This program was developed as advanced level work with a strong balance of intensive, comprehensive reading with knowing works for performance by heart. The program included selected Irish works of non-fiction, poetry, film, literature, music, and an introduction to the Gaelic language. The fall term was structured as follows: in the first week, the students received a basic introduction to Ireland and to issues of orality and literacy. In the second week, the focus was on the poetry of William Butler Yeats and on developing skills in understanding poetry. The class spent several weeks on the culture of ancient Ireland, focusing on spirituality, bardic traditions, and gender. A week spent on the Potato Famine and subsequent series of evictions and political unrest led to several more weeks of learning about the history of Irish politics and expressive works in the early 20th century.
Winter quarter was divided into four blocks of study: early 20th century Ireland, Irish America, late 20th century Ireland, and Ireland’s contemporary cultural explosion. In each quarter, the students divided into teams to prepare for a collaborative performance in the tenth week; it was the main expressive assignment of each quarter. Students received a take-home examination in the eighth week requiring eleven typed pages of response on such problems as linking different concepts or names, contextualizing quotes from program materials, and answering essay questions.
The four faculty included Seán Williams (ethnomusicology and Gaelic language), Patrick Hill (spirituality and philosophy), Charles Teske (literature and linguistics), and Rebecca Chamberlain (storytelling and art). Lectures in fall quarter included such titles as “Sacred Springs, Holy Waters” (Chamberlain), “English and Irish Historiography of the Famine” (Hill), “Gaelic Ways of Shaping Cosmology” (Williams), and “The Poetry of W.B. Yeats” (Teske). In winter quarter, lectures included “The European Union and Irish Identities” (Hill), “On Contemporary Irish Poetry” (Teske), “Character and Dialogue” (Chamberlain), and “Irish-American Music,” (Williams). Williams and Chamberlain led a series of workshops on old style Gaelic singing, and on the development and performance of stories, respectively. Other events included lectures on the Celtic Calendar by Linda Vail, a lecture and performance by Irish musician Mick Moloney, individual creation of two illuminated manuscripts in early Celtic style, a workshop on Irish set dancing, a full day of student presentations of traditional stories, and seminar assignments requiring the analysis of an Irish proverb, the telling of a family emigration story, and a presentation by each student on a particular Irish writer.
Each week featured two seminars: one on the book of the week (requiring a short written response), and one for the integration of the week’s work. In fall quarter, students created a short integrative paper at the end of each week, which was expected to be comprehensive, integrative, and personal about the entire week. In winter, the integrative papers covered each of the first three blocks of study. Program activities also included faculty lectures, films, Gaelic lessons, poetry, music, and group discussion; and presentations and workshops. At the end of the fifth week of fall quarter the students developed a larger integrative paper that covered the first five weeks of the program, and they wrote a similar paper for the tenth week of class, covering the entire quarter.
All students maintained a program portfolio containing notes of discussions, Gaelic language, films, poems, songs, and readings, all program materials, weekly papers, exams, integrative essays, and journal entries. Students were required to recite from memory poems by W.B. Yeats, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, and a Gaelic poem (“Mise Rafteraí”) by Antony O’Rafteraí, and engage in Gaelic small talk for their final evaluations in each quarter.
The program used the following readings: Breandán Ó hEithir’s A Pocket History of Ireland, Charles Teske’s “Orality and Literacy,” “Notes on Poetry,” and “That Old Time Linguistics” articles, William B. Yeats’ Collected Poems, Kevin Collins’ The Cultural Conquest of Ireland, Thomas Kinsella’s The Táin, Mary Condren’s The Serpent and the Goddess, Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Gallagher’s Paddy’s Lament, Margaret Ward’s Unmanageable Revolutionaries, Seán O’Casey’s Three Plays, and James Joyce’s Dubliners. In winter quarter the texts were James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir, Hasia Diner’s Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the 19th Century, Peter Quinn’s Banished Children of Eve: a Novel of Civil War New York, Mary Robinson’s speech titled “Cherishing the Irish Diaspora,” excerpts from Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Pádraig O’Malley’s Biting at the Grave: the Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair, Richard Kearney’s Post-Nationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, and Philosophy, Seamus Heaney’s Selected Poems, 1966-1987, Eavan Boland’s An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967 – 1987, and Rosemary Mahoney’s Whoredom in Kimmage: Irish Women Coming of Age.
Program films — discussed in seminar and written about in integrative papers and exams — included “The History of Ireland,” “Man of Aran,” “The Penal Days,” “The Curse of Cromwell,” “St. Patrick: a Biography,” “A Guide to Celtic Monasteries,” “The Secret of Roan Inish,” “When Ireland Starved,” “Eamonn Kelly: Storyteller,” “Mother Ireland,” “Juno and the Paycock,” and “The Dead” in fall quarter. In winter quarter, the films included “The Field,” “Some Mother’s Son,” “Riverdance — Live in New York,” “Understanding Northern Ireland,” “Corrymeela,” “Into the West,” “The Informer,” “Out of Ireland,” “The Molly Maguires,” “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” “Did Your Mother Come from Ireland?” and “The Last Hurrah.” Students also either read, performed, or otherwise encountered plays such as “Riders to the Sea” (John M. Synge), “The Ice Man Cometh” and “Abortion” (Eugene O’Neill), “The Rising of the Moon” (Lady Gregory), “The Famine” (Thomas Murphy), “Cathleen Ní Houlihan” (W.B. Yeats), “Translations,” “Molly Sweeney,” and “Philadelphia, Here I Come!” (Brian Friel). At the close of winter quarter, approximately one third of the class prepared to spend spring quarter in Ireland (representing the final segment of Perspectives on Ireland) with Patrick Hill, while the rest either went into related programs (“Studies in Ethnomusicology and Ethnopoetics: The Celtic World,” taught by Sean Williams and Rebecca Chamberlain, and “James Joyce,” taught by Charles Teske), or continued their studies elsewhere.