Affecting Irishness: Negotiating Cultural Identity Within and Beyond the Nation

This collection of new essays addresses a key debate in Irish studies. While it is important that new research endeavours to accommodate the new and powerful manifestations of Irishness that are evident today in our globalised economy, these considerations are often overlooked. The writers in this book seek to reconcile the established critical perspectives of Irish studies with a forward-looking critical momentum that incorporates the realities of globalisation and economic migration.
The book initiates this vital discussion by bringing together a series of provocative and thoughtful essays, from both renowned and rising international scholars, on the vicissitudes of cultural identity in a post-modern, post-colonial and post-national Ireland. By including work by leading scholars in the fields of film studies, migration and Diaspora studies, travel literature and gender studies, this collection offers a thorough twenty-first-century interrogation of Irishness and provides a timely fusion of international perspectives on Irish cultural identity.

The Editors: James P. Byrne is Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Emerson College, Boston. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of Massachusetts in 2000. He has recently co-edited the three-volume work Ireland and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History (2008).
Padraig Kirwan is currently Lecturer in the Literature of the Americas at Goldsmiths, University of London. He was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of California in 2002 and an Irish Research Council Scholar from 2000 to 2001. His work has appeared in a number of journals including the Journal of American Studies.
Michael O’Sullivan is Assistant Professor of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include Michel Henry: Incarnation, Barbarism and Belief (published by Peter Lang in 2006) and The Incarnation of Language: Joyce, Proust and a Philosophy of the Flesh (2008).