"Ireland in Proximity surveys and develops the field of Irish Studies, reviewing existing debates and providing new avenues for exploration. Drawing on a wide variety of approaches, this impressive collection of essays makes an innovative contribution to three areas of current interest. The contributors illustrate the diversity of thinking on Irish history, culture, and identity. Drawing on theoretical perspectives including psychoanalysis, cultural theories of space, postcoloniality, and theories of gender and sexual difference, this collection offers fresh perspectives on established subjects and brings new and under-represented areas of critical concern to the forefront. Among the topics explored are: sexuality and gender identities, the historiographical issues surrounding the Famine, the Irish diaspora, and theories of space in relation to Ulster and beyond.
Contributors: David Alderson, Aidan Arrowsmith, Caitriona Beaumont, Fiona Becket, Scott Brewster, Dan Baron Cohen, Mary Corcoran, Virginia Crossman, Richard Kirkland, David Lloyd, Patrick McNally, Elisabeth Mahoney, Willy Maley, Shaun Richards, Eibhear Walshe.

Alderson, David; Becket, Fiona; Brewster, Scott; Crossman, Virginia

Notes on contributors, Foreword, Acknowledgements, Introduction, PART I: History, 1. Introduction, 2. Nationalism and revisionism: ambiviolences and dissensus, 3. 'The Whole People of Ireland': patriotism, national identity and nationalism in eighteenth-century Ireland, 4. Re-writing the Famine: witnessing in crisis, PART II: Gender, 5. Introduction, 6. Wild(e) Ireland, 7. A theatrical matrilineage?: problems of the familial in the drama of Teresa Deevy and Marina Carr, 8. Gender, citizenship and the state in Ireland, 1922-1990, 9. Gender, nation, excess: reading Hush-a-Bye Baby, PART III: Space, 10. Introduction, 11. M/otherlands: literature, gender, diasporic identity, 12. Citizens of its hiding place: gender and urban space in Irish women's poetry, 13. Mapping carceral space: territorialisation, resistance and control in Northern Ireland's women's prisons, 14. Listening to the silences: defining the language and the place of a new Ireland, Index