The Field Day Anthology and Irish Women's Literary Studies

The recent publication of volumes 4 and 5 of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing presents a timely occasion for a review of women’s literary studies and an assessment of their influence in Irish studies. Indeed the contested status of these volumes from their very inception – objected to by some as wrongly separate in their focus on female representations, and by others as not separate enough, given their placement under the Field Day ‘umbrella’ – should, at the very least, have brought increased attention to the issue of women’s studies more generally. Yet, with the exception of some individual critics, Irish studies as a discipline remains singularly ill informed of (and by) the debates and concerns that have occupied Irish feminist criticism in the past decade. Meanwhile feminist critics, and those working in the field of women’s writings more generally, have themselves moved slowly to a more public airing of these preoccupations and to their articulation in a more self-questioning mode.