The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849 was not a genocide, and almost all serious scholars of Irish history agree with this assertion. The word genocide was coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin in 1944 in his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” The United Nations defines genocide Read more…
I was going to dedicate this post to discussing a recent livestream in which Gemma O’Doherty and Fr. Gerry Young discussed sex education and Islam. But, I’ll save that for another time; possibly for a piece for another website. [Admit it: you’re dying to know what an octogenarian priest thinks about Read more…
I love good tattoos. There’s nothing quite like being able to walk around every day wearing a beautiful piece of artwork on your body. I also have a couple of quotations as tattoos, to remind me to keep trying when life gets hard, and never to stop standing up for Read more…
I got so tired of the antisemitic bullshit in response to my Tweet about my research, that I wrote about it for Anthony McIntyre’s website, The Pensive Quill. You can read about my ordeal here.
I’m working on an article on right-wing nationalist movements in Ireland, focusing on Anti-Corruption Ireland, the National Party, and Identity Ireland, with a historical background of the Citizenship Referendum of the early 2000s. These parties employ rhetoric and tactics associated with fascism. Political scientists don’t typically agree on all of Read more…
On my recent trip to Dublin, I loaded up on Irish history books that one generally can’t find in the United States outside the realm of Amazon, which I’m trying to use less often. The pile of books significantly increased the poundage of our luggage, but I always find it Read more…
Returning to the United States from Ireland is always difficult, because I immediately miss the beautiful scenery, mellifluous speech, and friendly people of Dublin. This time, returning was particularly painful because the first news we heard about upon disembarking from our flight to Newark was that two mass shootings had Read more…
Are you a knitter who has always admired cabled Aran sweaters, but think they look too complicated to give it a go yourself? Fear not, my friends: cabled knitting is a lot easier than you think! And, what’s more, it’s easy to do if you already know how to knit Read more…
As July 12th approaches, Northern Ireland is going through its annual tradition of arguing about sectarianism. Sometimes, people have fought over the question, “Should the Orangemen be allowed to march through Catholic neighborhoods?” An important question to be sure, but this problem has been mostly resolved. Questions of sectarianism have Read more…
I wrote my dissertation on sexual assault against women and teenage girls in twentieth-century Ireland. I’ve published an article on the crime that used to be known as “unlawful carnal knowledge of a teenage girl aged 15 to 17” that demonstrated that Irish law did not really care about this Read more…