A tale untold: The Search for a Story in Byron's Lara

Shears, J. (2006). A tale untold: The Search for a Story in Byron's Lara. The Byron Journal. 34(1), pp.1-8. RAE2008

The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film

Koven, M. (2003). The Terror Tale: Urban Legends and the Slasher Film. Scope. May, 40 paras. RAE2008

Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema

Barkre, M.; Mathijs, E.; Sexton, J.; Egan, K.; Hunter, R. and Selfe, M. (2007). Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema. London: British Board of Film Classification. RAE2008

Anglo-French and English Society in Chaucer's ?The Reeve's Tale?

Rothwell, W., 'Anglo-French and English Society in Chaucer's ?The Reeve's Tale?', English Studies (2006) 87(5) pp.511-538 RAE2008

The Place of the European Foreigner in Contemporary German Drama

Wilkinson, Jane, 'The Place of the European Foreigner in Contemporary German Drama', Third Text (2006) 20(6) pp.753-762 RAE2008 Special Issue: FORTRESS EUROPE: Migration, Culture and Representation

The Terrorism Virus: Contemporary Traits and Mechanisms

In order to present and understand the nature of modern terrorism it is important to realize its key properties as well the mechanisms that shape terrorism. Selected properties and mechanisms shaping modern terrorism which can be exemplified by the following: evolutionary nature of terrorism, asymmetry of terrorism, interferentiality of terrorism, multitude of components of terrorism, diffusion of terrorism, duality of terrorism, positive dimension of terrorism, terrorist as the system, diversity of terrorist activity goals, changeability of terrorist threat, the broad and narrow dimension of terrorism, counter-anti-terrorism, the confrontational and cooperational character of relations, calculation and operational strategy, disintegrational nature of terrorism, multidisciplinarity of terrorism, horizontal and vertical dimension of terrorism and a the few other traits or mechanisms.

The influence of neoliberal thought on contemporary politics: an examination of the interrelationships between ideological hegemony, neoliberal thought and contemporary politics

This thesis critically assesses the impact of neoliberal ideology on liberal thought and contemporary politics specifically examining the question, To what extent has neoliberalism, as elucidated originally by Hayek affected change in contemporary politics? This question is crucial to understanding the nature, role, influence and impact of neoliberal ideas. This investigation required a broad engagement with the literature, identifying and discussing the relationships within neoliberalism allowing a clearer understanding of the role of ideas in neoliberalism’s continuing hegemony. The methodological approach adopted a social constructivist character that encompassed an individual centric emphasis, acknowledging the breadth and complexity of Neoliberalization through the use of interpretive repertoires. The initial chapters examine the ideational process and the role of particular understanding in motivating political conduct. In this context of the transfer of ideas through their everyday resonance eventually becoming ‘stubborn social facts’ (Habermas 2006:413) is highlighted. Later chapters discuss the historical and economic context of Neoliberalization focussing on the role of the hegemon and its influence, outlining and evaluating the contribution of Hayek to liberal thought. The penultimate chapter deals with the contemporary situation and the irony associated with Hayek’s original ideas. Concluding, several findings emerged contributing by combining available knowledge in a uniquely fresh way and generating originality by linking old ideas, new ideas and new facts. The results are grouped as, - Pragmatic, recognising that political pragmatism trumps ideological aspiration where liberal democratic processes require politicians are held to account. - Realistic, recognising the contrast and irony between political action and ideological insight reflected in the operationalization of neoliberalism. - General, recognising Hayek’s on-going but increasingly indirect influence. The thesis finishes with a short aside on ideational change within the context of the current crisis and advocates an introspective approach that includes entrepreneurial spirit, good conscience and duty as part of future deliberations.

Max Stirner's relevance to contemporary philosophy: a critical analysis

The aim of this dissertation is to revive the 19th-century thinker Max Stirner’s thought through a critical reexamination of his mistaken legacy as a ‘political’ thinker. The reading of Stirner that I present is one of an ontological thinker, spurred on as much—if not more—by the contents of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as it is the radical roots that Hegel unintentionally planted. In the first chapter, the role of language in Stirner’s thought is examined, and the problems to which his conception of language seem to give rise are addressed. The second chapter looks at Stirner’s purportedly ‘anarchistic’ politics and finds the ‘anarchist’ reading of Stirner misguided. Rather than being a ‘political’ anarchist, it is argued that we ought to understand Stirner as advocating a sort of ‘ontological’ anarchism in which the very existence of authority is questioned. In the third chapter, I look at the political ramifications of Stirner’s ontology as well as the critique of liberalism contained within it, and argue that the politics implicit in his philosophy shares more in common with the tradition of political realism than it does anarchism. The fourth chapter is dedicated to an examination of Stirner’s anti-humanism, which is concluded to be much different than the ‘anti-humanisms’ associated with other, more famous thinkers, such as Foucault and Heidegger. In the fifth and final chapter, I provide an answer to the question(s) of how, if, and to what extent Friedrich Nietzsche was influenced by Stirner. It is concluded that the complete lack of evidence that Nietzsche ever read Stirner is proof enough to dismiss accusations of plagiarism on Nietzsche’s part, thus emphasizing the originality and singularity of both thinkers.

‘Doing’ separation in contemporary Ireland: the experiences of women who separate in midlife

This study explores the experiences of fourteen Irish women who separated in midlife. The rationale for choosing to study this age group of women is because they are the first generation of Irish women to publically separate in midlife in such large numbers. All of them entered marriage at a time when divorce was not possible in Ireland and as such they are broadly without a cultural ‘script’ for how to ‘do’ separation. An exploratory study was conducted to try to capture the processes and events that are part of the lived experiences of separation for women in midlife. In-depth interviews were conducted with fourteen women who were recruited following their attendance at post-separation courses. The participants came from predominantly middle class backgrounds. Narrative interviews were conducted which covered topics such as the attitudes to separation internalised during childhood, the genesis of the marital problems, the events that triggered the separations, the women’s emotional reactions at the time of separating and their social, housing and financial outcomes of having separated. A theoretical framework using concepts related to connectedness and fragmentation was used to analyse the data. Significant diversity was found in the experiences of the interviewees. Most of the women retained connectedness to their children, to their families of origin and to friends who were not joint friends. Significant fragmentation was found in relationships with ex-husbands, with in-laws and with joint friends. All of the women were worse off financially than if they had remained married. They felt socially isolated in the aftermath of separation. Many of the women were struggling to establish positive identities as separated women. While a few of them were very relieved that their marriages had ended, for most, separation was experienced as a painful episode in their lives.

Locating the transnational: representations and aesthetics of the city in contemporary European cinemas

This thesis focuses on two Western European cinematic cities, and two unique periods of their respective nations’ histories, in a bid to “locate” the transnational within a contemporary European milieu. I argue that my geo-cinematic case studies are emblematic of broader questions of the problematics of national identity in contemporary Europe in the face of cross-national flows yet, as a result of their representations as cities both “anchored” and “in flux”, they reject a European postnational identity. Through its engagement with cinematic Rome as the “Eternal City” of Europe and cinematic Dublin as the “newly Europeanised” city, my thesis traces how representations and aesthetics of the urban spaces of these two cities correspond with the tensions at the heart of the respective eras in question. Via the figures that inhabit it, navigate it and search for it, the city is utilised to highlight fixity and mobility, centrality and dislocation, in explicit and implicit ways, amid the rapidly changing landscape of its national terrain. It is through my analyses of the filmed places and sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural spaces of these capital cities under the rubric of the transnational that this research demonstrates the “pluralities” of the construct in its cinematic manifestations. It is also my aim to evaluate the concept of cinematic transnationalism when identifying and accounting for representations of a specific national, historical timeframe, when the momentousness of the changes that occur is not bound by the national, but rather is reflective of the influence of both domestic and external forces. To this end, my thesis draws attention to instances in which the nation is shown to persist and resist dilution, arguing that it is only against the backdrop and continuity of the nation (in its evershifting guises) that the transnational can be conceived in representative and aesthetic terms.

Afterwords: reparative queer death and the contemporary Irish novel, 1960-2000

Given that an extant comprehensive study of homosexuality and the twentieth century Irish novel has yet to produced, this thesis is an attempt at rectifying such a gap in research by way of close textual analysis of writing from the latter half of the century—that is, from 1960-2000. Analysis of seven novels by four male authors – John Broderick, Desmond Hogan, Colm Tóibín and Keith Ridgway – lead to one overarching feature common to all four writers becoming clear: the homosexual or queer is always dying or already ‘dead’. ‘Dead’ is placed in inverted commas here as it is not only biological death that characterises the fate of gay men in the aforementioned literature. In the first instance, such men are also always already ‘dead’—that is, by light of their disenfranchisement as homosexual or queer, they are, in socialized terms, examples of the ‘living’ dead. Secondly, biological death neither fully obliterates the queer body nor its disruptive influence. Consequently, one of the overarching ways in which I read queer death in the late twentieth century Irish novel is through the prism of its reparative ‘afterw(a)ord’. On the one hand, such readings are temporally based (that is, reading from a point beyond the death of the protagonist - or their ‘afterward’); while, on the other hand, such readings are stylistically premised (that is, reading or interpreting the narrative itself as an ‘afterword’). The current project thus constitutes an original contribution to knowledge by establishing variant ways of reading the contemporary Irish novel from the point of view of the queer ‘unliving’. In assessing such heterogeneous aspects of contemporary queer death, the project a) contributes to recent, largely Anglo-American-based literary theoretical research on the queer and the eschatological, and b) provides a more contemporized literary base upon which future research can uncover a continuum of Irish queer writing in the twentieth century, one concerned with writing prior to 1960 and not limited to writing my men, in which death and same-sex desire are at parallel angles to one another.

Contemporary pilgrimage in Ireland: a cultural geographic perspective

Using the lenses of contemporary cultural geography, this research develops an understanding of pilgrimage as a relational and reciprocal process that co-produces self and world. Drawing on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that through the performances and experiences of contemporary pilgrimage in Ireland, participants and locations emerge as pilgrims and pilgrimage places. This approach unites different strands of cultural geography, including the mobilities field, more-than representational concerns, discussions of embodiment and practice, emotional and affective geographies, and religious and spiritual geographies. I explore how pilgrimage is an active process in which self and world, belief and practice, and the numinous and material entwine and merge. An autoethnographic methodology is enacted as an embodied, intersubjective, and reflexive research approach that incorporates the motivations, experiences, and beliefs of research participants, alongside my own descriptions and reflections. The methodology is focused on encountering and documenting pilgrimage practices as they occur in place and relating these embodied spatial practices to the accounts of pilgrims. The insights generated by engagements with research participants and through my own pilgrimages, offer new appreciations of the enduring appeal of pilgrimage in Ireland as a religious-spiritual and cultural activity that allows people to express personal intentions, to develop their faith, and to seek numinous encounters. Through the pilgrimages at Lough Derg, Croagh Patrick, and three holy wells, I produce a layered account of the empirical circumstances of the practices. The presentation of these places and events is enhanced by the use of evocative images and audiovisual recordings. By centring my study on the practices and experiences of different pilgrimages in present-day Ireland, and critically deploying strands of cultural geography and pilgrimage studies, this research produces new qualitative understandings of pilgrimage and contributes to discussions concerned with the relationships between self and world.