Celtic Studies

This course enhances students' understanding of "The Forgotten Irish" by addressing various sectors of society which have often been cast aside from the stereotypical view of what it means to be Irish. Topics such as religion, colonial connections, gender, and sexuality, traveler culture, and the role of "New Irish" immigrant communities are explored in a multi-modal context including literature, print, film, art, music, and original source documents.

This course considers key themes, topics, debates, and controversies in Irish culture, focusing particularly on the representation of Irish-ness and Irish culture in literature, film, drama, and art history. Key issues explored include cultural nationalism; the literary revival; the myth of the West; Dublin in cultural representation; gender and nation; commemoration and memory; institutional abuse scandals; race and immigration; and class prosperity, recession, and austerity.
 

The course gives students a comprehensive introduction to the Irish language and culture, and enables them to carry out a basic conversation in Irish. The course focuses on listening and speaking skills, and also on reading and writing skills. 

This course examines expressions of popular or vernacular religion and associated practices which exist apart from, but alongside, the strictly theological and liturgical forms of official religion. Ideas, beliefs, and narratives about the Christian supernatural as well as supernatural beings outside of (but often influenced by) the Christian pantheon, will be discussed, as well as fairy belief and legends. Possible explanatory frameworks for folk belief in the supernatural, and the relationship between belief and narrative creativity, is also examined. The course examines a wide range of verbal genres, including apocryphal stories about Christ and the saints, humorous anecdotes about religion, fairy legends, religious laments, prayers, and charms. A variety of traditional practices associated with folk religion and belief are also dealt with.

This course provides an introduction to the language of the Old Irish period (ca. 600-900).

The course is a survey course concerned with the histories, languages, literatures, and cultures of the Celtic-speaking peoples from the Iron Age until the end of the Middle Ages. Its principal objective is to guide students to a fully contextualized understanding of the languages, nations, and material and artistic cultures that came to be considered 'Celtic'. Topics include Greek and Roman authors' description of 'Celts' (i.e., in central Europe, Gaul, and Britain) alongside those peoples' visible artefacts and literature; the speakers of Celtic languages (e.g., Welsh and Gaelic) in medieval Britain and Ireland and their emerging intellectual culture; and the ways in which Celtic-speaking peoples understood themselves or were understood by others, and how they related to each other.

This course offers a sample of Irish traditional cultural expressions, focusing on the three main areas of oral literature, custom belief and tradition, and folk life. Students are introduced to storytelling, storytellers, stories, calendar customs, traditions, festivals, rituals, and fascinating aspects of popular belief and religion, such as fairies, Irish Saints, the Otherworld, Wake "amusements" and the Pattern Day. Folk life includes a survey of Irish vernacular architecture, furniture, objects of everyday life, traditional boats, and much more.