Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags

Citation:

Ryan, Louise, and Margaret Ward. 2019. Irish Women and Nationalism: Soldiers, New Women and Wicked Hags. Newbridge: Irish Academic Press.

Authors: Louise Ryan, Margaret Ward

Annotation:

Summary:
Studies of Irish nationalism have been primarily historical in scope and overwhelmingly male in content. Too often, the ‘shadow of the gunman’ has dominated. Little recognition has been given to the part women have played, yet over the centuries they have undertaken a variety of roles – as combatants, prisoners, writers and politicians. In this important and influential collection the full range of women’s contribution to the Irish nationalist movement is explored by writers whose interests range from the historical and sociological to the literary and cultural. From the little known contribution of women to the earliest nationalist uprisings of the 1600s and 1700s, to their active participation in the republican campaigns of the twentieth century, different chapters consider the changing contexts of female militancy and the challenge this has posed to masculine images and structures.
 
Using a wide range of sources, including textual analysis, archives and documents, newspapers and autobiographies, interviews and action research, individual writers examine sensitive and highly complex debates around women’s role in situations of conflict.
 
Irish Women and Nationalism, first published in 2004 and now reissued with a new foreword by Marie Coleman, is a major contribution to wider feminist debates about the gendering of nationalism, raising questions about the extent to which women’s rights, demands and concerns can ever be fully accommodated within nationalist movements. (Summary from Irish Academic Press)
 
Table of Contents:
Preface
Marie Coleman
 
Foreward
Sinead McCoole
 
1. Introduction
Louise Ryan and Margaret Ward
 
2. Testimonies to History: Reassessing Women's Involvement in the 1641 Rising
Andrea Knox
 
3. Revolution in Ireland, Evolution in Women’s Rights: Irish Women in 1798 and 1848
Jan Cannavan
 
4. ‘in the Line of Fire’: Representations of Women and War (1919–1923) through the Writings of Republican Men
Louise Ryan
 
5. Constance Markievicz and the Politics of Memory
Karen Steele
 
6. Representations and Attitudes of Republican Women in the Novels of Annie M. P. Smithson (1873–1948) and Rosamond Jacob (1888–1960)
Danae O’Regan
 
7. ‘and behind Him a Wicked Hag Did Stalk’: From Maiden to Mother, Ireland as Woman through the Male Psyche
Jayne Steel
 
8. ‘We Had to Be Stronger’: The Political Imprisonment of Women in Northern Ireland, 1972–1999
Mary Corcoran
 
9. Female Combatants, Paramilitary Prisoners and the Development of Feminism in the Republican Movement
Rhiannon Talbot
 
10. Narratives of Political Activism from Women in West Belfast
Claire Hackett
 
11. the Emergence of a Gender Consciousness: Women and Community Work in West Belfast
Callie Persic
 
12. Times of Transition: Republican Women, Feminism 

Topics: Combatants, Female Combatants, Conflict, Feminisms, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Roles, Nationalism, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Europe, Northern Europe Countries: Ireland

Year: 2019

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