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Course, academic year 2024/2025
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Space and Place in Irish Culture and Literature - AAALC026A
Title: Space and Place in Irish Culture and Literature
Guaranteed by: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
Faculty: Faculty of Arts
Actual: from 2023
Semester: summer
Points: 0
E-Credits: 5
Examination process: summer s.:
Hours per week, examination: summer s.:0/2, C [HT]
Capacity: unknown / unknown (unknown)
Min. number of students: unlimited
4EU+: no
Virtual mobility / capacity: no
Key competences:  
State of the course: taught
Language: English
Teaching methods: full-time
Teaching methods: full-time
Level:  
Note: course can be enrolled in outside the study plan
enabled for web enrollment
Guarantor: doc. Clare Wallace, M.A., Ph.D.
Class: Exchange - 09.2 General and Comparative Literature
Is co-requisite for: AAALC026B
Literature - Czech

NB as of 16.11.2024 this seminar is full, no further enrollments can be accommodated.

From the Aran Islands to the GPO, Ireland is both an overdetermined yet indeterminate terrain. Surveying Irish literature in his 1995 tome, Inventing Ireland, Declan Kiberd argued that “If Ireland had never existed, the English would have invented it.” Recent works such as Chris Morash and Shaun Richards Mapping Irish Theatre (2013) make an exciting case for the primacy of an understanding of the roles of space and place in the evolution of Irish theatre from the nineteenth century up to the present. This course proposes an exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century Irish culture and literature through the lens of space/place. Drawing on theoretical work on place, space and culture by Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Yi-Fu Tuan, Benedict Anderson, David Harvey, Tim Cresswell among others, we will explore the ways recent and contemporary Irish literature, theatre and film draws attention to the complexities of relationships between space and place. The course will be organised around nodes of interest and investigation: place-making/imagining the nation, displacement/migration/globalisation, gender/bodies/incarceration, cityspaces/wilderness and so on.

Materials:

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2004

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Introduction" and "Experiential Perspective," from Space and Place: The  Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001. 8thed.

Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces"

Harvey, David. "From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity" in Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change eds John Bird, Barry Curtis, Tim Putnam, Lisa Tickner. London: Routledge, 2012.

Smyth, Gerry. Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.

Morash, Chris and Shaun Richards. Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013.

Graham, Colin Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001.

 

Schedule

Schedule

1. (20.2) Introduction: Bearings, Orientations, the lie of the land

Defining terms. Perspectives on space and place

 

2. (27.2) Imagining a Nation: Bodies, Fields, Alignments

Texts: W.B. Yeats with Augusta Gregory Cathleen ni Houlihan (play), James Joyce short extracts from Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses (on Moodle), Poems: Paul Muldoon “Ireland”, Eavan Boland “Mother Ireland”

Critical frames:

·         Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities Ch 1 Introduction, Ch 3 The Origins of National Consciousness

·         Chris Morash and Shaun Richards, Mapping Irish Theatre Ch 2 Staging Place (available in electronic form in library)

·         Barbara O’Connor “Colleens and Comely Maidens” Representing and Performing Irish Femininity in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries in Flannery, Eóin, et al. Ireland in Focus: Film, Photography, and Popular Culture (available in electronic form in library)

 

3. (5.3) Watery depths, restless surfaces: Seaspaces, Edgespaces, Coast

JM Synge Riders to the Sea (play), Films: Robert Flaherty Man of Aran, Documentary: Mikey Corker Made in Ireland: The True Story of Irish Surfing

Critical frames:

·         Greg Garrard, "Wilderness," from Ecocriticism

·         Anna-Margaretha Haratschek, Ch 1 Cultural Spaces to Maritime Place: An Introduction in Navigating Cultural Spaces: Maritime Places

 

4. (12.3) Maps, Signage, Linguistic Contours and Detours

Brian Friel Translations (play), Eilis Ni Dhuibhne The Dancers Dancing (selected extracts), Hugo Hamilton The Speckled People (ch 1-6), Images: Séan Hillen Irelantis, Kathy Prendergast Body Maps Series

Critical frames:

·         Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities Ch 10 Census, Map, Museum

·         Claire Connolly, Theorizing Ireland Ch 1 Ireland in Theory

·         Gerry Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination Ch 2 Mapping/naming

 

5. (19.3) Land, landscape and the rural

Flann O’Brien The Poor Mouth (ch 1-3), J.B. Keane The Field (play), Seamus Heaney “Death of a Naturalist”, Belinda McKeon Solace (Prologue, part 1 ch 1, 3-8), Claire Keegan Foster (story)

Critical frames:

·         Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Introduction" and "Experiential Perspective," Space and Place: The  Perspective of Experience

·         Fintan O’Toole, Black Hole, Green Card: The Disappearance of Ireland ch Tourists in our own land

·         Gerry Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination Ch 2 The Country and the city

 

6. (26.3) I will be absent

 

7. (2.4) City: wandering about

James Joyce “Two Gallants” from Dubliners, Roddy Doyle The Commitments (extract on Moodle and film clips), Lenny Abrahamson Adam and Paul (film)

Critical frames:

·         Maria Beville and Deirdre Flynn Introduction Irish Urban Fictions, Eva Roa White Whose Dublin is it Anyway? Joyce, Doyle and the City in Irish Urban Fictions

 

8. (9.4) Pub: Social Space

John Ford, The Quiet Man (film), Conor McPherson The Weir (play), John Crowley Intermission (film)

Critical frames:

·         Colin Graham Deconstructing Ireland Ch 6 ‘…maybe that’s just Blarney’: Authenticity in Irish Culture

·         Bill Grantham, Craic in a box: Commodifying and exporting the Irish pub

·         Eamonn Jordan Pastoral Exhibits: Narrating Authenticities in Conor McPherson's "The Weir" Irish University Review Vol. 34, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 2004), pp. 351-368

 

9. (16.4) Keeping mum: Confinements, Heterotopias

Poem: Paul Meehan “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks”, Film: The Magdalene Sisters, Performance: ANU Laundry.

Critical frames:

·         Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces"

·         Gillian Rose, "No Place for Women?" from Feminism and Geography

·         Miriam Haughton, Staging Trauma Ch 4 Containment: Laundry (2011)

 

10. (23.4) Border/North: Liminal spaces, dangerous places

Seamus Heaney “Act of Union” (poem), Van Morrison Cyprus Avenue (song), David Ireland Cyprus Avenue (play), Stacey Gregg Shibboleth (play), Anna Burns Milkman (extracts Moodle)

Critical frames:

·         Catherine Nash, “Partitioned Lives: The Irish Borderlands”

·         Birte Heidemann Post-Agreement Northern Irish Literature: Lost in a Liminal Space? Ch 1

·         Richard Kirkland Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland Since 1965: Moments of Danger (extracts will be shared on Moodle)

 

11. (30.4) Place in the world – globalisation and its discontents

G.B. Shaw John Bull’s Other Island Act V, Sally Rooney Normal People (extracts on Moodle), Dennis O’Driscoll poem “The Celtic Tiger”

 

Critical frames:

·         Gerry Smyth Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination Ch 5

·         Colin Graham Deconstructing Ireland Ch 7 Punch drunk: Irish Ephemera

·         Joe Cleary Outrageous Fortune: Capital and Culture in Modern Ireland (extracts to be posted on Moodle)

 

12. (7.5) Endstop

Frame:

·         Sten Pultz Moslund “The Presencing of Place in Literature Toward an Embodied Topopoetic Mode of Reading” from Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies

ESSAY PROPOSALS ARE DUE

 

13. (14.5) Rektorský den

Optional: Review of essay proposals

 

 

 

 

Course requirements:

Students are expected to attend classes. YOU ARE PERMITTED A MAXIMUM OF TWO ABSENCES. In order to pass this class, you must capable of reading and discussing primary and secondary texts in English, and be able to compose an academic research paper at the end of the course.

 

Participation:

Participation extends beyond mere attendance. Expect your instructor to keep track of how often you contribute to class discussion (as a whole), particularly during the class discussions of assigned readings.

Presentations:

Presentations should address an issue connected with the texts/topic in question. Depending on the number of students in the seminar, each presentation should be around 10 minutes in length. You may prepare your talk in bullet points and should include questions for further discussion. You may prepare handouts or use the powerpoint facilities but PLEASE focus on something specific, an idea, a key passage, a debate the plays in question give rise to or address. Reading out large chunks of text is to be avoided and will be interrupted.

Presentations should be uploaded to the Moodle site before the class session.

 

Essays:

A list of suggested essay topics will be distributed during the semester. All students preparing essays should compose a paragraph length proposal outlining their topic and thesis statement/argument; length 150-200 words. A brief list of source materials in Chicago style should also be included.

Deadline for proposals for final essays: Proposals must be uploaded on the course site by 18.00 on 7 May 2024.

 

·         Final essays for Credit (Záp.) for BA students should be 2500 words minimum (bibliography excluded).

·         Final essays for Credit (Záp.) for MA students should be 3000 words minimum (bibliography excluded).

·         Final essays for Grade (PP/ZK) for MA students should be 4500-5000 words minimum (bibliography excluded).

 

Deadline for essays: Essays should be uploaded on the course site by 18.00 on 31 May 2024. If you require an extension you need to write to me in advance and explain why you need more time.

 

Final essays should combine both close analysis of selected primary texts and secondary materials. Heavy reliance on the internet should be avoided. Please pay attention to correct citation procedures. Chicago format for citations and bibliographies is required (models can be found in the library, the departmental Study Guide and on the internet—See http://ualk.ff.cuni.cz/doc/essays.doc.

 

All papers should include:

 

  • A title page (with your email address and if you are a visiting student the date by which you must have the credit)
  • Numbered pages and double spacing
  • Clearly marked paragraphs (either indent or leave a line)
  • Properly formatted sources and bibliography. Guidelines for citation and bibliographic style are on the Departmental homepage and are linked on the course site.

 

ESSAYS THAT HAVE NO RESEARCH BASE OR FAIL TO CITE SOURCES TRANSPARENTLY AND APPROPRIATELY (i.e. are plagiarised) WILL NOT BE GRADED. AI written work is not acceptable.

Should an essay be unsatisfactory for reasons other than plagiarism, students have the opportunity to submit ONE rewrite on condition that the rewritten work is submitted with the marked original.

 

Grading Scheme

 

Attendance and Participation

25%

Presentation

25%

Final Essay (+proposal)

50%

 

 

Last update: Wallace Clare, doc., M.A., Ph.D. (16.02.2024)
Teaching methods - Czech

seminář

Last update: Znojemská Helena, Mgr., Ph.D. (27.05.2019)
 
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