The West of Ireland-An Imagined Space

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course interrogates and examines representations of the West of Ireland in various twentieth-century literary texts focusing, in particular on the role of "the West of Ireland" in state formation and legitimization during the early decades of independent Ireland and its role in the construction of an Irish identity. We will look at how images of the West of Ireland were constructed in various utopian or romanticized formulations as well as examining more dystopian versions. This course will take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the visual arts and film as well as on literary texts written in both Irish and English. (Irish language texts will be read in translation).