Topics in Irish Hist:

SAME AS HIST-UA 181.

The Great Famine in Global Context The Great Famine (1845-52) was the most transformative event in modern Irish history, yet it also looms large in the global history of hunger. This course examines the Famine in this wider context, adopting a comparative lens and drawing on scholarship from across the field of international famine studies. Key topics include areas which have generated significant debate in the Irish context with familiar echoes elsewhere – that of colonialism and capitalism in nineteenth-century India and across the British Empire; the ‘politics’ of famine in places like the Soviet Union in the 1930s or China in the 1960s; dislocation, migration and the creation of famine refugees in camps such as Dadaab in Kenya since the 1990s; or the role of conflict and humanitarianism in responding to victims of conflict such as that ongoing in Ethiopia today.

Emphasis varies by semester; designed to allow flexibility in course offerings from visiting scholars and specialists in particular fields. Past examinations have included imagery and ideology of Irish nationalism, Irish American popular folk culture, and the Irish in America. Recently, focus has concentrated on the oral history of the Irish in America with course instruction in conducting oral history interviews, writing an archival finding aid, and in editorial decision making for public history projects.