Global Ireland

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The goal of this course is for students to gain an understanding of Ireland’s social and economic development throughout the 20th century. Why Ireland? From The Great Famine (1845 – 1848), to The Celtic Tiger, and beyond, Ireland has transformed from a developing nation under British rule, to a highly developed independent nation. It is the 44th largest economy in the world and ranks eighth on the UN Human Development Index. Furthermore, in the post-WWII period, Ireland has played a prominent role in international peacekeeping and humanitarianism. Ireland’s changing political landscape and evolving sociology, throughout the 1900s and 2000s, tell the story of a country undergoing a turbulent century of conflict and unity, protest and peace, hope for the future while lamenting the past. To understand Ireland’s development more fully then, this course considers the political and sociological, as well as infrastructural and financial factors affecting Ireland as it is increasingly impacted by a changing international context. Two examples include Ireland’s accession and membership of the European Union (EU) and the influx of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the country. The course asks questions such as: to what extent did Ireland’s famous - yet often misinterpreted culture – contribute to facilitating and/or hindering development? To what extent can we attribute Ireland’s rapid economic growth to the “luck of the Irish”? Is this development specific to Ireland or are there lessons to be drawn from the Irish context that can be applied to currently developing nations? These include intertwined topics such as: (a) symbols and stereotyping of Ireland and the Irish (b) social change including the evolving rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, (c) accession to the EU, (d) The border, Brexit, and its implications, (e) foreign direct investment, its costs and benefits, (f) the growth of technology and, (g) Ireland’s shift from an inward to outward looking society. Each topic will be considered not as an independent entity, but as one chapter in the unfolding story of Ireland’s development over the last 150 years.