For more than four decades, Northern Ireland has been the source of an outpouring of imagery impelled by its own history. From the poetry of the late sixties, including such seminal figures as Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, through the first rank of exploratory novels by the likes of Deirdre Madden, Bernard McLaverty, Eoin McNamee, Glenn Patterson, Robert MacLiam Wilson, and Eugene McCabe, to playwrights like Anne Devlin, Gary Mitchell and Owen McCafferty, the depth of literature from “the North” has been internationally recognized. As in other trouble zones, writers have posted their “dispatches from the front” of the conflict. In the realm of the visual arts, too, a powerful (and often divided) iconography has emerged, given expression in various media, from street murals to canvas, photography to film. The purpose of this course is to explore in all its manifest forms, the artistic response to a society in turmoil, and its recent attempts to make sense of the long-awaited peace.
Additional requirements:
REQUIRED FILMS
Cal. Dir. Pat O’Connor. 1985.
Mickeybo and Me. Dir. Terry Loane, 2004.
Resurrection Man. Dir. Mark Evans. 1997.
Method of presentation:
Lectures, seminars and an emphasis on interaction (leading of discussions, group work and individual class contribution, as well as participatory involvement. It is anticipated that students will attend at least one play/cultural event in Belfast if they attend the Northern Ireland trip, and a second in Dublin, providing the subject matter is relevant. Classes will usually begin with a survey of visual material – paintings, murals, photographs from Northern Ireland.
Required work and form of assessment:
Classroom presentations and participation (30%); Mid-term paper (30%); final paper (40%).
content:
Introduction to “The Troubles” Timeline and overview. General observations and discussion of some images.
Cal, Bernard MacLaverty’s novel about a Catholic living in a Protestant neighborhood in Northern Ireland. Film, directed by Pat O’Connor. (1985) This is an accessible introduction to the psychological and emotional schisms generated though the conflict, by one of the North’s best-known writers – and introduces a theme (love across the divide) which is to be be re-worked in fiction repeatedly over the following decades.
Reading: Students are required to read the novel Cal in its entirety.
Cal: Analysis of extracts from the novel together with a viewing of the second half of the film. The many aspects of division: social, ethnic, religious, and their manifestations in the novel.
Is “innocence” possible in a violently fragmented society?
Reading: A Night in November, by Marie Jones (play script)
A Night in November. This phenomenally successful play examines the identity crisis of a Protestant man from Northern Ireland, brought up as quintessentially British, who, to his great shock realises he is Irish, also. Followed by documentary on a production of the same. Screening of documentary.
Street Murals: Territorialism, propaganda, or art? Many commentators have seen the murals as nothing more than an expression of sectarian hatred, but, as the political climate changed and the move towards peace gained momentum, the symbolism of the murals evolved to reflect shifting priorities. As the iconography altered in the new political climate, it became clear that the murals were an important barometer of opinion on the ground. Discussion of “Dark Tourism”
Reading: 50 Dead Men Walking – Chapters 1 - 6
50 Dead Men Walking screening of film and excerpts from Autobiography. The politics of betrayal. The morality of the “dirty war.”
Reading: Mojo Mickeybo, by Owen McCafferty
Mojo Mickeybo plus a screening of the film). McCafferty’s, like Mitchell’s, is a much-needed retrospective voice (this time on the Nationalist side of the divide) taking a post-agreement view of Northern Ireland’s recent past. Children in “The Troubles”
Reading: The play, In a Little World of Our own, Gary Mitchell
A world out of joint: the playwright’s response. Gary Mitchell, In a Little World of Our Own. Mitchell is the leading theatrical voice from the Protestant side, post-agreement. His plays inhabit an often paranoid and insular emotional landscape, riven by fears for the future.
Reading: Chapters 1- 7 of Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson, 1998
Eureka Street: The role of humour in a traumatised society
Reading: The remainder of Eureka Street
Eureka Street: character, balance and the limits of satire.
Reading: Chapters 1 – 10 of the novel Resurrection Man, Eoin McNamee, Faber, 1994
Resurrection Man, together with its film adaptation. Set in 1970s Belfast, this story is centered around a member of the Loyalist terror group, the Shankill Butchers, and explores how acts of violence gradually corrode their own political justification until what was a means becomes an end in itself.
Screening of film – Resurrection Man. Review of the artists, dramatists and novelists from the entire semester – propaganda, sectarianism and the dangers of self-expression.
Guest speaker / Field trip (To be confirmed)
Five minutes of Heaven, Award-winning 2009 drama-documentary starring James Nesbit and Liam Neeson about a meeting between a paramilitary killer and the brother of his victim.
Kennedy Andres, Elmer. Fiction and the Northern Ireland Troubles since 1969: de-constructing the North. Four Courts Press.
Lance, Pettitt. “Television Drama and the Troubles” in Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Magee, Patrick. Gangsters or Guerrillas? Representations of Irish Republicans in ‘Troubles Fiction’. Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast 2001.
Ormsby, Frank, ed. A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Belfast: Blackstaff House, 1992.
Parker, Michael, ed. The Hurt World: Short Stores of the Troubles. Belfast: Blackstaff House, 1995.
Pelaschlar, Laura. Writing the North: The Contemporary Novel in Northern Ireland. Fonda Grafiche Multimediali, S.R.L. Trieste, 1998.
Notes:
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.
Writing On The Wall
For more than four decades, Northern Ireland has been the source of an outpouring of imagery impelled by its own history. From the poetry of the late sixties, including such seminal figures as Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, through the first rank of exploratory novels by the likes of Deirdre Madden, Bernard McLaverty, Eoin McNamee, Glenn Patterson, Robert MacLiam Wilson, and Eugene McCabe, to playwrights like Anne Devlin, Gary Mitchell and Owen McCafferty, the depth of literature from “the North” has been internationally recognized. As in other trouble zones, writers have posted their “dispatches from the front” of the conflict. In the realm of the visual arts, too, a powerful (and often divided) iconography has emerged, given expression in various media, from street murals to canvas, photography to film. The purpose of this course is to explore in all its manifest forms, the artistic response to a society in turmoil, and its recent attempts to make sense of the long-awaited peace.
REQUIRED FILMS
Cal. Dir. Pat O’Connor. 1985.
Mickeybo and Me. Dir. Terry Loane, 2004.
Resurrection Man. Dir. Mark Evans. 1997.
Lectures, seminars and an emphasis on interaction (leading of discussions, group work and individual class contribution, as well as participatory involvement. It is anticipated that students will attend at least one play/cultural event in Belfast if they attend the Northern Ireland trip, and a second in Dublin, providing the subject matter is relevant. Classes will usually begin with a survey of visual material – paintings, murals, photographs from Northern Ireland.
Classroom presentations and participation (30%); Mid-term paper (30%); final paper (40%).
Cal, Bernard MacLaverty’s novel about a Catholic living in a Protestant neighborhood in Northern Ireland. Film, directed by Pat O’Connor. (1985) This is an accessible introduction to the psychological and emotional schisms generated though the conflict, by one of the North’s best-known writers – and introduces a theme (love across the divide) which is to be be re-worked in fiction repeatedly over the following decades.
Reading: Students are required to read the novel Cal in its entirety.
The many aspects of division: social, ethnic, religious, and their manifestations in the novel.
Is “innocence” possible in a violently fragmented society?
Reading: A Night in November, by Marie Jones (play script)
Reading: 50 Dead Men Walking – Chapters 1 - 6
Reading: Mojo Mickeybo, by Owen McCafferty
Reading: The play, In a Little World of Our own, Gary Mitchell
Reading: Chapters 1- 7 of Eureka Street, Robert McLiam Wilson, 1998
Reading: The remainder of Eureka Street
Reading: Chapters 1 – 10 of the novel Resurrection Man, Eoin McNamee, Faber, 1994
Screening of film – Resurrection Man. Review of the artists, dramatists and novelists from the entire semester – propaganda, sectarianism and the dangers of self-expression.
MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal., Vintage, 1983.
McCafferty, Owen. Mojo Mickeybo. 2001.
McLiam Wilson, Robert, Eureka Street, London, Vintage, 1998.
McNamee, Eoin, Resurrection Man, London, Faber, 1994.
Mitchell, Gary. In a Little World of Our Own. 1995.
Rolston, Bill. Drawing Support: Murals in the North of Ireland. Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1992.
------. Drawing Support 2: Murals of War and Peace. Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, B 1995.
Allen, Nicholas The Cities of Belfast, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2000
Buckley, Anthony. Symbols in Northern Ireland. Belfast: The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1998.
Cliffe, Brian (ed), Representing The Troubles, 1970 – 2000, Dublin, Four Coursts Press 1999
Heathwood, Peter. Selected documentaries from the Peter Heathwood Research facility. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/othelem/media/heathwood/index.html [2]. 2005.
Kennedy Andres, Elmer. Fiction and the Northern Ireland Troubles since 1969: de-constructing the North. Four Courts Press.
Lance, Pettitt. “Television Drama and the Troubles” in Screening Ireland: Film and Television Representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Magee, Patrick. Gangsters or Guerrillas? Representations of Irish Republicans in ‘Troubles Fiction’. Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast 2001.
Ormsby, Frank, ed. A Rage for Order: Poetry of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Belfast: Blackstaff House, 1992.
Parker, Michael, ed. The Hurt World: Short Stores of the Troubles. Belfast: Blackstaff House, 1995.
Pelaschlar, Laura. Writing the North: The Contemporary Novel in Northern Ireland. Fonda Grafiche Multimediali, S.R.L. Trieste, 1998.
This course is offered during the regular semester and in the summer. For summer sections, the course schedule is condensed, but the content, learning outcomes, and contact hours are the same.