This course represents an introduction to modern Irish in both its spoken and written forms: basic principles of grammar and sentence structure are covered. Emphasis is placed on the application of these principles in every-day situations. Students will learn how to conduct simple conversations about the activities and events of everyday life: talking about oneself and asking questions of others; conversing about family and home; describing the weather and daily activities.
Introduction to Gaelic Literature ENLT 395"Irish has the oldest vernacular literature of Europe: our earliest monuments go back to the sixth century." This observation by Professor Calvert Watkins of Harvard University highlights the unique and ancient literary tradition of the Irish. This course will introduce students to the riches and delights of the literary tradition of Gaelic Ireland from the earliest times down to the Great Famine. Consulting texts in translation, students will read stories from the Heroic Literature of Ireland; they will learn of the impact of Christianity, the Viking Raids, the Norman Invasion and the Tudor conquest on the canons of Irish literature. It is against this background of upheaval that students will come to know the role of Ireland's literary aristocracy; that caste of learned men who regulated the Irish tradition, rejected any unlicensed innovation and conformed new genres to age-old literary conventions. Students will read a selection of bardic poetry with particular emphasis on compositions dealing with the Tudor Conquest and destruction of Irish Gaelic civilization in 1601. The end of the Gaelic world heralds a new era for Irish literature and a new and more challenging role for those who inherit from their bardic forefathers the custody the custody of Gaelic Ireland's literary tradition. The struggle is now one of cultural survival, and students will learn of the centrality of literature in this struggle as they read the works of Geoffrey Keating, Daibhi O'Bruadair, Aodhgán Ó Raithaille and the Asiling poets. Taken as a whole, this course will impart to the student a sensitive appreciation of the muscular vitality of the Irish literary tradition along with a greater understanding of the centrality of literature and the literati in Ireland's political and cultural history.
James Joyce(ENLT 431 01)This course reads the canons of contemporary Irish and Irish-American Cinema in order to analyze the performance and commodification in global media culture of qualities of "Irishness" and of Irish history. We will, for example, consider these films in order to understand, and often to challenge, the construction of Irish colonial history in what is essentially a Trans-Atlantic cinematic tradition. Moreover, the performative subjectivities of "hard men" and "plucky colleens" will be interrogated, as will the globally screened epoch known as "The Troubles." In addition to these concerns the crossroads of race and ethnicity in America will be at stake in our interpretive work; as Diane Negra has argued "Irishness is rapidly becoming the white ethnicity of choice [for Americans], a means of claiming an ethnic identity while maintaining the benefits of whiteness." We will ask questions about how this imaginative "ethnic refuge," functions in the larger discourse of race in the United States.
An opening section on the particular interpretive work required by visual narrative will begin the course. We will in the first weeks of the class be viewing clips of film classics and reading from the canons of film theory and criticism.
Irish and the Irish Americans(HIST 249/Honors) Instructor: David EmmonsEnrollment limited to those going to Ireland with Davidson Honors' College (see http://www2.umt.edu/dhc/studyabroad.htm for further details
Ireland, the Irish people, and the Irish diaspora, from first settlement to contemporary troubles