Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction

This research will examine the representation of women and exile in Irish literature and explore how recent Irish novelists, such as Julia O'Faolain, John McGahern, Edna O'Brien, William Trevor, Anne Enright, and Colm Tóibín, have effectively reclaimed the missing history of the Irish woman emigrant. The authors to be examined in the book coming out of this research, Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan, present complex representations of women in relation to the Irish emigrant experience and respond to a range of different meanings of exile, emigration, and diaspora. The readings developed in the work will explore the texts under discussion in relation to a number of dominant discourses in Irish literary criticism, most importantly: the revisionist impulses of the contemporary Irish novel; key developments in Irish literary feminism and the recovery of Irish women's history; and current debates about literature and the Irish diaspora. In doing so, it will build on work on women and the Irish diaspora from a range of disciplines including Literary Studies, History, Geography, and the Social Sciences. Another facet of the project will bring together academics from across these different disciplines for a conference to address the larger theme of 'Women and the Irish Diaspora', proceedings of which are under contract to be published in a special issue of the Routledge journal Irish Studies Review. Linked to this research is a lifelong learning seminar series on the theme of 'Women and Exile in Irish Literature' that will run at the London Irish Women's Centre in 2012. This has been agreed with the Centre's Director and will be offered to women who use the resources and support services provided by the Centre.

The impact of this research will be twofold: on the academic community and on the community of Irish women in England. The academic impact will be to raise the profile of a recently neglected, but very important, area of study through the publication of Women and Exile in Contemporary Irish Fiction with Palgrave Macmillan. The proposed conference and resulting publication of a second output linked to the book project, a special issue of the interdisciplinary journal Irish Studies Review on the theme of 'Women and the Irish Diaspora', will ensure that further debate will be generated in this field. A lifelong learning seminar series based on this research, to be taught at the London Irish Women's Centre, will guarantee that the research has a clear public-facing dimension and affords the students in attendance (who are also users of the resources and support services available at the Centre) an opportunity to engage with this topic in ways most meaningful to their own lives.