Performing 'The Tragedy of Mariam' and Constructing Stage History

Since the rediscovery of Elizabeth Cary’s drama, The Tragedy of Mariam, the play and its author have generated a veritable critical industry. Yet little has been written about performance, a lacuna explained by a reluctance to think about Mariam as a theatrical creation. This article challenges the current consensus by arguing for the play’s theatrical imprint and by analysing two 2013 performances – a site-specific production at Cary’s birthplace, and a production by the Lazarus Theatre Company. Throughout, Mariam is engaged with in terms of casting, costume, lighting, set and movement, issues that have mostly been bypassed in Cary studies.

Film, History and Memory

Film, History and Memory examines the relationship between film and history, exploring the multiplicity of ways in which films depict, contest, reinforce or subvert historical understanding. This volume broadens the focus from 'history', the study of past events, to 'memory', the processes – individual, generational, collective or state-driven – by which meanings are attached to the past. This approach acknowledges how the significance of the historical film lies less in its empirical qualities than in its powerful capacity to influence public thinking and discourses about the past, whether by shaping collective memory, popular history and social memory, or by retrieving suppressed or marginalized histories. This study aims to contribute to the growing literature on history and film through the breadth of its approach, both in disciplinary and geographical terms. Contributors are drawn not only from the discipline of history but also film studies, film practice, art history, languages and literature, and cultural studies.

A Cambridge History of Irish Working-Class Writing

This 24-chapter edited collection will be the first major study of the history of Irish working-class writing.

Commemorating Women in Irish History, 1912-1922

This is a pilot project to create a website identifying places in Ireland that relate to the history of women, 1912-1922. I have also submitted a grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund to extend this project to a longer chronological period. This is a collaborative project with Professor Bernadette Whelan in the University of Limerick.

History and Salvation in Lebor na hUidre

This chapter argues that the scribes of Lebor na hUidre show a persistent concern with eschatology, and in particular with the salvation of souls and the Last Judgement. In some cases the texts are overtly religious, but in a substantial number of cases they are explicitly or implicitly historical. The pivotal event is the mission of St Patrick, which is identified in several of the texts examined here as the origin of Christianity in Ireland. Pagans are repeatedly brought into contact with Christians/saints or other representatives of God, revealing the victory of Christianity and the subjugation of paganism. It is argued that the stories are to be placed within the medieval western theory of history according to which God’s plan for humanity was revealed through a study of the events of the past.