About the Book
Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument presents for the first time a visual cultural history of the 1840s Irish Famine, tracing its representation and commemoration from the 19th century up to its 150th anniversary in the 1990s and beyond.
As the watershed event of 19th century Ireland, the Famine’s political and social impacts profoundly shaped modern Ireland and the nations of its diaspora. Yet up until the 1990s, the memory of the Famine remained relatively muted and neglected, attracting little public attention. Thus the Famine commemorative boom of the mid-1990s was unprecedented in scale and output, with close to one hundred monuments newly constructed across Ireland, Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia. Drawing on an extensive global survey of recent community and national responses to the Famine’s anniversary, and by outlining why these memories matter and to whom, this book argues how the phenomenon of Famine commemoration may be understood in the context of a growing memorial culture worldwide. It offers an innovative look at a well-known migration history whilst exploring how a now-global ethnic community redefines itself through acts of public memory and representation.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Visualizing the Famine: Nineteenth-Century Image, Reception and Legacy
The Famine in fine art
Newspaper illustration and the figure of Famine
Legacy
Chapter 3: Commemorating the Famine: 1940s-1990s
Commemoration and historiography
The 1990s sesquicentenary
Trauma, genocide and Famine memory
Chapter 4: Constructing Famine Spaces in Ireland
Site: the workhouse and graveyard
Presence: embodying Famine
Performance: commemorative ritual and process
Chapter 5: Community Famine Commemoration in Northern Ireland and the Diaspora
Commemoration in contested spaces: Northern Ireland and Britain
The high cross and Celtic Canada
Imaging genealogy in the United States
Chapter 6: Major Famine Memorials
Dublin and Boston
Murrisk, Co Mayo and Philadelphia
Sydney
New York City
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Appendix: Famine Monuments – a Global Survey
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Emily Mark-FitzGerald is a Lecturer in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin.
Review :
A timely and engaging look at the memory and public memorialisation of the Famine. As we progress through the decade of commemorations, many of the issues discussed in relation to the Famine will take on a fresh significance, and the issues and questions that Mark-Fitzgerald raises will provide some solid insights and lessons. Fresh and perceptive ... a compelling and incisive study of famine monuments which offers valuable and timely insights into the practices and processes of memorialization. The Great Famine and the way we remember it A new study contributes to our understanding but overlooks some key memorials Historians disagree about whether a silence surrounded the Great Famine before 1995, the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of P hytophthora infestans , or potato blight, in Ireland. What is irrefutable is that after 1995 there was a resurgence of both popular and academic interest in the tragedy, expressed both in an outpouring of new scholarship and, for example, in the construction of more than 100 monuments around the world to commemorate the Famine, from Sydney to Arizona. And, as the recent publication of the excellent Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork University Press, 2012) shows, scholarship and public interest have not abated. Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument , by Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, is a wide-ranging, if not comprehensive, look at this phenomenon, and a contribution to our understanding both of the way the Famine has been remembered and of the process of commemoration more generally, both in Ireland and among the diaspora. A large portion of the book is, perhaps inevitably, devoted to memorials in North America. Since 1995 almost 30 monuments have been installed in the US alone, which speaks of the perception of the Famine as a crucial part of the Irish-American origin story. Within this narrative, however, Famine immigration and Irish immigration in general are often conflated. In contrast to Ireland, Famine memorials in the US are generally in busy, affluent areas. They often celebrate triumph over disaster, an approach that would be out of place in Ireland, and gives little idea of the struggles that immigrants who made it to North America faced. A number of the monuments have been criticised, including the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia, which depicts more than 30 life-sized figures, for its Hallmark-card sentimentality and for the simplistic message of its interpretative panels. Possibly the most controversial monument is in downtown Boston. The committee that organised it was led by a multimillionaire Irish immigrant who raised $2 million at a gala in 1998. Criticisms have come from both sides of the Atlantic: one Irish commentator criticised its "pious cliches and dead conventions", and a 2002 poll in the Boston Globe named it as the worst public monument in the city. Avoidance of cliche In contrast, despite some initial problems and criticisms, the Irish Hunger Memorial near the site of the former World Trade Center in New York city, which depicts a stark landscape that includes a reconstructed cottage from Co Mayo, has been generally praised for its avoidance of cliche. Overall, the memorials in the United States speak as much to the wealth of today's Irish-Americans as to the poverty and struggles of their ancestors. The location of Famine memorials raises questions about memorials in Northern Ireland and Britain. These are not fully addressed in Mark-Fitzgerald's book. The 1998 Famine memorial in Liverpool is not, as the author claims, the first in the city and in Britain. There were earlier memorials in Liverpool, including one dedicated to 10 priests who died from typhus in 1847, caught while tending to Irish immigrants. The short section on Northern Ireland is also problematic. Regardless of varieties of experience, the Great Famine was a national disaster, and, as recent scholarship has shown, districts and towns in eastern Ulster, many of them predominantly Protestant, suffered greatly. Quakers compared Newtownards, in Co Down, with Skibbereen, while Protestant ministers in Belfast complained that the Shankill cemetery was overflowing with unburied Famine dead and was a disgrace to a civilised nation. Mark-Fitzgerald has chosen to divide her study along the lines of the Partition. The chapter "Famine Spaces in Ireland" is solely concerned with the Republic; the section on monuments in Northern Ireland is contained in a chapter entitled "Community Famine Commemoration in Northern Ireland and the Irish Diaspora", which seems an odd coupling. And the first example of a "Northern" monument in the chapter relates to Doagh, Co Donegal. The only Northern Irish monument examined (briefly) is that in the Cornagrade graveyard in Enniskillen, near the site of the local workhouse. For reasons we all understand, there are fewer monuments to the Famine in northeast Ulster, but not to discuss them perpetuates the idea of the Famine as a Southern and Catholic tragedy. There are also two glaring omissions, yet these memorials speak of the complexity of Famine memory and memorialisation in Ireland. The stained-glass window in Belfast City Hall (which is mentioned only in a one-sentence footnote) was unveiled in 1999 (not 1996, as the footnote states). Apart from its location and its timing, this project received the support of the Progressive Unionist Party, in a conscious effort by the party's leaders to recapture a shared and complex history, of which the Famine was viewed as a significant part. The other omission is of what is possibly one of the oldest Famine memorials on the island of Ireland, at Garron Point, on the Co Antrim coast. It is dedicated to Francis Anne Vane, the third marchioness of Londonderry; its inscription declares that, wanting to "hand down to posterity an imperishable memorial to Ireland's affliction and England's generosity in the year 1846-7, unparalleled in the annals of human suffering", she "hath engraved this stone". The reference to England's generosity has been long scratched out. Nonetheless, this early monument speaks of aspects of the Famine (not least the role of landowners and the contribution of women) that deserve some mention in a book of this size and scope. As Niall O Ciosain pointed out during the sesquicentennial commemorations, "there is no unitary memory of the Famine", and Mark-Fitzgerald's book reinforces this point. In Ireland the network of monuments is mostly local, organic to the community, and achieved with little outside funding. Some of the more elaborate ones were created with an eye to cultural tourism, but the Famine theme parks that Roy Foster wrote disparagingly of have not emerged. Hunger today Inevitably, many of the monuments constructed overseas have immigration as a central theme. Some reference hunger in the world today and its parallels with Ireland in the 1840s, yet they fail to relate Famine immigration to contemporary immigration and the challenges that new immigrants face. A strength of this book is that it reveals the diversity of origins, motives and outcomes in the creation of these monuments. Clearly, it is challenging - perhaps impossible - to create in a public monument a cohesive narrative of an event of such longevity, geographic spread and localised impact. The Irish sculptors John Behan and Rowan Gillespie have been widely praised for the creative compassion they have brought to this task, but, as this book demonstrates, every monument has its detractors. As we move farther from the sesquicentenary, and as the funders, sculptors and committees that created these memorials pass away, these criticisms might acquire a sharper focus. Overall, Mark-Fitzgerald's book is a timely and engaging look at the memory and public memorialisation of the Famine. As we progress through the decade of commemorations, many of the issues discussed in relation to the Famine will take on a fresh significance, and the issues and questions that Mark-Fitzgerald raises will provide some solid insights and lessons. Prof Christine Kinealy is founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute, at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut. Her last book, Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland , came out in 2013. In this superb book about a complex subject, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald cogently charts the complicated history of how the Famine has been visually represented, especially since the 150th commemorations. The author not only illuminates this specific theme but is revealing about the concerns and anxieties of both modern Irish societies and the many diasporic Irish communities about identities and representation. The introduction raises a series of key questions as to how and why the Famine has moved from an 'unspeakable event', to perhaps the most visualized cultural experience of the Irish across the globe'. In chapter 2, the author skilfully traces the relationship between the visualizations of the Famine in the mid 19th century and their contexts, in terms of their viewers' reception and moral values of the time. Many conventions of Victorian visualizations have proven remarkably durable - showing up time and again in recent commemoration projects. Chapter 3 is an outstanding reconstruction of the many contested debates about revisionism and Famine history, the notions of Famine 'silence' and 'trauma' and their validity and the controversies surrounding the National Famine Commemoration's strategies in the 1990s. For me, the most enthralling chapter (4), written as are all the chapters with skill and subtlety, deals with the construction of over seventy new Famine monuments in Ireland since 1995. Restored workhouses and famine cemeteries/mass graves in often out of the way locations are the most commonly used commemoration sites. Here local initiatives and the specifics of Famine suffering in the locality are central. Most memorials do not focus on themes of emigration, renewal and triumph as many do overseas, but tell stories of the neglect of the Famine poor, solemnly remembering the dead who were so often buried without customary rituals. Here Famine spaces have been made sacred by the dead. Case studies of Carr's Hill, Cork and Knockfierna in Co Limerick illuminate these themes while critical assessments are made of more elaborate projects. Contestations about organization, location and aesthetics are more a feature of monuments erected from Northern Ireland through Britain, Canada and USA. Yet these monuments reveal an ongoing fierce custodianship of Famine memory across communities of the diaspora. The final chapter - on major Famine memorials - makes well-referenced comparisons between monuments in Dublin and Boston, Murrisk and Philadelphia and concludes with a nuanced appreciation of the outstanding commemorative sites in Sydney and New York. Emily Mark-Fitzgerald commands a challenging literature with great facility. Primarily an art historian, she is a fine cultural geographer and observant ethnographer. Negotiating a path through issues surrounding the organization, funding and completion of Famine projects worldwide, she gives her own judgements on both the nature of the conflicts and the aesthetic qualities of the monuments. It is a landmark study, which will stand the test of time. In this superb book about a complex subject, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald cogently charts the complicated history of how the Famine has been visually represented, especially since the 150th commemorations. Emily Mark-Fitzgerald commands a challenging literature with great facility. It is a landmark study, which will stand the test of time. Historians disagree about whether a silence surrounded the Great Famine before 1995, the 150th anniversary of the first appearance of P hytophthora infestans , or potato blight, in Ireland. What is irrefutable is that after 1995 there was a resurgence of both popular and academic interest in the tragedy, expressed both in an outpouring of new scholarship and, for example, in the construction of more than 100 monuments around the world to commemorate the Famine, from Sydney to Arizona. And, as the recent publication of the excellent Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork University Press, 2012) shows, scholarship and public interest have not abated. Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument , by Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, is a wide-ranging, if not comprehensive, look at this phenomenon, and a contribution to our understanding both of the way the Famine has been remembered and of the process of commemoration more generally, both in Ireland and among the diaspora. A large portion of the book is, perhaps inevitably, devoted to memorials in North America. Since 1995 almost 30 monuments have been installed in the US alone, which speaks of the perception of the Famine as a crucial part of the Irish-American origin story. Within this narrative, however, Famine immigration and Irish immigration in general are often conflated. In contrast to Ireland, Famine memorials in the US are generally in busy, affluent areas. They often celebrate triumph over disaster, an approach that would be out of place in Ireland, and gives little idea of the struggles that immigrants who made it to North America faced. A number of the monuments have been criticised, including the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia, which depicts more than 30 life-sized figures, for its Hallmark-card sentimentality and for the simplistic message of its interpretative panels. Possibly the most controversial monument is in downtown Boston. The committee that organised it was led by a multimillionaire Irish immigrant who raised $2 million at a gala in 1998. Criticisms have come from both sides of the Atlantic: one Irish commentator criticised its "pious cliches and dead conventions", and a 2002 poll in the Boston Globe named it as the worst public monument in the city. Avoidance of cliche In contrast, despite some initial problems and criticisms, the Irish Hunger Memorial near the site of the former World Trade Center in New York city, which depicts a stark landscape that includes a reconstructed cottage from Co Mayo, has been generally praised for its avoidance of cliche. Overall, the memorials in the United States speak as much to the wealth of today's Irish-Americans as to the poverty and struggles of their ancestors. The location of Famine memorials raises questions about memorials in Northern Ireland and Britain. These are not fully addressed in Mark-Fitzgerald's book. The 1998 Famine memorial in Liverpool is not, as the author claims, the first in the city and in Britain. There were earlier memorials in Liverpool, including one dedicated to 10 priests who died from typhus in 1847, caught while tending to Irish immigrants. The short section on Northern Ireland is also problematic. Regardless of varieties of experience, the Great Famine was a national disaster, and, as recent scholarship has shown, districts and towns in eastern Ulster, many of them predominantly Protestant, suffered greatly. Quakers compared Newtownards, in Co Down, with Skibbereen, while Protestant ministers in Belfast complained that the Shankill cemetery was overflowing with unburied Famine dead and was a disgrace to a civilised nation. Mark-Fitzgerald has chosen to divide her study along the lines of the Partition. The chapter "Famine Spaces in Ireland" is solely concerned with the Republic; the section on monuments in Northern Ireland is contained in a chapter entitled "Community Famine Commemoration in Northern Ireland and the Irish Diaspora", which seems an odd coupling. And the first example of a "Northern" monument in the chapter relates to Doagh, Co Donegal. The only Northern Irish monument examined (briefly) is that in the Cornagrade graveyard in Enniskillen, near the site of the local workhouse. For reasons we all understand, there are fewer monuments to the Famine in northeast Ulster, but not to discuss them perpetuates the idea of the Famine as a Southern and Catholic tragedy. There are also two glaring omissions, yet these memorials speak of the complexity of Famine memory and memorialisation in Ireland. The stained-glass window in Belfast City Hall (which is mentioned only in a one-sentence footnote) was unveiled in 1999 (not 1996, as the footnote states). Apart from its location and its timing, this project received the support of the Progressive Unionist Party, in a conscious effort by the party's leaders to recapture a shared and complex history, of which the Famine was viewed as a significant part. The other omission is of what is possibly one of the oldest Famine memorials on the island of Ireland, at Garron Point, on the Co Antrim coast. It is dedicated to Francis Anne Vane, the third marchioness of Londonderry; its inscription declares that, wanting to "hand down to posterity an imperishable memorial to Ireland's affliction and England's generosity in the year 1846-7, unparalleled in the annals of human suffering", she "hath engraved this stone". The reference to England's generosity has been long scratched out. Nonetheless, this early monument speaks of aspects of the Famine (not least the role of landowners and the contribution of women) that deserve some mention in a book of this size and scope. As Niall O Ciosain pointed out during the sesquicentennial commemorations, "there is no unitary memory of the Famine", and Mark-Fitzgerald's book reinforces this point. In Ireland the network of monuments is mostly local, organic to the community, and achieved with little outside funding. Some of the more elaborate ones were created with an eye to cultural tourism, but the Famine theme parks that Roy Foster wrote disparagingly of have not emerged. Hunger today Inevitably, many of the monuments constructed overseas have immigration as a central theme. Some reference hunger in the world today and its parallels with Ireland in the 1840s, yet they fail to relate Famine immigration to contemporary immigration and the challenges that new immigrants face. A strength of this book is that it reveals the diversity of origins, motives and outcomes in the creation of these monuments. Clearly, it is challenging - perhaps impossible - to create in a public monument a cohesive narrative of an event of such longevity, geographic spread and localised impact. The Irish sculptors John Behan and Rowan Gillespie have been widely praised for the creative compassion they have brought to this task, but, as this book demonstrates, every monument has its detractors. As we move farther from the sesquicentenary, and as the funders, sculptors and committees that created these memorials pass away, these criticisms might acquire a sharper focus. Overall, Mark-Fitzgerald's book is a timely and engaging look at the memory and public memorialisation of the Famine. As we progress through the decade of commemorations, many of the issues discussed in relation to the Famine will take on a fresh significance, and the issues and questions that Mark-Fitzgerald raises will provide some solid insights and lessons. Prof Christine Kinealy is founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute, at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut. Her last book, Charity and the Great Hunger in Ireland , came out in 2013. After the 150th anniversary of the Great Famine in 1995, a resurgence of interest in the tragedy manifested in the construction of more than 100 monuments around the world to commemorate the Famine. A new book, entitled 'Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and Monument' by Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, tries to understand the way the Famine has been remembered and the process of its commemoration in Ireland and abroad Nearly 30 memorials have been constructed in the United States since 1995, most installed in busy and affluent areas, reports the Irish Times. In contrast to Ireland, the monuments in the US generally celebrate triumph over disaster and speak to the wealth of today's Irish Americans instead of focusing on the struggles that immigrants coming to America had to face. Many of the monuments, such as the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia, have been criticized for their sentimentality and simplistic message. The most controversial monument lies in downtown Boston. An Irish commentator criticized its "pious cliches and dead conventions" and readers of the Boston Globe named it the worst public monument in the city in a 2002 poll. On the other hand, New York City's stark Irish Hunger Memorial, which includes a reconstructed cottage from Co Mayo, has been praised for its lack of cliche. Mark-Fitzgerald's book only has a short section on Northern Ireland, which perpetuates the idea of the Famine as a Southern and Catholic tragedy, says founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute, Prof Christine Kinealy, in her review of the book in the Irish Times. The chapter 'Famine Spaces in Ireland' concerns only the Republic, whereas the section on monuments in Northern Ireland is contained in the chapter 'Community Famine Commemoration in Northern Ireland and the Irish Diaspora.' The only monument in Northern Ireland examined, albeit briefly, is that in the Cornagrade graveyard in Enniskillen, near the site of the local workhouse. The book reinforces Niall O Ciosain's idea that "there is no unitary memory of the Famine.' The monuments in Ireland are mostly local and organic to the community and built with little outside funding. While many of the monuments constructed abroad focus on immigration as a central theme or reference world hunger, they also fail to relate to the challenges that new immigrants face today. "Clearly, it is challenging - perhaps impossible - to create in a public monument a cohesive narrative of an event of such longevity, geographic spread and localized impact. The Irish sculptors John Behan and Rowan Gillespie have been widely praised for the creative compassion they have brought to this task, but, as this book demonstrates, every monument has its detractors," Prof Kinealy writes. Examining the diversity in the origins, motives and outcomes in the construction of these memorials, 'Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and Monument' is an engaging look at the memory and memorialization of the Famine. Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/How-the-world-remembers-the-Irish-Famine.html#ixzz312hrIYI2 Follow us: @IrishCentral on Twitter | IrishCentral on Facebook Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and Monument is an engaging look at the memory and memorialization of the Famine. Mark-Fitzgerald's excellent book will have an important position as questions arise around the relationship between the high-profile memory practices relating to the Irish Famine, so centred on creating a usable narrative of the past and of Irish identity, and the more recent traumatic memories which were being actively suppressed and silenced during the same period. Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument is sure to enrich several disciplines, from social and visual histories to the study of Irish culture, both in Ireland and throughout the diaspora.
