Ireland, Literature and Film
DialogueDublin, Ireland Rinn Gaeltacht, Ireland Cork, Ireland Galway, Ireland Waterford, Ireland Summer I, 2022
The single greatest benefit of study abroad was all of the hands-on experience that I got. We spent plenty of time on analysis and discussion in the classroom, but what makes study abroad unique is all of the opportunities I had for learning outside of the classroom. Getting to walk down the streets that Joyce wrote about in Dubliners and to talk to writers and filmmakers about their works is so much more powerful than just reading about these things in class.
Brendan Lewis, CSSH ’20
Courses
Explores Irish writers from the nineteenth century through the present. Emphasizes their relationships to contemporary Irish society. Explores the formal traditions of Irish writing as well as the historical, political, and cultural discourses that Irish writing has both helped to shape and within which the writing circulates. As the course takes place in Dublin during the summer term, offers students an opportunity to meet living Irish writers who talk about their relationship to the literary tradition and their own craft. Covers writers such as Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Kate O’Brien, Colm Tóibín, Anne Enright, Paul Murray, Kevin Barry, and Maeve Binchy.
Studies the similarities and differences between literary texts and film versions of those texts or the interrelations between film and literature as a means of cultural expression in a specific country outside the United States. May be repeated without limit.
This program offers students the opportunity to explore Ireland through film and literature. In particular, this year’s program will focus on how the Irish arts have responded to the global pandemic. What do writers, actors, musicians, filmmakers, and others have to say about Ireland and the world during the global crisis? Have the arts provided critique, solidarity, comfort? How has the importance of the new online world reshaped Ireland and its society? What can writing, film, and digital media tell us about the world as we remember it before the pandemic, the world as we experience it during the pandemic, and that world waiting to be born on the other side of these challenging times?
Literature has occupied a unique place in Irish culture, with many of the big names in English-language literature hailing from the island, including such famous writers as Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and Gregory. Irish film rose to prominence during the economic boom known as the Celtic Tiger, which lasted from the 1990s through 2008. Currently, Ireland is experiencing a kind of cultural boom with proliferation of new voices, particularly writers, bursting onto the scene. Students will have the opportunity to explore classics and engage exciting contemporary works.
Perhaps most exciting is that students will have the opportunity to meet authors and filmmakers. In the past we have had the chance to meet the writers Colm Tóibín, Paul Murray, Kevin Barry, Sally Rooney, and Belinda McKeon. Screenwriter and actor Mark O’Halloran as well as director Conor Horgan have spoken to us. We have also had the great opportunity to meet with Senator David Norris, an internationally famous campaigner for gay rights, and hope to meet him again.
Students will have the chance to read literature and screen films in the context in which they were produced and to meet with the people creating them. Students will learn about the formal, historical, and political analysis of cultural works as well as about the craft of writing and filmmaking. Ireland has a rich tradition of both English-language and Irish-language culture and students will have the chance to explore both traditions.
