The University of Montana currently offers an interdisciplinary 18 credit minor in Irish Studies that draws on the course offering of distinguished faculty in Modern Languages, History, Liberal Studies, Drama, Literature, Music, Film Studies, and Theatre. A programmatic focus on the central role of the Irish language in Ireland's history and culture and on the role of the Irish American diaspora in the western settlement of North America makes the minor a unique course of study among Irish Studies programs in America. Moreover, the Irish Studies Minor provides University of Montana students with the opportunity of studying the rich, diverse, and globally influential traditions of Irish culture: Literature, Theatre, Dance, and Music.
While the Irish Studies Minor itself is relatively new, it draws on the pioneering work done by Professor David Emmons in the field of Irish Studies. The author of the seminal text The Butte Irish: Class and Ethnicity in an American Mining Town, 1875-1925 (1990), Emmons makes clear the place of the Irish not only in the construction of Butte, Montana, but in the generation of categories of ethnic identification, and in the building of a contemporary America. The Irish Studies Minor also builds on and draws energy from the activities--cultural, preservationist, linguistic--of members of the Irish American community in Montana (Butte, Missoula, Helena, Great Falls, Anaconda, and others) who have over the years investigated, critiqued, and honored the history of the Irish in Butte, in Montana, and in the West itself.