Crossroads : performance studies and Irish culture / edited by Sara Brady and Fintan Walsh.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brady, Sara.

Walsh, Fintan, 1979-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural policy.

Arts and society.

Performing arts.

Ireland--Civilization.

Ireland.

Civilization.

Performing arts--Ireland.

Arts and society--Ireland.

Ireland--Cultural policy.

Physical Description:

xii, 255 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hanpshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Summary:

In the expansive and expanding field of Irish studies performance has typically featured as drama, theatre, dance, and music. Recent changes in Irish society., the arts industry, and modes of critical inquiry have all prompted the need to think further about the complex and under-researched area of performance in and of Irish culture. It is increasingly well recognized that the categories of 'Irish culture' and 'Irishness' are highly performative, effected through a wide range of social practices, cultural formations, and discursive utterances, and in timely need of critical address.

The purpose of this seminal collection of essays is to broach this task by considering Irish culture through some of the paradigms and vocabularies offered by performance studies. As the title of the book makes clear, we return to the evocative metaphor of crossroads by way of signaling the manifold ways in which Irish culture has been performed in past, present, and likely future tenses at local, national and international domains These roads do not respect the static symmetry indexed by a figural cross; rather the trajectories mapped here are suggestive, multiplicitous, and mobile,. Practices, epistemologies., temporalities, geographies, and identities splinter in their wake, clearing the ground for the emergence of nuanced understandings of performance and cultural politics.

Contents:

Part I Tradition, Ritual, and Play 11

1 Performing Ireland: A Performative Approach to the Study of Irish Culture / Jack Santino 13

2 Performing Tradition / Bernadette Sweeney 21

3 Sporting 'Irish' Identities: Performance and the Gaelic Games / Sara Brady 34

4 'It's beyond Candide - it's Švejk': Wise Foolery in the Work of Jack Lynch, Storyteller / Mike Wilson 45

5 Traditional Irish Music in the Twenty-first Century: Networks, Technology, and the Negotiation of Authenticity / Scott Spencer 58

Part II Place, Landscape, and Commemoration 71

6 'Tapping Secrecies of Stone': Irish Roads as Performances of Movement, Measurement, and Memory / J'aime Morrison 73

7 Commemoration and the Performance of Irish Famine Memory / Emily Mark FitzGerald 86

8 Performing 'the Troubles': Murals and the Spectacle of Commemorations of Violence at Free Derry Corner / Matthew Spangler 100

9 St Patrick's Purgatory and the Performance of Pilgrimage / David Cregan 114

Part III Political Performances 127

10 De Valera Performs the Oath: Word, Voice, Book, and Act / Anne Pulju 129

11 Between the Living and the Dead: Performative 'in-betweens' in the Work of Alastair MacLennan / Carmen Szab̤ 141

12 Jus Soli/Jus Sanguinis: The Biopolitics of Performing Irishness / Matthew Causey 153

Part IV Gender, Feminism, and Queer Performance 167

13 Ghosting Bridgie Cleary: Tom Mac Intyre and Staging This Woman's Death / Charlotte Mclvor 169

14 Challenging Patriarchal Imagery: Amanda Coogan's Performance Art / Gabriella Calchi Novati 180

15 Homelysexuality and the 'Beauty' Pageant / Fintan Walsh 196

Part V Diaspora, Migration, and Globalization 211

16 Taking Northern Irish Identity on the Road: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival of 2007 / E. Moore Quinn 213

17 Who's Laughing Now? Comic Currents for a New Irish Audience / Eric Weitz 225

18 Parading Multicultural Ireland: Identity Politics and National Agendas in the 2007 St Patrick's Festival / Holly Maples 237.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230219984

0230219985

OCLC:

294885552