Essay: Could recession and the threat of terrorism be the cause of difficulties for the teaching of Irish studies in the United States, asks Christina Hunt Mahony, a veteran in the field.
Irish Studies in North America can be said to have begun at my own university - the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. Coincident with the early years of the Irish Literary Renaissance, a chair of Celtic Languages and Literatures was endowed there by the Ancient Order of Hibernians in 1896. Irish Studies, as we know it today - meaning the study of the literatures in Irish and English, history, folklore, politics and cultural studies - is a relatively new phenomenon. This sub-discipline was first introduced in universities in North America, but today Irish Studies programmes thrive in Irish and British universities where the range and level of courses has outstripped those on offer abroad.
Programmes in North America, reflecting a general trend in teaching, focus on the 19th, 20th, and now the 21st centuries. Since American universities no longer require literature students to study anything before the 19th century except Shakespeare and students earn history degrees taking only survey courses which touch upon earlier periods, this focus is not unusual, but it is a major difference between Irish Studies at home and abroad.
In the US the major programmes are found in Catholic institutions, with obvious implications, whereas in Canada Irish Studies tends to have more of what used to be called a "two traditions" approach. There are no large programmes, but courses are offered in many Canadian universities, with degrees on offer only in Celtic Studies at St Michael's College of the University of Toronto, in Irish Language at St Mary's in Halifax (where there is a new research chair at the Memorial University) and in Canadian-Irish Studies at Concordia in Montreal. In the US, the biggest programmes are those at well-funded Boston College and Notre Dame. Boston College differs from Notre Dame in its larger emphasis on Irish-American Studies, a growing trend nationwide. Boston College also sponsors the Irish Literary Supplement, remarkably under a single editorship since its inception more than 25 years ago. This latter undertaking is part of a laudable but somewhat disturbing North American trend, which I will call here "the one-man band" syndrome and discuss below.
Notre Dame has a strong programme in Dublin, and moves into new quarters on the Merrion Road shortly. It has also picked up publishing interests from Field Day and continues with an exemplary Irish line at its in-house press. At Catholic University, there is an MA degree programme in Irish Studies (as opposed to Notre Dame and Boston College's Irish specialisations within other disciplines) and the unique feature there is the required Dáil internship administered in Dublin by the IPA. It's a "study in two capitals" approach, favouring students interested in contemporary issues.
There are many places in the US, however, where one can study Ireland. One can even now obtain a certificate in Irish Studies online - co-sponsored by NUI Galway and Regis University in north Denver, Colorado. Since imagined Irelands are all the go, studying in virtual Ireland seems a logical next step. But is this what North American students really want? From my own experience, I think not, as I outlined when giving the longer analysis from which this essay is distilled at a conference in the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco late last year.
It might be considered a first step toward taking a genuine programme either there or here, but there is something of a forlorn quality about these undertakings, which are, of course, also money-spinning and thus smiled-upon by university administrations.
Although all things Irish have become culturally downright chic abroad, there is always the threat of overkill. There is also the cultural gap. Exported contemporary Irish culture can leave the Irish abroad disbelieving and at times angry. A great wealth of new drama has gone abroad, to a mixed reception - and these plays may or may not make their way on to American university syllabuses. The choice of Marina Carr's On Raftery's Hill for a major Irish arts festival at the Kennedy Centre in Washington is a case in point. The festival was a considerable success, but the play caused a furore, resulting in many empty seats after the interval and the incestuous rape which closed the first half. Cases of such abuse as Carr portrayed make the pages of Irish newspapers regularly, but the Irish abroad were unwilling or unable to accept this as a modern reality. For most emigrants the clock stops when they leave the country, and a degree of reverence for Irish institutions - family, religion, political probity and oul' decency - is essential to the maintenance of Irish identity abroad.
Irish books, mostly novels, short stories and memoirs, had, in recent years captured places on American bestseller lists, but now there are grumblings heard, sometimes of the "not another Frank McCourt" variety. General reception of Irish books in the US can affect university reading lists and library purchases. Most general "Irish" reading lists published by amazon.com and similar sources contain little which is known in Ireland but rather lists of Irish-American interest. Homegrown novelists William Kennedy and Alice McDermott are much preferred.
Irish Studies programmes in the US are often peripheral and vulnerable to market forces. So, when after September 11th, the words IRA and terrorist began being used in the US in the same sentence, it was a disturbing first in the mainstream US media. This juncture and the recession there could become a genuine liability for Irish matters within the academy.
It should never be assumed that all Americans are consumed by an interest in things Irish. Much of America doesn't know or care about Ireland and can be antipathetic. Fintan O'Toole's anecdote about Americans in the south-west only being able to identify Dublin as the place Garth Brooks recorded an album gives an insight into a general reaction. There is the compounded problem of the concentration of Irish programmes in Catholic universities. This identification can be an impediment to their gaining favour in non-affiliated colleges. US grant programmes are also no longer partial to Eurocentricity and more money is now being directed toward Third World ethnicities. The academy in Ireland should also be dissuaded from thinking that Irish Studies in American universities will be secure in future because Americans love the Irish. This is true in segments of American society, but not across the board. Americans tend to be Anglophilic as a rule, and there is some genuine Hibernophobia. I have certainly encountered this is in the upper reaches of the American academy in state-run and non-religious institutions.
Perhaps the gravest potential problem besetting Irish Studies in North America is that of continuity. Too many Irish Studies programmes in the US have been the result of the initiative and hard work of an individual or individuals - that "one-man band" approach. Too often there is no successor bred to the task, nor is there a mechanism for insuring replacement hires on retirement. If an Irish historian retires, he or she will likely be replaced by a British historian viewed as having a broader brief. Although this makes sense on first hearing, it can be deceiving. Scholars trained in Irish history have, by definition, the skills to teach general British history courses, especially to undergraduates, although the reverse is usually not the case. History departments in the US are short-sighted not to recognise that if you build an all-purpose introductory course for undergraduates in Irish history they will come - in droves. The prejudices which might inform choices in administrations and among the professoriat do not reflect the students' genuine eagerness about things Irish.
There is a decided trendin North America toward hyphenated Irish Studies. Irish-Canadian Studies and Irish-American Studies have gained in prevalence in part because funding options for such programmes can dip into funds earmarked for national concerns. This trend is also the indirect product of the rise of Irish Studies programmes in both Ireland and Britain. Although North American scholars kick-started Irish Studies, there is often now a knowledge gap, unarticulated, between Irish Studies scholars on the opposite sides of the Atlantic which can leave scholars abroad behind the curve. The development of Irish-American Studies can be seen as a defensive reaction. Since in many universities in the US Irish Studies - just to take classroom approaches to Joyce or Yeats or to 1916 - courses are taught as they would have been in Irish schools 20 years ago, not as taught in Irish universities today, a nostalgia gap exists too which infects Irish studies in the US. The future in the US and Canada shouldn't be, however, to veer into Canadian-Irish or American-Irish studies, because when North American students are attracted to Irish Studies it is rare that their initial interest is in studying the diaspora. More commonly, it is in studying the Irish - they want Irish literature and Irish history and they want to go to Ireland.
Consider, too, the distressing business of US Irish Studies programmes trying to fill lucrative chairs in the recent past with prominent Irish scholars and writers. Too often this has resulted in imperfect or temporary results. Notre Dame seems to have a virtual Irish Studies faculty, most of them resident in Dublin. Boston College began a prudent process of test-driving appointees to find a permanent candidate - a good idea, but one which just proved how many permutations on bad matches are possible before proceeding to a happy ending. NYU promised multiple Irish Studies chairs, but there is still only one, which continues to revolve, at times creakily. The University of Missouri in St Louis, with new funding for a chair, had to advertise twice. The difficulty is in part another gap between expectations (they all want to hire Seamus Heaney or his equivalent star quotient) and the reality that prominent writers and scholars must more or less be in Ireland in order to remain current.
The foregoing has sounded something of a death-knell - but it isn't intended that way. Irish Studies in North America is still à la mode, and no Czech or Swedish or Peruvian chic seems likely to emerge to displace it. Irish Studies in America is acquiring something of a patina. Its founders have gone or are retiring, while the rest of us are busily training disciples. The discipline remains vulnerable to the winds of change and, in economic terms, remains something of a niche market. I believe the future can be bright, but some of the pieties and presuppositions about Irish Studies abroad should be examined by those in the field both here and there.
Christina Hunt Mahony is acting director of the Centre for Irish Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC