Women, Social and Cultural Change in Twentieth Century Ireland

Dissenting Voices?

Edited By: Sarah O’Connor, Christopher C. Shepard

£29.99

This book explores women, social and cultural change in twentieth-century Ireland. The interdisciplinary work gathered here challenges monolithic representations of Irish female identity, exposing women’s disparate backgrounds and varied experiences.

Drawing from a range of disciplines, this book pivots around the central concept of women, social and cultural change in Ireland during the twentieth century.…

Drawing from a range of disciplines, this book pivots around the central concept of women, social and cultural change in Ireland during the twentieth century. The interdisciplinary, inter-institutional nature of the work gathered here aims to challenge monolithic representations of Irish female identity. Utilising new sources and theoretical frameworks, the contributors to this volume expose women’s disparate political, social and cultural backgrounds, highlighting the concept of woman as a ‘site’ of exchange, overlap and variation. This collection represents not only the work of a vibrant research community but aims to make a lasting contribution to the study of women in twentieth century Ireland.

Sarah O’Connor is currently Assistant Professor of Celtic Studies in St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. A former Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority Scholar, her doctoral dissertation was entitled ‘Women and Social Change in Twentieth Century Ireland: Bilingualism, Regionalism and Translation in Irish Women’s Writing, 1960-2006’. The central research focus of that dissertation was the concept of interstitiality, which is used to account for the creative and subversive role of bilingualism, regional dialect and translation in a variety of creative texts by Irish women. She was also one of the Irish-language researchers working on the Database of Irish Women Writers 1800-2005 funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and directed by Professor Gerardine Meaney (University College Dublin) and Professor Maria Luddy (University of Warwick).

Christopher Shepard was a Government of Ireland Higher Education Authority Scholar based at Queen’s University Belfast. His doctoral dissertation, entitled ‘Women activists and organisations in Ireland, 1945-68’, examined the role of non-feminist organisations in encouraging female activism and promoting social and legislative change in Ireland during the middle-decades of the twentieth-century. In his next project, he hopes to explore the lives and work of Irish Protestant women missionaries in the Far East, 1935-51.