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Publications

Books

Ireland and the North, eds Fionna Barber, Heidi Hansson & Sara Dybris McQuaid, Peter Lang UK, 2019.

The volume is an edited collection of chapters engaging with the relationship between Ireland and the Nordic countries. As a spatial and geographical point of reference for the formation of political and cultural identities in Ireland, the idea of ‘the North’ encourages the identification of overlooked connections between Ireland and the Nordic countries, which, like Ireland, are also small nation states on the periphery of Europe. Importantly, the book employs a double conceptualisation of ‘the North’ to include Northern Ireland. Chapters are drawn from a wide-ranging field of study that includes art history, literary history and theory, archaeology, antiquarianism, and media studies in addition to political analysis. With three sections on Material Culture, Political Culture, and Print Culture, the book moves beyond the predominant literary paradigm in Irish Studies to make a significant contribution to expanding and developing the field. 


This CLIC-project volume showcases the expertise in classical learning that flourished in medieval Gaelic Ireland. Included are synchronistic poetry and world chronologies; lesser-known Irish poetry and prose recounting episodes from Graeco-Roman mythography and featuring, for instance, Jason and the Argonauts, Ulysses and Penelope, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Daedalus and the Minotaur; linguistic and metaphysical tracts; place-name lore; and medieval historiographies of Alexander the Great, Hercules, and warriors of Irish legend recast as classical heroes. Creating access to this body of texts and revealing the marked influences of classical concepts on the imaginative resources of medieval Ireland fills a conspicuous lacuna in our knowledge of classical reception in European literatures.


Irish Migrations and Classical Antiquity. Edited by Isabelle Torrance

The CLIC-project volume traces classical reception in contexts ranging from early Irish origin legends and medieval Latin learning to 21st-century cultural politics, including Irish-language translation, diaspora literature and gendered experiences. Participation appears in assertions of Irish civilisation, synchronistic histories, literary cosmopolitanism and transnational exchange. Resistance surfaces in critiques of marginalisation, defence of minority languages and challenges to aesthetic or political canons. This book rethinks how Irish identities travel across borders, languages and centuries by showing how the ancient world underwrites both movement and its meanings.

Journal Special Issues


Politics and Narrative in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations, Éire-Ireland Special Issue 57 (2022), edited by Sara Dybris McQuaid and Fearghal McGarry

This special issue examines politics and narratives in Ireland's Decade of Commemorations. It uses the term commemorations in order to include events and engagements that do not officially form part of the Decade of Centenaries but, crucially, take place within this context and become part of its critical mass. 


This themed CLIC-project volume provides the first dedicated and comprehensive study of Graeco-Roman influences across Irish visual and material culture from the Middle Ages to today. It features new research that considers an expansive range of material to advance our understanding of the complex interconnections between classical antiquity and Irish visual aesthetics.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters


Ireland as the earthly culmination of translatio imperii in Suidiugud Tellaig Temra, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 68:1(2025), 78–90. By Daniel James Watson

A CLIC-project publication.


Ór na Greige is stór na hÉigipt. Classical antiquity in Irish-language popular poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Popular Receptions of Classical Antiquity.The Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity Conference 2021, eds. Christian Thrue Djurslev, Jens A. Krasilnikojf and Vinnie Nerskov. Aarhus University Press, 2024, 81-100. By Gregory Darwin. 

A CLIC-project publication.


Rewriting Hippolytus: Hybridity, Posthumanism, and Social Politics in Marina Carr’s Phaedra Backwards. Arethusa 55 (2022) 229-44. Accepted Manuscript. By Isabelle Torrance

A CLIC-project publication.


Greek Tragedy and Irish Politics in the Decade of Commemorations. Éire-Ireland 57 (2022), 189-213. By Isabelle Torrance

A CLIC-project publication.


On Greek and Latin Names in Early Modern Irish Syllabic Verse, Celtica 33 (2021) Accepted Manuscript. By Gregory R. Darwin.

A CLIC-project publication.


Administrations of Memory: Transcending the Nation and Bringing Back the State in Memory Studies, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 32 (2019), 125-43, by S.D. McQuaid & S. Gensburger, 


Parading memory and re-member-ing conflict: Collective memory in transition in Northern Ireland, International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 30 (2017), 23-41, by Sara Dybris Mcquaid


 Speaking of silence: comments from an Irish studies perspective, Nordic Irish Studies 11:2 (2012), 1-20, by Maria Beville and Sara Dybris McQuaid 


Trailblazers and Cassandras: Other Voices in Northern Ireland, Nordic Irish Studies 11:2 (2012), 71-95, by Sara Dybris McQuaid