Celtic Studies

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. 

The Great Hunger or An Gorta Mór (1845-52) was the single most transformative event in modern Irish history and proportionally one of the most devastating famines to occur anywhere in the modern era. This famine led to the loss of one million lives and the emigration of two million refugees from a population of eight and a half million. The humanitarian crisis of the late-1840s and early-1850s marks the creation of a global Irish diaspora and a lasting memory of social change. This course explores key debates surrounding the famine and its resonances across Irish and global history, tackling topics including the role of government relief, epidemic disease, mass displacement, and the social revolution which fundamentally reshaped Ireland.

The course examines magical belief and supernatural entities in Scotland. This complex and much-neglected aspect of our cultural heritage is explored through a combination of empirical data (provided by case studies and archive holdings) and theoretical contextualization. A dominant theme is the identification and interpretation of vestiges of supernatural belief still extant and deeply embedded in Scottish cultural life. Comparative material from other Celtic-language cultures and Scandinavia also feature.