Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 – the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 – the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

This publication initiative is devised to augment the Museum experience, and is part of the Museum's commitment to making its collection accessible to audiences of all ages and levels of educational interest. The booklets are produced to the highest level, beautifully illustrated with works from the Museum and related collections. It ensures that audiences have access to the latest scholarship as it pertains to both the historical and contemporary dimensions of the collection.

The absence of photographs of the Irish Famine has been attributed to the shortcomings of a medium then it its infancy, but it may also be due to certain limitations in the visible itself. Susan Sontag argued that images can evoke sentimental responses but cannot address wider political questions of obligation and justice. Luke Gibbons revisits representations of the Famine, particularly those in Ireland's Great Hunger Museum to argue that images can not only give visual pleasure but demand ethical interventions on the part of spectators. This fusing of sympathy and affective response with the right of redress is conveyed by a 'judicious obscurity,' a determination not to show all, which places an obligation on the spectator to complete what is beyond representation, or what is left to the imagination.

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 – the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

This publication initiative is devised to augment the Museum experience, and is part of the Museum's commitment to making its collection accessible to audiences of all ages and levels of educational interest. The booklets are produced to the highest level, beautifully illustrated with works from the Museum and related collections. It ensures that audiences have access to the latest scholarship as it pertains to both the historical and contemporary dimensions of the collection.

Commemorative projects, born out of conflicting memories, can be problematic. Catherine Marshall challenges the coarsening of history by the construction of commemorative monuments that are thought to provide closure over the events that they mark. She explores how imaginative artists help us to work into and through the past. Through the vitality of her artists, at home and abroad, Ireland and the diaspora have attempted to come to terms with some of the inherited legacies of the Great Hunger, the most devastating event in modern Irish history.

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 – the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

This publication initiative is devised to augment the Museum experience, and is part of the Museum's commitment to making its collection accessible to audiences of all ages and levels of educational interest. The booklets are produced to the highest level, beautifully illustrated with works from the Museum and related collections. It ensures that audiences have access to the latest scholarship as it pertains to both the historical and contemporary dimensions of the collection.

The subject matter of real human suffering did not lend itself easily to art. Ireland's Great Hunger - the worst demographic catastrophe of the nineteenth century – coincided with the invention of new mass-market periodicals. Niamh O'Sullivan considers the aesthetic, historical, technical and contextual roles of British newspaper illustration in interpreting the story of the Famine. The booklet examines how academically trained artists who had little experience of looking at unfiltered or distanced atrocity became pictorial journalists

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845-1852 - the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

The Great Hunger was the most gothic event in Ireland's history and has haunted Irish literature ever since. In the struggle to resist the diminishment of this tragic episode in Ireland's colonial history, Irish Gothic writers preserved the memory of the Famine when a general silence prevailed among historians and authors of the Victorian novel. Both Irish Gothic literature and the work of the modernists (Joyce, Yeats and Beckett) resonate with the cultural memory of the suffering of millions, either lying in unmarked graves or forcibly transplanted to a harsh new world. Black Roads traces the impact of the Famine on Irish literature from William Carlton's The Black Prophet (from which the title is taken) to more contemporary work by authors like Patrick McCabe, Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland, and playwrights like Tom Murphy, Conor MacPherson and Marina Carr. Post Famine, Black Roads argues, all Irish literature is about the Famine, leaving the discussion about what 'Irishness' means centred on what Seamus Deane described as 'what the Famine means.'

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845-1852 - the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

Had the Great Famine not occurred, newspapers would still have gone through massive changes in the nineteenth century, precipitated by industrialization and urbanisation. But the Famine did take place, and the ways Irish journalists found to tell the story of unprecedented horror conditioned the evolution of journalism, not alone in Ireland, but abroad. The scale and complexity of the catastrophe forced journalists to find new ways of reporting news, to develop new techniques of interrogation, including the narration of the stories of ordinary people, rather than just reporting the speeches of important men. Whatever the political perspective of the journalist, the ideologies of his readers had to be taken into account, requiring him to develop new writing skills - forensic, contextual and emotional - that explained the Famine to the rest of the world. The stories that appeared in local Irish newspapers were often reprinted not only in the newspapers of Dublin, but London and other major cities, as far as America and Australia. It was the work of journalists that attracted other journalists from around the world who wanted to see for themselves how such a calamity could take place so close to the centre of the world's greatest empire. The Great Irish Famine was the worst humanitarian disaster of the nineteenth century and how it was reported by the press established many of the norms of disaster coverage to this day.

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845-1852 - the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

The catastrophe of Great Irish Famine of 1845-51 is a major watershed in Irish history, with a decisive impact on many aspects of Irish demographic, economic, social and political history. It played a crucial role in shaping the memory and identity of the Irish diaspora, notably in north America and Britain. It is also credited with effecting enduring changes in Irish cultural life.

Perhaps the most profound cultural change in modern Irish history has been the replacement of Irish by English as the main vernacular of the general population in the centuries since the conquest of Ireland in the sixteenth century. It is a complex story, but the massive impact of the Famine (mortality and emigration) on the later phase of this language change demands precise analysis. Based on the author's own work and taking account of recent studies of the language change, this Folio examines closely explanations and interpretations of this change of vernacular - over the long term and in its nineteenth-century setting - with a firm focus on the role of the Great Famine in this episode of fundamental cultural transformation

Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845-1852 - the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

During the peak years of the great famine at least 750,000 men, women, and children died from either starvation or disease. At the same time roughly 350,000 individuals were driven out of their dwellings. Overall the population of Ireland fell from some 8.5 million people in 1845 to around 6.5 million in 1851. This ominous drain of humanity continued at a slower rate well into the twentieth century. Whereas nature could be blamed for the lethal effects of acute hunger or malnutrition, human agency caused much of this devastating loss owing to mass evictions of the poorest tenants and squatters after the agent or bailiff had served them with the dreaded Notice To Quit.

This richly illustrated pamphlet seeks to contextualize the mass evictions by focussing on the ideological and economic factors as well as the role of religious and racial prejudice in prompting owners to rid their estates of what was known as a 'surplus population.' Determined to avoid paying for the maintenance of unprofitable tenants and squatters, landlords sought to avoid insolvency by expelling these pauperized peasants. After destroying their cabins, they consolidated all these small holdings into larger farms or cattle ranches that were rented to solvent tenants. Relying on the laws governing land tenure, letting contracts, and rent, these landlords used the mechanism of eviction to ensure that their estates would become profitable enough to pay for their own privileged way of life.

Whether or not the victims of eviction received private or public assistance to emigrate overseas, the results of these clearances were much the same. Thousands of acres were converted to pasturage in parts of Munster and Connaught and small villages or clachans were abandoned. Only the skeletal remains of stone cottages remained - some of which can still be seen today. No wonder that many Irish contemporaries called the evictors 'exterminators.'

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 – the worst demographic catastrophe of nineteenth-century Europe. The essays are interdisciplinary in nature, and make available new research in Famine studies by internationally established scholars in history, art history, cultural theory, philosophy, media history, political economy, literature and music.

Taking poetry as an act of witness and restorative memory, this essay traces the development of poems relating to Ireland’s Great Hunger from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. An international landscape of connected experience emerges through the work of Eavan Boland, Alan Shapiro, Patrick Kavanagh, Seamus Heaney, Paul Celan and many poets in Ireland, the U.S., Germany and Australia.

In examining a world of poetry, the connections and parallels to contemporary famines and migrations become clear, and the response of Irish poets to famine in other countries is acknowledged. Vincent Woods shows how the post-Famine diaspora influenced the work of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman; and in presenting new work by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Miriam de Burca, argues that the creative response to the Irish Famine is ongoing and vital.