1st Edition
The Routledge History of Irish America
This volume gathers over forty world-class scholars to explore the dynamics that have shaped the Irish experience in America from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.
From the early 1600s to the present, over 10 million Irish people emigrated to various points around the globe. Of them, more than six million settled in what we now call the United States of America. Some were emigrants, some were exiles, and some were refugees—but they all brought with them habits, ideas, and beliefs from Ireland, which played a role in shaping their new home. Organized chronologically, the chapters in this volume offer a cogent blend of historical perspectives from the pens of some of the world’s leading scholars. Each section explores multiple themes including gender, race, identity, class, work, religion and politics. This book also offers essays that examine the literary and/or artistic production of each era. These studies investigate not only how Irish America saw itself or, in turn, was seen, but also how the historical moment influenced cultural representation. It demonstrates the ways in which Irish Americans have connected with other groups, such as African Americans and Native Americans, and sets “Irish America” in the context of the global Irish diaspora.
This book will be of value to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as instructors and scholars interested in American History, Immigration History, Irish Studies, and Ethnic Studies more broadly.
Foreword
Marion R. Casey
Introduction
Cian T. McMahon and Kathleen P. Costello‑Sullivan
Foreword by Marion R. Casey
Part 1: From Colonial Era to Early Republic
Chapter 1: Ireland and the Irish in the Atlantic World
Audrey Horning
Chapter 2: Ulster Presbyterians and the Development of a “Scotch-Irish” Identity
Peter Gilmore
Chapter 3: Family and Labor in Eighteenth-Century Irish America
Judith Ridner
Chapter 4: The Irish in the Revolutionary Atlantic
Samuel K. Fisher
Chapter 5: Race, Labor, and Slavery in Antebellum Irish America
Angela F. Murphy
Chapter 6: Cosmopolitan Insights from Early Irish-American Letter Networks
Jennifer Orr
Part 2: The Great Famine
Chapter 7: The Great Famine Exodus
Anelise Hanson Shrout
Chapter 8: American Catholicism and the Irish from Colonial Times to 1870
Oliver P. Rafferty SJ
Chapter 9: The Rise of the Popular Press in Irish-American Culture
Debra Reddin van Tuyll
Chapter 10: Anti-Irish Nativism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century
Hidetaka Hirota
Chapter 11: Irish-American Drama in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America
Mary Trotter
Chapter 12: Folklore in Irish America
E. Moore Quinn and Cara Delay
Chapter 13: Irish-American Famine Literature
Marguérite Corporaal
Part 3: After the Famine
Chapter 14: How Remembering the Famine Shaped Irish-American Identity
Mary C. Kelly
Chapter 15: The Irish in the Civil War and Reconstruction
David T. Gleeson
Chapter 16: Race, Gender, and Irish Labor in U.S. Northeastern Cities
Danielle Phillips-Cunningham
Chapter 17: California, Race, and the Irish in the West
Malcolm Campbell
Chapter 18: Irish Americans in American Politics and the Catholic Church, 1870-1945
Timothy J. Meagher
Chapter 19: The Emmets and the Jameses, an Irish-American Case Study
Colm Tóibín
Part 4: The Turn of the Twentieth Century
Chapter 20: America and Irish-American Nationalism
David Brundage
Chapter 21: America and Irish Unionism, 1870-1930
Lindsey Flewelling
Chapter 22: Irish-American Women and Political Activism in the Early Twentieth Century
Tara M. McCarthy
Chapter 23: The Irish and Labor in the Industrial Era, 1880-1930s
James R. Barrett
Chapter 24: Irish Labor, Liberty, and Literature in the Twentieth-Century Atlantic World
Maria McGarrity
Part 5: After World War II
Chapter 25: The Irish and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
Ray O’Hanlon
Chapter 26: Irish-American Politics in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Matthew J. O’Brien
Chapter 27: Revisiting the Role of the United States of America in Northern Ireland
Andrew Sanders
Chapter 28: Capturing Fading Communities in Post-World War II Irish-American Fiction
Beth O’Leary Anish
Chapter 29: Lorraine Hansberry, Sean O’Casey, and the Common Space of the Theatre
Cara McClintock-Walsh
Chapter 30: Irish Americanness in Late Twentieth-Century Hollywood Films
Matthew J. Fee
Part 6: Irish America in the Third Millennium
Chapter 31: Media and the Irish Diaspora from the Twentieth Century to the Present
Mark O’Brien
Chapter 32: Irish America, the “Celtic Tiger,” and After
Seán Ó Riain & Nessa Ní Chasaide
Chapter 33: Irish Americans and U.S. Politics in the Twenty-First Century
Ted Smyth
Chapter 34: Breaking the Silence of Child Sexual Abuse in the Irish-American Catholic Church
Sally Barr Ebest
Chapter 35: LGBTQ Irish Activists and the Queering of Irish America
Bridget E. Keown
Part 7: The Twenty-First Century and Beyond
Chapter 36: The Irish Language in America
Nicholas M. Wolf
Chapter 37: Irish Music in America
Méabh Ní Fhuartháin
Chapter 38: Disabilities in Irish-Catholic America
Joseph Valente
Chapter 39: Animals in Irish-American Poetry
Kathryn Kirkpatrick
Chapter 40: Whiteness and the Contemporary Irish-American Family Saga
Sinéad Moynihan
Chapter 41: Contemporary Irish America and the Environment
Christine Cusick
Afterword: The Remarkable Persistence of Irish America
Daniel Mulhall
Biography
Cian T. McMahon is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Honors College at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of two books, The Global Dimensions of Irish Identity: Race, Nation, and the Popular Press, 1840-1880 (2015) and The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (2021), and has also published articles in a range of scholarly journals including Irish Historical Studies and the American Historical Review.
Kathleen P. Costello-Sullivan is Professor of Modern Irish literature at Le Moyne College. Along with articles and book chapters, she has written Mother/Country: Politics of the Personal in the Fiction of Colm Tóibín (2012) and Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-first-Century Irish Novel (2018) and edited J. Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla (2013) and Norah Hoult's Poor Women! (2016). She is the current Series Editor for Syracuse University Press’s Irish line and a former ACIS President.
“Ranging from the colonial era to the present day and addressing a remarkably wide range of themes—including migration, labor, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, nationalism, literature, language, music, and the environment—this Routledge History will be an invaluable resource for all readers interested in Irish-American history and culture.”
Kevin Kenny, New York University
"This volume represents a spectacular achievement that will appeal to scholars, students, and general readers. Innovative and wide-ranging, it beautifully illustrates the diversity and complexity of Irish-American culture and history from the earliest waves of migration up to the present time."
Marjorie Howes, Boston College
“Carefully structured into seven well-defined sections and written by both rising stars and leading scholars in the field, The Routledge History of Irish America is a breathtakingly wide-ranging exploration of the lives, activities, and reception of Irish-America across the centuries. A must for students and scholars alike.”
Donald M. MacRaild, London Metropolitan University and Honorary Fellow at Ulster and Edinburgh universities.
