Bryan Albin Giemza

Rethinking the Irish in the American South: Beyond Rounders and Reelers Bryan Albin Giemza

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments -- Introduction / Bryan Albin Giemza -- I. Questions of Historical Definition -- Chapter 1. A Lengthening Chain in the Shape of Memories The Irish and Southern Culture / William R. Ferris -- Chapter 2. After Strange Kin Further Reflections on the Relations between Ireland and the American South / Kieran Quinlan -- Chapter 3. Irish Migration to the Colonial South A Plea for a Forgotten Topic / Patrick Griffin -- II. Manipulating Culture: Influence, Reconsidered -- Chapter 4. Tara, the O'Haras, and the Irish Gone with the Wind / Geraldine Higgins -- Chapter 5. Transatlantic Rites of Passage in the Friendship and Fiction of Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Bowen / Kathryn Stelmach Artuso -- Chapter 6. Shared Traditions Irish and Appalachian Ballads and Whiskey Songs / Emily Kader -- Chapter 7. Blacks and Celts on the Riverine Frontiers The Roots of American Popular Music / Christopher J. Smith -- III. Ideology and Ambivalence -- Chapter 8. Another Lost Cause The Irish in the South Remember the Confederacy / David T. Gleeson -- Chapter 9. On the Uses of Slavery The Irish in the South and Civil War Rhetoric / Bryan Albin Giemza -- Coda: Smoke 'n' Guns A Preface to a Poem about Marginal Souths, and Then the Poem / Conor O'Callaghan -- Contributors -- Index. Publisher Marketing: Studies of the Irish presence in America have tended to look to the main corridors of emigration, and hence outside the American South. Yet the Irish constituted a significant minority in the region. Indeed, the Irish fascination expresses itself in Southern context in powerful, but disparate, registers: music, literature, and often, a sense of shared heritage. "Rethinking the Irish in the South" aims to create a readable, thorough introduction to the subject, establishing new ground for areas of inquiry. These essays offer a revisionist critique of the Irish in the South, calling into question widely held understandings of how Irish culture was transmitted. The discussion ranges from Appalachian ballads, to "Gone With the Wind," to the Irish rock band U2, to Atlantic-spanning literary friendships. Rather than seeing the Irish presence as "natural" or something completed in the past, these essays posit a shifting, evolving, and unstable influence. Taken collectively, they offer a new framework for interpreting the Irish in the region. The implications extend to the interpretation of migration patterns, to the understanding of Irish diaspora, and the assimilation of immigrants and their ideas

Contributor Bio:  Giemza, Bryan Albin Bryan Albin Giemza, Mechanicsville, Virginia, is an associate professor of American literature at Randolph-Macon College and author, with Donald Beagle, of "Poet of the Lost Cause: A Life of Father Ryan".