Beginning Irish Studies provides a comprehensive introduction to the history and development of the increasingly influential academic discipline of Irish Studies and acknowledges its importance as a dynamic and constantly evolving method for analysing drama, literature, film and poetry in Ireland. It guides the reader to an understanding of the contextual underpinnings of this academic discipline – including gender, empire, eco-criticism, memory studies, and intersectionality– as well as the interpretation of these in cultural and critical theory. Beginning Irish Studies is both an introduction to the academic discipline of Irish Studies and an invitation to its readers to consider its further developments from various theoretical perspectives. It also endeavours to envisage the future Intersectional alliances that Irish Studies might make in the coming years across the international areas of literature, culture, and politics.
Price: £85.00
Pages: 288
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Beginnings
Publication Date:
20 October 2026
ISBN: 9781526191397
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
HISTORY / Europe / Ireland, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 20th Century, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: from c 2000, Cultural studies
‘A well organised, illuminating, comprehensive, and challenging monograph useful both to students and professional academics.’
—Neil Sammells
‘This is a book that the field needs, proposed by someone with the necessary skill and experience for the task.'
—Patrick Bixby, Foundation Professor of Humanities at Arizona State University
Graham Price lectures in the School of English, Drama, and Film at University College Dublin. His monograph, Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama: Learning to be Oscar’s Contemporary, was published in 2018 and is the first book-length examination of the Wildean strand in contemporary Irish theatre. Price’s co-written book (with Darragh Greene), Film Directors and Emotion: An Affective Turn in Contemporary American Cinema, was published in 2020.
Introduction
1 The Irish Revival: the birth of a discipline?
2 The Counter-Revival: revising a discipline?
3 Postcolonial theory and Irish Studies
4 Gender, sex, and sexuality
5 Memory, trauma, and imagination
6 Irish Ecocriticism
7 Coda: Waiting for the Irish Studies to come
Selected readings
Index
