Irish Heritage

In 1976 a small group of Irish Americans was looking for a permanent place to celebrate and share their heritage and culture. After many fundraisers and Irish Family Days, they purchased an abandoned, graffiti-covered building on the northwest side of Chicago. Over the past 25 years, a crew of passionate volunteers has transformed the derelict structure into a premier institution. Through dance, music, festivals, language, history, and art, the Irish American Heritage Center delivers on its mission as a nonprofit organization enhancing the life of every member and of the community. But for the vision of those original dreamers and the blood, sweat, and tears of the thousands of volunteers, it would not exist.

The Ottawa Valley is a region of Canada straddling the Ottawa River in Ontario and Québec that is well known for its rich singing, storytelling, fiddling and step dancing traditions. Settled largely by the Irish, Scots and the French over the past two hundred years, it had largest concentration of people of Irish origin in Canada by the late 19th century. Travelling through the Valley one gets the sense of coming face to face with the past. While its dramatic history is filled with incidents of extreme hardship and tragedy, the overriding impression is of a triumphant survivalism associated with its strong men of the past; the voyageurs, the coureurs du bois and the lumbermen. The legacy of this unique heritage—from fiddling and step dancing to tales of priests, lumberman, and Orange and Green rivalries—is explored in this book through the voices of Valley people themselves. The author reveals the importance of place and history in the transmission of this vibrant regional culture down to the present day.

An influential study of culture, history, folklore in the great tradition of French historiography

What does it mean to be of Irish descent? What does Irish descent stand for in Ireland? In Northern Ireland? In the United States? How are the categories of “native” and “settler” and accounts of ethnic origin being refigured through popular genealogy and population genetics? Of Irish Descent addresses these questions by exploring the contemporary significance of ideas about ancestral roots, origins, and connections. Moving from the intimacy of family stories and reunions to disputed state policies on noble titles and new applications of genetic research, Nash traces the place of ancestry in interconnected geographies of identity—familial, ethnic, national, and diasporic. Underlying these different practices and narratives are potent and profoundly political questions about who counts as Irish and to whom Ireland belongs. Examining tensions between ideas of plurality and commonality, difference and connection that run through the culture and science of ancestral origins, Of Irish Descent is an original and timely exploration of new configurations of nation and diaspora as communities of shared descent.

Roughly 44 million Americans of Irish descent, though understandably proud of their heritage, have grown up with a shocking degree of cultural deprivation with regard to the culinary traditions of their ancestors. For most, Irish cuisine means potatoes, corned beef, and cabbage. Now at last, The Irish Heritage Cookbook will set the record straight. Margaret Johnson offers a much-needed fresh perspective on what Irish cooking is all about. She tells stories about the foods of Erin and how these dishes were reinvented by Irish emigrants and their offspring, evolving to include new ingredients and to suit modern circumstances and tastes. Offering a bountiful collection of both traditional recipes and contemporary innovations from a host of chefs and cooks in the Old Country and the New, The Irish Heritage Cookbook affirms at last the place of Irish cooking among the great cuisines of the worldand one to be enjoyed by all who love Ireland.

Ruth Barton argues that in order to understand the position of filmmaking in Ireland and the inheritance on which contemporary filmmakers draw, definitions of the Irish culture and identity must take into account the Irish diaspora and engage with its cinema.

This guide is designed to help those conducting research in all aspects of Irish military history. Commissioned by the Military Heritage of Ireland Trust, which was established in 2000 to foster knowledge of this heritage, it lists the institutions, archives, public bodies and organizations that specifically hold relevant information on military heritage, relating from the earliest times to the present day. Also included is a listing of fortifications, battle sites and places in Ireland relevant to military events in its broadest sense. Where possible, email, website and telephone details are also included, as are museum and archival depositories opening times. The guide is completed with an extensive bibliography listing books and articles that have been published on military history, particularly those in the last twenty years.