Written for a broad audience of students, academics, and general readers. It spans prehistoric times to the present, and examines both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in detail. It offers, in A-Z format, 25 long, thematic articles on politics, economics, religion, the arts, and society; 200 mid-length entries on key movements, periods, institutions, and cities; and 175 succinct articles on specific people, groups, and events. Entries represent an inclusive, cross-disciplinary approach, written by specialists in history, archaeology, anthropology, geography, politics, economics, the Irish and English languages and literatures, the visual arts, and other fields.

The great Irish potato famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s was a massive social catastrophe which resulted in the death of about one million people - a scale of mortality which, taking into account the scale of Ireland's population in 1845, places this disaster among the worst in modern world history. The famine was also largely responsible, in conjunction with British government politics, for one of the great international human migrations in modern history - the mass exodus of some two million people from Ireland, mostly to North America, in the years 1845-55.

Drawing on contemporary eyewitness accounts and diaries, the book charts the arrival of the potato blight in 1845 and the total destruction of the harvests in 1846 which brought a sense of numbing shock to the populace. Far from meeting the relief needs of the poor, the Liberal public works programme was a first example of how relief policies would themselves lead to mortality. Workhouses were swamped with thousands who had subsisted on public works and soup kitchens earlier, and who now gathered in ragged crowds. Unable to cope, workhouse staff were forced to witness hundreds die where they lay, outside the walls. The next phase of degradation was the clearances, or exterminations in popular parlance which took place on a colossal scale. From late 1847 an exodus had begun. The Famine slowly came to an end from late 1849 but the longer term consequences were to reverberate through future decades.

Even considering recent advances in the development of women's studies as a discipline, women remain underrepresented in the history and historiography of the Great Hunger. The various roles played by women, including as landowners, relief-givers, philanthropists, proselytizers and providers for the family, have received little attention.This publication examines the diverse and still largely unexplored role of women during the Great Hunger, shedding light on how women experienced and shaped the tragedy that unfolded in Ireland between 1845 and 1852. In addition to more traditional sources, the contributors also draw on folklore and popular culture.Women and the Great Hunger brings together the work of some of the leading researchers in Irish studies, with new scholarship, methodologies and perspectives.This book takes a major step toward advancing our understanding of the Great Hunger.

This volume of essays is based upon papers that were delivered at Quinnipiac University's Great Hunger Conference in September 2000. It considers the Great Hunger both as a historical moment that had a devastating and enduring impact on Ireland, and as a social, political, and demographic process that shaped the culture and people of both Ireland and North America. The chapters are grouped thematically into three parts. The first, Silence, takes as its point of departure the ways in which the Great Hunger created silences, both at the time of the Famine and in the subsequent historical memory of the Irish people. The second section, Memory, addresses the legacy of the Famine in the lives and work of the generation that lived through it and those who came after, both in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora. The final section, Commemoration, considers how the Famine has become a focal point during the past decade in popular memory, particularly through varied efforts to memorialize the Famine and to integrate it into educational curricula.

The papers collected in this volume are a product of the second conference on Ireland's Great Hunger held at Quinnipiac University in 2005. That conference, focused on the themes of representation and preservation, brought together forty-five scholars from around the world to discuss various aspects of the Famine and its aftermath. Following the conference, the complete An Gorta Mór collection of Quinnipiac's famine commemorative art was placed on display for the first time in the University's Alumni Hall. This volume, focused on the theses of relief, representation, and remembrance, contains essays from a broad range of disciplines including works of history, literary criticism, anthropology, and art history.

Traces the complex evolution of Irish art through three millennia, showing how it has drawn on Celtic, AngloSaxon, Norman, Mediterranean and other diverse sources. As the story unfolds, Arnold repatriates Irish artists who are frequently regarded as 'English' - including William Mulready, Daniel Maclise and James Barry - and shows how Irish painting and sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, metalwork and architecture together form a rich and distinctive cultural heritage.