Irish Lit Past and Present

Catalog description

This course introduces students to postcolonial theory and examples of anticolonial theater in the Irish context. Reading both firsthand accounts and literatures from the rebellion of 1798 to the present post- Good Friday Agreement era in the North of Ireland and texts from the Republic of Ireland, this course asks students to read about constructions of identity in terms of gender, class, race, and national identity. From Oscar Wilde’s description of incarceration in “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” to William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory’s revolutionary play “Cathleen ni Houlihan”, selections from Joyce’s Ulysses to the poetry of Congolese/ Irish poet Nithy Kasa and Nigerian/ Irish writer Melatu Uche Okorie, the class discusses changing definitions of Irish identity in a global, anticolonial context.