The Irish and the World

"When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious." The writer Edna O'Brien's portrait of Irish life encapsulates a history shaped by colonialism, famine, forced migration, and enduring political struggle. This course explores the global story of Ireland, a small land of 4.8 million that since 1800 has produced a diaspora of some 10 million people worldwide. Colonized and colonizers, freedom fighters and slave-owners, the starving and the wealthy, pious and irreverent-- the Irish reveal their past through memoirs, poetry, novels, music, film, and television.