Children, childhood and Irish society
1500 to the present
Maria Luddy & James Smith editors
Studies of Irish children’s literature are relatively numerous in Ireland, and yet the study of children and childhood, and the concepts associated with these words, is really just beginning in this country. Addressing this lacuna, this book is a significant contribution to the field of childhood studies. This extensive collection examines how attitudes to children have changed in Ireland over the past half millennium. The contents are informed in part by the emergence of Children’s Studies as an area of critical inquiry within interdisciplinary cultural studies. What, if anything, is new about how childhood is currently understood in Ireland? How has the understanding of Irish childhood changed over time? And how do earlier conceptions of Irish childhood feed into and/or inform more recent conceptualizations? Reflecting the interests of historians, literary critics and the discipline of social work in an attempt to cross-reference how children and childhood have been understood in the past and how certain attitudes and concepts evolved over time, this volume generates considered and important answers to these questions.
For full table of contents, see button at right.
Contributors: Margot Backus (U Houston), Ruth Barton (TCD), Virginia Crossman (Oxford Brookes U), Mary E. Daly (UCD), Jane Elizabeth Dougherty (Southern Illinois U, Carbondale), Robbie Gilligan (TCD), Harry Hendrick (Warwick U), Brandon Jernigan (Research Square), Leeann Lane (Mater Dei, DCU), Maria Luddy (U Warwick), Claire Lynch (Brunel U), Kelly J.S. McGovern (U Maryland), Gillian McIntosh (QUB), Ríona Nic Congáil (St Patrick’s College, DCU), Máirín Nic Eoin (St Patrick’s College, DCU), Mary O’Dowd (QUB), Ciaran O’Neill (TCD), Eoin O’Sullivan (TCD), Mary Shine Thompson (St Patrick’s College, DCU), Barry Sloan (U Southampton), James M. Smith (Boston College), Eibhear Walshe (UCC).
Maria Luddy is professor of modern Irish history, University of Warwick. James Smith is associate professor in the English Department, Boston College.
