Irish American Material Culture: A Dictionary of Collections, Sites, and Festivals in the United States and Canada

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A strong oral tradition together with a variety of literary works and other written records have given us a broad general knowledge of the cultural and political history of the Irish immigrants who settled in North America during the past four centuries. This directory adds a further dimension to our understanding of Irish immigration and its contributions to American culture. Reflecting a growing scholarly interest in the material side of cultural history, it is the first work to offer complete information on Irish-American archival and artifact collections, historic sites, and festivals.

Reviews

The raison d'etre of this new series is that though ethnic studies 'have until recently used conventional methods of historical research' and relied for the most part on sources such as letters, diaries, and oral interviews, researchers 'are now seeking to use physical objects as sources of immigrant history . . . These include buildings, photographs, household objects, tools, musical instruments and clothing created, brought, or transformed by members of particular ethnic groups.' This series of directories will 'locate and describe ethnic material culture and photographic collections in the United States and Canada.' The compiler of the first volume in the series is Eleuterio-Comer, whose degree is in folk culture. She uses the term Irish-American to mean immigrants and their descendants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland who have settled in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the group known as 'Scotch-Irish.' The introduction explains the waves of Irish emigration and traces the course of 'their movement from urban ghettos to seeming assimilation in the suburbs.' The directory's three sections cover collections, sites, and festivals. The arrangement is alphabetical by state or province and entries are sequentially numbered. Collections consists of descriptive entries for Irish-American holdings in 90 museums, libraries, historical societies, etc . . . The second section presents data on 46 sites of Irish-American significance, mostly taken from the National Register of Historic Places. And Festivals is included because they are frequently the most comprehensive sites of both historical and contemporary culture. A short biblio. of books and journal articles concentratingon Irish history and material culture completes the volume.-Reference Books Bulletin
"The raison d'etre of this new series is that though ethnic studies 'have until recently used conventional methods of historical research' and relied for the most part on sources such as letters, diaries, and oral interviews, researchers 'are now seeking to use physical objects as sources of immigrant history . . . These include buildings, photographs, household objects, tools, musical instruments and clothing created, brought, or transformed by members of particular ethnic groups.' This series of directories will 'locate and describe ethnic material culture and photographic collections in the United States and Canada.' The compiler of the first volume in the series is Eleuterio-Comer, whose degree is in folk culture. She uses the term Irish-American to mean immigrants and their descendants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland who have settled in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the group known as 'Scotch-Irish.' The introduction explains the waves of Irish emigration and traces the course of 'their movement from urban ghettos to seeming assimilation in the suburbs.' The directory's three sections cover collections, sites, and festivals. The arrangement is alphabetical by state or province and entries are sequentially numbered. Collections consists of descriptive entries for Irish-American holdings in 90 museums, libraries, historical societies, etc . . . The second section presents data on 46 sites of Irish-American significance, mostly taken from the National Register of Historic Places. And Festivals is included because they are frequently the most comprehensive sites of both historical and contemporary culture. A short biblio. of books and journal articles concentratingon Irish history and material culture completes the volume."-Reference Books Bulletin

Author Bio

SUSAN K. ELEUTERIO-COMER is a professional folklorist specializing in ethnic group material culture.