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- PublicationDublin Honours Magdalenes Listening Exercise Report Vol 1: Report on Key FindingsOn 6th June 2018, a formal ‘Listening Exercise’ took place in the Round Room of the Mansion House as part of Dublin Honours Magdalenes (DHM), an historic two-day event in Dublin from June 5th-6th. The event fulfilled two key aspects of the Irish State’s Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme: to bring together those women seeking to meet others who also spent time in the Magdalene Laundries, and to provide an opportunity for a listening exercise to gather views from survivors on how the Magdalene Laundries should be remembered by future generations.
151 - PublicationInstitutional abuse in Ireland: Lessons from Magdalene survivors and legal professionalsThe girls and women who were incarcerated in Ireland’s Magdalene institutions found themselves under lock and key due largely to perceptions that they were at risk of violating or had violated moral rather than legal codes. Their treatment was considerably worse than the treatment of those imprisoned under the Irish criminal justice system. Addressing the manifold injustices that they suffered is still an on-going issue for groups such as Justice for Magdalenes Research and survivors themselves, and this chapter offers an introduction to the legal rights and difficulties faced by former Magdalenes and other survivors of institutional abuse seeking justice. In particular, the chapter discusses the findings of a 24-month European research project in which the authors were involved, entitled SASCA (Support to Adult Survivors of Child Abuse in institutional settings).
33 - PublicationAffect and the history of women, gender and masculinityThis article begins with looking at the disciplines of literary studies and history to discuss how they are distinct yet share a certain overlapping ground. Literary studies’ focus on the subject matter of affect and historians’ focus on verifying facts are rudimentary distinctions between the fields but despite the differences in method and perspective between these disciplines, the boundaries of feminist history and feminist literary studies have intersected to create a shared territory for the field of the history of women, in which the examination of affect is a crucial focus. Romantic passion between women still remains a problematic topic for women’s history but is a fertile area of study in gender history. The article looks at the relatively recent academic endeavour of historicising masculinity, and on the new work, which focuses on understanding the expression and status of emotion in male bonding. The argument is made that these historians of masculinity follow in the footsteps of feminist historical studies of affect and feminist gender history. The essay closes with thought on how this focus on historicising affect, specifically love, commitment, friendship and desire for intimacy has reverberations in contemporary society.
390 - PublicationAcademics Becoming Activists: Reflections on Some Ethical Issues of the Justice for Magdalenes CampaignMagdalene institutions in Ireland date from the (mid-)eighteenth century, and until the late nineteenth century their history parallels that of asylums for poor and destitute women found all over Europe, run by religious orders or lay-managed philantrophic concerns seeking to provide needy women with refuge. Magdalene asylums often provided training and references of good character for these women so that after their rehabilitation they could go into service and earn a living. The Magdalenes were run according to Protestant or Catholic ethos: most Christian denominations took the life of Mary Magdalene as their inspiration. Christian traditions hold that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute who did penance for her sinful ways by washing the feet of Jesus and drying his feet with her hair. Jesus forgave Mary Magdalene her sins and she became one of his most prominent followers. The rationale for these institutions was that even the prostitute, that most scandalous and sinful of women, could be forgiven for her sins if she was sufficiently remorseful and did penance for her sins. The Christian concept of penance involves actions of humility and labour—the more humble and more onerous the labour, the greater Divine grace and forgiveness might be bestowed. Many Christian traditions have focused on controlling the reproductive and sexual bodies of women on the assumption that female sexuality is replete with causing ‘occasions of sin.’ The nominally celibate, exclusively male Roman Catholic clergy long monitored and admonished monitoring Catholic women’s reproduction and sexuality, promoting a cultural view that women (like their Biblical foremother Eve) tempt men into sexual sin.
93Scopus© Citations 5 - PublicationPride and prejudice : legalising compulsory heterosexuality in Boston and New York’s annual St Patrick Day parades(2007-02)
; This article discusses the vicious territorial disputes surrounding the tradition of St Patrick’s Day Parades through the city streets of New York and Boston, USA. It documents the legal arguments mounted successfully to exclude Irish lesbian, gay and transgender participants from the march, exploring what ideologies of nation-space and public space underpin them. It argues that the progression through urban space of the marches enforces compulsory heterosexuality, through actual and semiotic exclusion. Irish-American nationalism can be read as illustrative of the heterosexualisation of nationalism. It was the unquestioned assumption that being homosexual is antithetical to being Irish that provided the fundamental premise from which it was logically and successfully argued in the US courts: that the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization is a violent, obscene enemy bent on the destruction of Irish ethnicity and Irish communities. By contrast, the article holds up the Parades in Cork and Dublin as designated inclusive and multicultural events, the nation-space of the Irish Republic ‘economically liberated’ and wishing to communicate modernity to its citizens.2028Scopus© Citations 3