{"id":1053,"date":"2015-12-01T17:47:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T17:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2022-02-16T14:27:01","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T19:27:01","slug":"new-lucy-mcdiarmid-book-at-home-in-the-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/english\/2015\/12\/01\/new-lucy-mcdiarmid-book-at-home-in-the-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"New Lucy McDiarmid Book: At Home in the Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted December 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

Lucy McDiarmid, Marie Frazee-Baldassare Professor of English, is commemorating 100 years since the Irish revolution with her new book At Home in the Revolution: <\/em>What Women Said and Did in 1916<\/em>, published by the Royal Irish Academy.<\/p>\n

In November, she travelled to Ireland to meet and present a copy of the book to the nation’s president, Michael D. Higgins (pictured above). She also spoke at the Dublin Book Festival and sat on a panel discussion for the book launch<\/a>. Available as a podcast on SoundCloud<\/a>, the engaging discussion with multiple experts gives the book academic context in terms of Irish historiography. \u200cIn addition, she was interviewed for several radio broadcasts and a television documentary to be screened on Easter Monday, 2016, the 100th anniversary of the day the 1916 Easter Rising began.<\/p>\n

Five years in the making, At Home in the Revolution<\/em> derives its material from women\u2019s accounts of the famous Easter Rising and offers an alternate history of the event.<\/p>\n

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The eyewitness narratives come from a variety of women on all sides of the conflict. McDiarmid found sources in diaries, letters, memoirs, autobiographies, and records in the witness statements of the Bureau of Military History<\/a>. In addition, she used materials online such as the 1911 census for Ireland<\/a>. McDiarmid has been giving talks on the subject for several years, so Irish people also reached out and shared diaries and letters from their ancestors. Many of the descendants even came to celebrate the book’s launch in Dublin (pictured right).<\/p>\n<\/div>

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\"Descendants<\/figure>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

\u200c<\/a>\u200cUntold stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

McDiarmid doesn’t focus only on the famous women of this time. Instead, she looked for accounts by anyone who told a good story, and many of these were working-class women who had not come to the attention of scholars before.<\/p>\n

The rich, new testimony in all these materials emphasizes episodes often ignored or considered trivial by traditional scholars, such as cooking with bayonets, arguing with priests, or resisting sexual harassment. The book\u2019s analysis shows social change in process, with a focus on the way issues of gender were negotiated in a time of revolution. The book highlights episodes that capture a period when gender roles were uncertain.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a ground breaking study,” said historian Margaret Margaret Mac Curtain at the book launch.<\/p>\n

Why write this book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

More on the book:<\/p>\n