Cork University Press

Secrets of the Irish Landscape

2013-04-30T13:30:20+01:00

Secrets of the Irish Landscape is a major new RTE television series accompanied by a stunning book from Cork University Press

The accompanying book to the TV series Secrets of the Irish Landscape is edited by Matthew Jebb and Colm Crowley and published by Cork University Press under the Atrium imprint. This major RTE TV series to be broadcast on May 5th, May 12th and May 19th. Derek Mooney is the programmes' presenter. The book will be available on Friday May 3rd.

UCC contributors to the book are: Peter Woodman, Mick Monk, Regina Sexton and Tomás Ó Carragáin

There will be a large media campaign for the TV programme and book.

Here is the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzPRjy_bAwU

This book examines many little understood aspects of the Irish Landscape from the last Ice Age until now. Historians, archaeologists, biologists and earth scientists each bring their unique take on how the landscape and the life it supports have been crafted by natural and human events. Some of the great enigmas of the past are now being unravelled, and this book gives a fascinating and fresh glimpse of how Ireland’s unique and stunning ecosystem has evolved.

The book also celebrates the pioneering work of Robert Lloyd Praeger. In 1895 Praeger began a pilgrimage across Ireland that was to last five years. His aim was to chart the distribution of all plants across the country. His observations of the landscape and its people became a classic of Irish travel writing in The Way That I Went.

Transmission dates
RTÉ ONE – Sunday May 5th 2013 6.30 pm
RTÉ ONE – Sunday May 12th 2013 6.30 pm
RTÉ ONE – Sunday May 19th 2013 6.30 pm

ISBN 978-1-78205-010-0, Hbk, €29, £25, 243 x 280mm, 244pp, May
There is a 20% discount to newsletter subscribers

You can order at:
http://www.corkuniversitypress.com

Regards

Mike

Mike Collins
Publications Director

Transforming 1916 wins books prize

2013-04-22T10:43:52+01:00

Transforming 1916: meaning, memory and the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising and published by Cork University Press has won The American Conference for Irish Studies James Donnelly Sr Prize for Books on History and Social Science.

The fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising has been held responsible for everything from the outbreak of conflict in Northern Ireland to the alienation of an entire generation in the Republic of Ireland. This book examines the myths behind the most elaborate commemoration of the Rising to date.

Transforming 1916 explores the meaning and memory of the Easter Rising in 1966 and the way in which history operated in Ireland at a moment of rapid change. Transforming 1916 looks at the commemorative process through parades, statues, pageants, television programmes, exhibitions and documentary film; and considers the tensions present north and south of the border. It argues that the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising was not, in fact, an unrestrained celebration of Ireland’s past but represented instead an attempt by the Irish government to convey a message of modernisation and economic progress. Transforming 1916 casts light on what 1916 means in Ireland and illuminates the politics of commemoration as the centenary of the Rising approaches.

Roisín Higgins, Boston College-Ireland, Dublin

Wexford Castles Environment, Settlement and Society

2013-03-07T10:43:04+00:00

Cork University Press has published today Wexford Castles Environment, Settlement and Society.

Billy Colfer’s Wexford Castles expands the IRISH LANDSCAPES series by taking a thematic approach, while still staying loyal to the central landscape focus. Rather than adapting a narrowly architectural approach, he situates these buildings in a superbly reconstructed historical, social, and cultural setting -March 2013 ISBN 978-185918-493-6, €49, £39, Hardback, 299 x 237mm, 272pp

County Wexford has three strikingly different regions - the Anglo-Norman south, the hybridised middle and the Gaelic north - which render it a remarkable version in smallscale of the wider island. Colfer’s wide-angle lens takes in so much than the castles themselves, as he ranges widely and deeply in reading these striking buildings as texts, revealing the cultural assumptions and historical circumstances which shaped them.

In this most cosmopolitan of counties, we range far and wide in search of the wide-spreading roots of its cultural landscape - from the Crusades and the Mani peninsula in Greece to the Bristol Channel, from Crac des Chevaliers to Westminster, from the Viking north and the cold Atlantic to the warm Mediterranean south.

The book breaks new ground in exploring the long-run cultural shadow cast by the Anglo-Normans and their castles, as this appears in the Gothic Revival, in the poetry of Yeats and in the surprisingly profuse crop of Wexford historians and writers. While most books on a single architectural form can end up visually monotonous, creativity has been lavished on this volume in terms of keeping the images varied, fresh and constantly appealing. The result is a sympathetic and innovative treatment of the castles, understood not just as a mere architectural form, but as keys to unlocking the mentalité of those who lived in them. Wexford Castles: landscape, context and settlement is a worthy conclusion of Billy’s Colfer’s superb trilogy of landscape studies.

The book also includes a useful gazetteer of surviving Tower Houses.

Billy Colfer is the author of The Hook Peninsula, County Wexford (Cork University Press, 2004) and Wexford: A Town and its Landscape (Cork University Press, 2008). Billy died on February 2nd 2013.

http://www.corkuniversitypress.com

Viewpoints: Theoretical Perspectives on Irish Visual Texts

2013-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

Over the last twenty years, Ireland has undergone significant transformation and, as a consequence, notions of Irish identity and nationality have been in constant flux. For this reason, it is a timely moment to consider visual representations, both past and present, of Irish cultural life, and contribute to conversations about questions such as: What kind of iconic currencies does Ireland have? How should we see them? Are there specific ideological frameworks operating when we imagine Ireland? Can we imagine Irishness differently?

Viewpoints explores the ways in which visual texts engage with questions of Irish culture, and the manner in which those texts are received, circulated, and consumed. By way of recourse to a range of theoretical positions that include feminism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, philosophy, and queer theory, the collection presents multiple and variegated perspectives on Irish texts, culture, society, and life. With essays on theories of visualisation and early Irish photography, adaptation and memory in the diasporic image, identities in Irish photographic art, the advertising of therapeutic ‘wellness’ sites, as well as essays which read and focus Irish film and television ‘differently’, this book brings new critical readings to how we ‘see’ Irish culture.

www.corkuniversitypress.com

Claire Bracken is at English Department, Union College, Schenectady, New York and Emma Radley is at UCD School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin

The Female Figure in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's Poetry

2013-02-13T14:14:35+00:00

Cork University Press has today published The Female Figure in Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's Poetry by Patricia Boyle Haberstroh. This is a comprehensive study of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, one of the most important contemporary Irish poets and the subject of growing international acclaim. Covering her volumes up to the most recent, The Sun-fish, it examines the role of the female figure in her poetry. Combining figures from history, folklore, myth, and sacred legends with those of contemporary women, including some in her own family, Ni Chuilleanáin challenges reductive stereotypes and one-dimensional images.

Short-listed in 2010 for both the T.S. Eliot and the Irish Times Poetry Now awards, Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry has recently gained international attention; an edition of her Selected Poems, published in 2008, has also brought her work to a wider reading public.

Patricia Boyle Haberstroh, Department of Fine Arts, La Salle University, USA and is the editor of Opening the Field: Irish Women, Texts and Contexts (2007, Cork University Press)

http://www.corkuniversitypress.com

Banned Irish History Book published in English for the first time

2013-02-12T14:25:27+00:00

Great deeds in Ireland: Richard Stanihursts De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis is the first full translation of the controversial Latin history of Ireland by the famous Dublin intellectual, Richard Stanihurst - ISBN 978-190900-572-3 €49, £39, Hardback, 234 x 156mm, 544pp, in Latin & English.

He wrote it after fleeing Elizabethan London for the Netherlands.De Rebus in Hibernia Gestis was published in 1584 by Christopher Plantin, the greatest printer of the age. It provided a contemporary account of Ireland’s geography and people and what the author considered to be the greatest event in Irish history – the Anglo-Norman conquest.

Relying on the work of Giraldus Cambrensis, Stanihurst celebrated the origins of the English colony in Ireland whilst simultaneously allegorizing the dilemma facing his own community from a new wave of Protestant English conquerors.

The Anglo-Irishman’s attempt to introduce Ireland to the Europe’s Renaissance elite in a literary tour-de-force went awry after many Gaelic Irish, also exiled on the continent, objected to the book’s satirical portrayal of Ireland’s clergy and its representation of the country’s customs, history and learned classes.

The book was burned on the orders of the Inquisition in Portugal, marked ‘prohibido’ in libraries in Spain and provoked a number of angry responses from readers and other writers over the following eighty years.

Because of its centrality to debates about Ireland, Stanihurst’s De Rebus was the first book translation undertaken by the Centre for Neo-Latin Studies established at University College Cork for the study of this hitherto neglected corpus of Irish literature.

John Barry has been involved in teaching and research in the Classics Department of University College Cork. He has written on various aspects of Irish Latin writing and the classical influence on Irish scholarship and has been a contributor to the New Oxford DNB.

Hiram Morgan, teaches at University College Cork. He has written Tyrone’s Rebellion (Woodbridge, 1993) and has edited Political Ideology in Ireland, 1541–1641 (Dublin, 1999), Information, Media and Power through the Ages (Dublin, 2001) and The Battle of Kinsale (Bray, 2004). He was a founder and co-editor of History Ireland, Ireland’s illustrated history magazine. He is a former chairman of the Royal Irish Academy’s Historical Sciences Committee and is current current director of CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts of Ireland

www.corkuniversitypress.com

Webbs An Irish Flora available as an ebook

2013-02-05T10:29:14+00:00

From today Webb’s An Irish Flora, eighth edition is available as an ebook. This is an indispensable
guide for you if you are out walking or just working in your garden. The last edition appeared in 1996 with 372 pages this new expanded edition has 560 pages with hand- painted illustrations. In addition, trees, shrubs and climbers in winter are now covered for the first time. There is also a new section on those plants that have legal protection in Ireland.

...this flora remains the most useful pocket guide to the Irish flora-National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin

ibook http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781859184783/

kindle http://tiny.cc/ma7yrw

Companion to Irish Traditional Music wins award

2013-01-30T13:02:57+00:00

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music has been awarded a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) for 2012.

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music has been ranked 11th in a shortlist of 644 ‘Outstanding Academic Titles’ chosen by a key US librarians’ resource, Choice Reviews Online. The shortlist was itself selected from a total of c. 7,000 academic reviews covering all subject areas which were published in 2012 by Choice Reviews.

CHOICE is the premier U.S. based source of reviews of academic books, electronic media, and Internet resources of interest to those in higher education. More than 35,000 librarians, faculty, and key decision makers rely on Choice magazine and Choice Reviews Online for collection development and scholarly research. Choice reaches almost every undergraduate college and university library in the United States and enjoys a substantial international subscriber base.

The award for the Companion to Irish Traditional Music puts it in the top 3% of the more than 25,000 titles submitted to CHOICE. To coincide with this award the Cork University Press will release the Companion to Irish Traditional Music as an ebook on February 1st 2013

ibook http://itunes.apple.com/ie/book/isbn9781859184509/

kindle http://tiny.cc/ytznrw

The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine wins Best Irish-published Book of the Year

2012-11-21T09:45:37+00:00

The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine edited by John Crowley, William J. Smyth, Mike Murphy and published by Cork University Press has won the International Education Services Best Irish-published Book of the Year. The award was announced at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards on November 22nd.

The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine was published in September 2012 and has already been reprinted three times. It has been launched in Dublin, Cork, New York, Chicago and Boston.

The Atlas of the Great Irish Famine seeks to achieve a greater understanding of the Famine, through its 50 chapters and includes contributions from over 60 scholars from the arts, folklore, geography, history, archaeology, Irish and English languages and literatures. Included, are case studies of famine emigrants in cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, New York and Toronto. The Atlas features 400 images and 200 maps that have been digitized in an ambitious project by collating maps of individual parishes and townlands that are based on census records.

Cork University Press has established an enviably high reputation in producing atlases. The latest – of the Great Irish Famine – maintains and enhances this record. Not only are the maps themselves innovative and attractive to look at, but they communicate clearly an abundance of information, often unfamiliar. The cartography is accompanied by a wealth of other images, sometimes strikingly beautiful, and also hauntingly distressful. In addition, a starry cast of experts provides incisive and illuminating commentary on all aspects of the disaster. All in all, this is likely to prove one of the most original and enduring studies of the grievous famine -Toby Barnard, Oxford University

http://corkuniversitypress.com/Atlas_of_the_Great_Irish_Famine_/357/

ISBN 978-185918-479-0, €59, £55, Hardback, 299 x 237mm, 728pp, 200 maps and 400 illustrations, 60 contributors, September 2012

Further information: http://greatirishfamine.ie/

Minister Deenihan Provides Copies of the ‘Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-52’ to City and County Libraries Nationwide

2012-11-01T11:07:37+00:00

Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, is pleased to announce today (Tuesday 30^th October, 2012) that he has provided each of the county and city libraries nationwide with a copy of The ‘Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-52’, which is edited by John Crowley, William J Smyth and Mick Murphy, and which was recently published by Cork University Press.

Minister Deenihan said:

‘In recognition of the important role that libraries play as community centres of culture and learning, I am delighted to now provide a copy of this beautiful and important publication for each of the county and city libraries in Ireland. I hope that they will find it to be a useful and informative resource and that it will be of assistance in publicising and educating communities around Ireland about the history of the Great Irish Famine’.

The failure of the potato crop during the 1840s was a transforming event in Ireland. There is nothing else in the history of the Irish people that can be likened to the Great Famine, either for its immediate impact, or its legacy of emigration, cultural loss and decline of the Irish language. It brought a shattering direct loss of life, established a momentum in emigration that endured for many years and polarised social and political relations in Ireland and with Great Britain. It is now widely accepted that a million people perished between the years 1845-1852 and that an additional one million and a quarter emigrated. In 1835, the number of native Irish speakers was estimated at 4 million, but by 1851 only 2 million spoke Irish as their first language.”