Childhood and the Irish Family in the Twentieth-Century

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Ireland famously (or infamously) voted in 2004 to end the automatic citizenship right for all babies born in Ireland; supporters of the legislation argued that women were travelling to Ireland to give birth specifically to obtain an EU passport for their children. This was certainly not the first time that constructions of the family created conflict in Ireland (we might think of the 1937 Constitution and the series of divorce laws enacted by the State, or the Ann Lovett case and the various child abuse scandals), nor that representations and understandings of childhood were contentious topics of public discourse. Thus the 2009 release of the Ryan Report has been seen as signaling a new openness in Ireland to discussing formerly taboo topics. This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the intersections of childhood and the construction of the family in twentieth-century Irish society. The central focus of this exploration will be literary representations of the family (texts to be read may include James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Kate O'Brien, The Land of Spices; Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood ; Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy; Mary Leland, The Killeen; and Emma Donoghue, Stir-fry); we will also examine media depictions of the family. Topics to be covered include: education; child abuse; traditional roles of the mother and father in the family; teenage pregnancy and the Magdalene laundries; censorship issues.