Irish Studies (IRST)

IRST 1201  Introduction to Modern Irish    
3 credit hours  
This course will introduce students to Modern Irish, with emphasis on the spoken and written forms.
IRST 1202  Modern Irish Language    
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: IRST 1201 or permission of instructor.
This course will develop the student’s ability to speak, write and read Modern Irish.
IRST 1203  Scottish Gaelic - Introductory I  ACST 1203  
3 credit hours  
This course gives the student an introduction to the structure and use of Scottish Gaelic in a Nova Scotia context. Topics covered include grammar and conversation basics, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and conversation aimed at specific social occasions and locations.
IRST 1204  Scottish Gaelic - Introductory II  ACST 1204  
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: IRST 1203
This course gives the student a continuation of the introduction to the structure and use of Scottish Gaelic in a Nova Scotia context. Topics covered include grammar and conversation basics, traditional and new Gaelic songs, and conversation aimed at specific occasions and locations.
IRST 1215  Ireland: An Introduction  HIST 1215  
3 credit hours  
The course is a general introduction to Ireland through a survey of the island’s history. Although it is situated on the fringes of Europe, Ireland was influenced by developments on the continent from the earliest times. In addition, the later experience of overseas migration connected Ireland to developments across the Atlantic and beyond. This course will pay particular attention to how Ireland’s history reflects these broader European and transatlantic connections.
IRST 1216  Ireland: Culture and Society    
3 credit hours  
This course, which complements IRST 1215, seeks to expand students’ understanding of the complexity of the Irish experience. Areas covered in this course include: Women in Ireland; the Irish abroad (with special emphasis on the Irish in Canada); Ireland in a European context; the Celtic Tiger; Northern Ireland in the post-Belfast Agreement period; sport in Ireland; and the Irish and film. This survey is aimed at both Irish Studies students and those who have a general interest in Ireland.

IRST 1800 – 1825 Special Topics in Irish Studies
6 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 1826 – 1849 Special Topics in Irish Studies
3 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 2325  Intermediate Irish I    
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: IRST 1201 and 1202
A continuation of elementary Irish, with emphasis placed on students attaining a firm grasp of spoken Irish. In addition, students will continue their study of the history and development of the Irish language.
IRST 2346  A Sociolinguistic History of Ireland  LING 2346  
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: at least six (6) credit hours in IRST, ENGL, LING or HIST
This course charts the history and development of language in Ireland from earliest times to the present. Students learn about the origins and growth of Irish, the influence on it of Latin, Norse and English, and the emergence of Hiberno-English. A series of texts which demonstrate the changing linguistic landscape of Ireland and the interrelationship of languages are considered.
IRST 2350  Irish Musical Tradition    
3 credit hours  
A survey of Irish folk music from pre-Christian times to the twentieth century. Areas under investigation shall include folk music as it relates to the wider background of Irish history; folk instruments; song-airs and singers; the structure and ornamentation of Irish folk music; and the role of Irish folk music in its nation’s current musical scene. A knowledge of musical notation and terminology is not a prerequisite.
IRST 2441  The Irish Short Story  ENGL 2441  
3 credit hours  
Students examine the short story as a major form of Irish writing, tracing its development from internationally read practitioners such as Joyce, O’Connor and Lavin, to contemporary figures such as John McGahern, Anne Enright and Claire Keegan.
IRST 2453  Contemporary Ireland in Theatre and Performance  ENGL 2453  
3 credit hours  
This course explores Irish theatre and performance from the late nineteenth century to the present, beginning with foundational institutions such as the Gaiety Theatre (1871), the Irish Literary Theatre (1899), and the Irish National Theatre Society (1904). It examines the principal traditions that have shaped Irish theatre and performance, situating them within the broader context of European and world drama. Additionally, the course considers the significant role theatre and performance have played in Irish culture and society, serving as both a mirror and a catalyst for social, political, and artistic change.
IRST 2520  Irish Folklore  ENGL 2520  
3 credit hours  
A comprehensive study of folklore in Ireland. All aspects of folklore will be examined, with special emphasis on the storytelling, song, and folk drama traditions.
IRST 2537  Ireland in Revolution, 1890-1922  ENGL 2537  
3 credit hours  
Students study Irish literature and culture as a case study in anti-colonial revolution. Focusing on Ireland’s major revolutionaries and writers, including Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, Constance Markievicz, Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, students examine how and why colonized peoples resist, and what the long-term effects of colonialism, and its overthrow, might be.
IRST 2539  Ireland, Colonialism and the Unfinished Revolution    
3 credit hours  
This course centres the experience of colonial occupation in Irish history and politics over the past eight hundred years, locating both states (North and South) in global accounts of occupation, racialization, partition, and exploitation. It examines present tensions between capitalist, liberal democratic, and national liberation movements on the island, and assesses future prospects.
IRST 2540  Troubling 'Northern Ireland'    
3 credit hours  
Students will study the conflict in the North of Ireland (1968-1998) using an array of primary and secondary sources including reportage, cinema, television, and poetry. As well as covering some of the historical and ideological drivers of the conflict, students will explore how it was shaped by class, nationality, and gender. Maintaining a strict focus on the relationship between the past and present, we analyze the shortcomings of the neoliberal peace that supplanted a thirty year insurgency.
IRST 2601  Gendering Violence in Early Modern Irish Poetry  ENGL 2601  
3 credit hours  
This course uses early modern Irish poetry (1540 - 1650) to study the symbolic violence of colonial discourse. The course is a case study in the gendered violence of colonial projects and the anticolonial resistance movements they engender. Native Irish and early settler writings both use violent tropes of emasculation and feminization that recur in early accounts of the colonization of the New World. The final report of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls tribunal is used as a lens through which to study how gendered discourses of violence travelled from Europe to the New World with devastating effects that are still felt today.

IRST 2800 – 2825 Special Topics in Irish Studies
6 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 2826 – 2849 Special Topics in Irish Studies
3 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 3325  The Irish and Atlantic Canada  ACST 3325  
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: Thirty (30) credit hours and ACST 1000 or permission of instructor
This interdisciplinary course will offer a survey of the history and culture of people of Irish descent in the Atlantic Region. Topics will include Irish settlement in the Atlantic Region, religion and politics, sectarian conflict, social status, community organizations and contemporary Irish identity in the Atlantic Region.
IRST 3330  Irish Shame  ENGL 3330  
3 credit hours  
This course explores how colonial occupation was justified, resented, and resisted in Irish writing. It also examines the role of ‘shame culture’ in Ireland’s decolonization movements and the formation of the partitioned postcolonial Irish state. Additionally, it considers the troubling involvement of Irish settlers in colonialism elsewhere, such as Canada’s residential schools system. To address these issues, we analyze Irish literature, the discourses of ‘the civilizing process,’ and early Government of Canada reports related to colonization.
IRST 3333  Ireland in Film    
3 credit hours  
Beginning with a survey of the history, development and current state of Irish cinema, this course will primarily focus on literary works that have been adapted for the screen. Students will consider a selection of early 20th century texts, such as Maurice Walsh’s ‘The Quiet Man,’ and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead,’ as well as examples of recent fiction that have subsequently been filmed.
IRST 3448  Queering Irish Poetry, 1870 - Present  ENGL 3448  
3 credit hours  
The gendered logics of settler colonialism have profoundly shaped Irish self-identity. Colonization, as a form of gendered oppression, provokes a hypermasculine response in decolonization movements—a dynamic that Irish poets have variously augmented, internalized, or subverted through queer resistance. Irish poetry has both reproduced and challenged normative structures, while resistance itself has taken queer forms. We study Irish poetry, queer theory, and aesthetics.
IRST 3456  Unsettling Irish Drama  ENGL 3456  
3 credit hours  
This course examines Ireland’s performance as an independent nation and the staging of Irishness on the national stage. Irish theatre serves as a site for enacting dominant narratives of identity and tensions around class, race, and gender. Alternative modes of performance—including dance, drag, and fringe theatre—have emerged to challenge and expand these conventions. Theatre and performance in Northern Ireland has also been shaped by the region’s contested political and cultural history.
IRST 3458  Unsettling 'Ireland': Gender, Race, Class    
3 credit hours  
This course explores the unsettling intersections of sexual, colonial, racial, and economic exploitation in Ireland. We deconstruct Ireland’s self-image as a liberal postcolony, parsing its multiple, often contradictory, logics of exploitation, gender oppression, and resistance to domination. We interrogate concepts like social reproduction, racial capitalism, hegemony, and whiteness in an Irish context.
IRST 3460  Issues in Modern Irish History  HIST 3460  
3 credit hours  
This course will examine a range of topics that have been the focus of debate in Irish History. The issues to be explored will be selected by the instructor and may include such topics as: the history of the Irish Plantations, the affects of the Penal Laws, the consequences of the 1798 Rebellion, the rise of Irish Nationalism, the causes of the Great Famine, the consequences of mass Irish Emigration, the position of women in Irish society, and the significance of the Easter Rising. In addition to providing an understanding of some of the major issues in Modern Irish History, the course will also provide an overview of historical change in Ireland from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.
IRST 3470  Irish Studies Seminar    
3 credit hours  
Prerequisite: Permission of Coordinator
This interdisciplinary course will allow students to consider a selection of topics relating to the Irish experience at home and abroad. Availing of the expertise of internal and external guest speakers, areas of study will include post-colonial Ireland; Ireland in a contemporary European context; language and culture; Northern Ireland; contemporary literature in Irish and English; the Irish contribution to Canada; and sources for the study of the history of the Irish in Canada.

IRST 3800 – 3825 Special Topics in Irish Studies
6 credit hours
Prerequisite: permission of Coordinator of the Irish Studies Program.
This course will investigate in depth a specific topic or set of topics in Irish Studies. The topic will vary from year to year.

IRST 3826 – 3849 Special Topics in Irish Studies
3 credit hours
Prerequisite: permission of Coordinator of the Irish Studies Program.
This course will investigate in depth a specific topic or set of topics in Irish Studies. The topic will vary from year to year.

IRST 4431  The Modern Irish Novel  ENGL 4431  
3 credit hours  
This course will involve a study of the modern Irish novel, placing each work in its social and cultural context. It may include works by James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen and/or Samuel Beckett, as well as a selection of contemporary novels by writers like Anne Enright and John Banville.
Note: Students should normally have completed nine(9) credit hours in English at the 2000 or 3000 level before taking 4000 level English courses.
IRST 4566  Irish Migration  HIST 4566  
3 credit hours  
During the nineteenth century Ireland had the highest emigration rate in Europe. In order to better understand this phenomenon, this seminar course will focus on the literature that discusses the nature of Irish migration and settlement from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. While the course will examine Irish immigrants in their various destinations, it will focus in particular on Irish settlement in North America.

IRST 4800 – 4825 Special Topics in Irish Studies
6 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 4826 – 4849 Special Topics in Irish Studies
3 credit hours
Course content varies from year to year.

IRST 4876 - 4899 Directed Reading Courses in Irish Studies
3 credit hours
Prerequisite: Permission of Coordinator
An independent reading course in selected topics relating to Ireland and the Irish abroad.  Topics include: the history and culture of Ireland; languages and literature; the Irish in Canada; and contemporary Ireland.