Exhibiting Irishness: Empire, Race, and Nation, c. 1850-1970

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Exhibiting Irishness analyses how exhibitions enabled Irish individuals and groups to work out (privately and publicly) their politicised existences across two centuries. As a cultural history of Irish identity, the book considers exhibitions as a formative platform for imagining a host of Irish pasts, presents and futures. Fair organisers responded to the contexts of famine and poverty, migration and diasporic settlement, independence movements and partition, as well as post-colonial nation building. My research demonstrates how Irish businesses and labourers, the elite organisers of the fairs and successive Irish governments curated Irishness. The central malleability of Irish identity on display emerged in tandem with the unfolding of Ireland's political transformation from a colony of the British Empire, a migrant community in the United States, to a divided Ireland in the form of the Republic and Northern Ireland.

Reviews

WINNER of the Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture 2025 (American Conference for Irish Studies)

Honourable mention for the Donald Murphy Prize for Best First Book 2024

'Exhibiting Irishness is a groundbreaking work that is essential reading for anyone interested in Irish history, visual and material culture, art, ethnic and racial studies, and gender studies. Ultimately, it reveals the fragility, ambivalence and relationality of Irishnesssomething constantly (re)negotiated, questioned and affirmed in line with societal, historical and political changes. The book, thus, has the potential to transform our understanding of exhibitions and their role in (re)constructing and promoting Irishness'
Rise Journal

'Akhtar explores Irelands participation in exhibitions and world fairs as vehicles for expressing fluid cultural, political, and economic Irish identities from 1850 to 1970 within the context of Ireland's relationship with the British Empire and the wider global economy... This book contributes to the study of Ireland, national identity and nationalism, and fairs and exhibitions.'
Recommended by CHOICE

An original and ambitious book that unites several important strands in Irish Studies through an engaging examination of the packaging and repackaging of Irish culture for international consumption.
Michael de Nie, University of West Georgia

It exemplifies the richness of transdisciplinary enquiry for the expanded field of Irish studies, and is particularly impressive in its scope and breadth of source material.
Emily Mark-FitzGerald, University College Dublin

Author Bio

Shahmima Akhtar is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Birmingham