Rethinking the Irish in the American South: Beyond Rounders and Reelers

by Bryan Albin Giemza (Editor)

Overview

Studies of the Irish presence in America have tended to look to the main corridors of emigration, and hence outside the American South. Yet the Irish constituted a significant minority in the region. Indeed, the Irish fascination expresses itself in southern context in powerful, but disparate, registers: music, literature, and often, a sense of shared heritage. Rethinking the Irish in the American South aims to create a readable, thorough introduction to the subject, establishing new ground for areas of inquiry.

These essays offer a revisionist critique of the Irish in the South, calling into question widely held understandings of how Irish culture was transmitted. The discussion ranges from Appalachian ballads, to Gone with the Wind, to the Irish rock band U2, to Atlantic-spanning literary friendships. Rather than seeing the Irish presence as “natural” or something completed in the past, these essays posit a shifting, evolving, and unstable influence. Taken collectively, they offer a new framework for interpreting the Irish in the region. The implications extend to the interpretation of migration patterns, to the understanding of Irish diaspora, and the assimilation of immigrants and their ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496800435
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	06/03/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Bryan Albin Giemza is associate professor of American literature at Randolph-Macon College and author, with Donald Beagle, of Poet of the Lost Cause: A Life of Father Ryan.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Bryan Albin Giemza 3

I Questions of Historical Definition

Chapter 1 "A Lengthening Chain in the Shape of Memories" The Irish and Southern Culture William R. Ferris 19

Chapter 2 After Strange Kin Further Reflections on the Relations between Ireland and the American South Kieran Quinlan 36

Chapter 3 Irish Migration to the Colonial South A Plea for a Forgotten Topic Patrick Griffin 51

II Manipulating Culture: Influence, Reconsidered

Chapter 4 Tara, the O'Haras, and the Irish Gone with the Wind Geraldine Higgins 77

Chapter 5 Transatlantic Rites of Passage in the Friendship and Fiction of Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Bowen Kathryn Stelmach Artuso 92

Chapter 6 Shared Traditions Irish and Appalachian Ballads and Whiskey Songs Emily Kader 6

Chapter 7 Blacks and Celts on the Riverine Frontiers The Roots of American Popular Music Christopher J. Smith 140

III Ideology and Ambivalence

Chapter 8 Another "Lost Cause" The Irish in the South Remember the Confederacy David T. Gleeson 163

Chapter 9 On the Uses of Slavery The Irish in the South and Civil War Rhetoric Bryan Albin Giemza 183

Coda: Smoke 'n' Guns A Preface to a Poem about Marginal Souths, and Then the Poem Conor O'Callaghan 204

Contributors 212

Index 216