The 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement established power-sharing arrangements between the two divided communities in Northern Ireland. The Agreement is not set in stone but is rather a hopeful yet uncertain project. Making it put down deep cultural roots requires some confrontation with and transformation of the history, and the socially constructed memories, of Ireland’s decisive decade 1912–1923, which was violent and divisive.

This significant volume moves music-historical research in the direction of deconstructing the national grand narratives in music history, of challenging the national paradigm in methodology, and thinking anew about cultural traffic, cultural transfer and cosmopolitanism in the musical past. The chapters of this book confront, or subject to some kind of critique, assumptions about the importance of the national in the musical past. The emphasis, therefore, is not so much on how national culture has been constructed, or how national cultural institutions have influenced musical production, but, rather, on the way the national has been challenged by musical practices or audience reception.

This is the first book to bring a philosophical lens to issues of socio-political and cultural importance in twenty-first century Ireland. While the social, political, and economic landscape of contemporary Ireland has inspired extensive scholarly debate both within and well beyond the field of Irish Studies, there is a distinct lack of philosophical voices in these discussions. The aim of this volume is to enrich the fields of Philosophy and Irish Studies by encouraging a manifestly philosophical exploration of contemporary issues and concerns. The essays in this volume collectively address diverse philosophical questions on contemporary Ireland by exploring a variety of themes, including: diaspora, exile, return; women’s bodies and autonomy; historic injustices and national healing; remembering and commemoration; institutionalization and containment; colonialism and Ireland as "home"; conflict and violence; Northern Ireland and the peace process; nationalism, patriotism, and masculinities; ethnicity, immigration, and identity; and translation, art and culture. Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Ireland marks a significant contribution to contemporary theorizations of Ireland by incorporating both Irish and transatlantic perspectives. It will appeal to a broad audience of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, Irish Studies, feminist theory, history, legal studies, and literary theory. Beyond academia, it will also engage those interested in contemporary Ireland from policy and civil society perspectives.

This essential guide offers innovative critical readings of key contemporary novels from Ireland and Northern Ireland. Linden Peach discusses texts that are representative of the richness of Irish writing during the 1980s and 1990s, and reads works by established authors alongside those by the new generation of writers. The novels examined include works by John Banville, Jennifer Johnston, Roddy Doyle, Emma Donoghue, Seamus Deane, William Trevor, Dermot Bolger, Joseph O'Connor, Patrick McCabe, Mary Morrissy, Glenn Patterson and Robert McLiam Wilson. The Contemporary Irish Novel addresses themes such as ghosts and haunting, mimicry, obedience and subversion, the relocation and reinscription of identity, the mother figure, parent-child relations, madness, masculinity, self-harm, sexuality, domestic violence, fetishism and postmodernity. Drawing on a range of critical approaches including postcolonial, gender and psychoanalytic theory, Peach explores and celebrates the diversity of Irish fiction and suggests that the boundary between literature and theory is as permeable as that between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction examines how contemporary Irish authors have taken up the history of the Irish woman migrant. It situates these writers' work in relation to larger discourses of exile in the Irish literary tradition and examines how they engage with the complex history of Irish emigration.

The fifth volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism--covering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council--surveys the transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores the efforts of bishops, priests and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern challenges and reintegrate the experiences and expertise of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century's designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, decolonization and liberation, this period has also been designated 'the People's Century'. Viewed through the lens of the Catholic church in Britain and Ireland, these same dynamics are explored within thematic, synoptic chapters by leading scholars. As a century characterized by the rise, or better renewal of the apostolate of the laity, this edited collection traces the struggles to reconcile tradition, re-evaluate hierarchical authority, adapt to social and educational mobility, as well as to adjudicate serious challenges from outside and within--including inflammatory biopolitics and clerical sexual abuse--to religious belief and the legitimacy of the Church as an institution.

This book provides a comprehensive and field-defining examination of the study of religions in Ireland. By bringing together some of the foremost experts on religions in an Irish context, it critically traces the development of an important field of study and evaluates the thematic threads that have emerged as significant. It thereby offers an assessment of contemporary religions in Ireland and their relationships to society, culture, economics, politics and the State. Contributors make connections between topics as diverse as Ireland's Revolutionary Period, the formation of the Irish State, the decline of Catholicism, the rise of migrant religions and New Religious Movements and the effects of secularisation on religions and society. This book emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of the study of religions whilst illustrating the coherent themes that have shaped the development of the field in Ireland, making it unique.

This book provides an original assessment of the First World War in Ireland and its consequences, the key to understanding the complexities of the Irish nation today. Thomas Hennessey explores how the War transformed the nature of the Irish and Ulster questions from devolved self-government within the UK to a free Irish republic outside the British Empire, considering such influential figures as de Valera and Michael Collins, and issues such as conscription. He examines both this process of re-evaluation, and the vital question of the consequences for Northern Ireland today.