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Building on Irish Studies I, this module will first examine various aspects of Irish writing and culture since the partition of the island into two separate states in 1921. The second half of the module will explore cinema’s place in Irish life during its long twentieth century. Many have felt that once the revolutionary political excitements of the war of independence and the cultural ferment of the Irish Literary Revival had abated, Irish society across the island settled into an extended period of conservative stupor characterized by repressive and insular majoritarianisms. This view of things probably underplays the degree of social conflict still at work within both states throughout the century and by the 1960s at any rate the combined effects of industrial modernization and the women’s movement in the South and the civil rights campaigns and the ‘Troubles’ in the North generated levels of social agitation and conservative backlash sufficient to convulse the island for several decades. This module will explore the complex relationship between cultural and social change in Ireland between the 1920s and the present. Having read a variety of literary texts and viewed a range of films, students will be asked to consider these in the light of ongoing debates in Irish Studies about the nature of modern Irish society and culture.
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IRISH STUDIES 2
