On Friday the 11th of December our institute Director Prof Linda Connolly launched her new book "Women of the Irish Revolution" an edited collection of an important new reassessment of women’s roles and experience of women during the Irish revolution. The President commended Prof Connolly for her timely publication and for voicing a previously silent part of history and their traumatic experiences along with her fellow contributors to the book.
Professor Connolly's book was launched officially on Friday with an online book launch including many of her fellow contributors, including, Sarah-Anne Buckley, Marie Coleman, Louise Ryan, Lucy McDiarmid, John Borgonovo, Claire Mc Ging, Margaret Ward, Andrew Bielenberg, Mary McAuliffe, Ailbhe McDaid, John Cunningham, And a beautiful poem by Eleanor Hooker and we finished with a beautiful Christmas carol on the harp from Laoise Doherty
The narrative of the Irish revolution as a chronology of great men and male militarism, with women presumed to have either played a subsidiary role or no role at all, requires reconsideration. Women and feminists were extremely active in Irish revolutionary causes from 1912 onwards, but ultimately it was the men as revolutionary ‘leaders’ who took all the power, and indeed all the credit, after independence. Women from different backgrounds were activists in significant numbers and women across Ireland were profoundly impacted by the overall violence and tumult of the era, but they were then relegated to the private sphere, with the memory of their vital political and military role in the revolution forgotten and erased.
Women and the Irish Revolution examines diverse aspects of women’s experiences in the revolution after the Easter Rising. The complex role of women as activists, the detrimental impact of violence and social and political divisions on women, the role of women in the foundation of the new State, and dynamics of remembrance and forgetting are explored in detail by leading scholars in sociology, history, politics, and literary studies. Important and timely, and featuring previously unpublished material, this book will prompt essential new public conversations on the experiences of women in the Irish revolution.
The book can be purchased here