Seminar: Archives and Public History:Witnessing the Past - 11 April, NUI Galway

Date – 11 April
Venue - Room G011, Hardiman Research Building
Time: 1.30pm – 5 pm
Contact Information: barry.houlihan@nuigalway.ie

Overview:Archives and Public History: Witnessing the Past

Public history and the awareness of shared pasts is becoming ever more prevalent. Recent and ongoing commemorations have brought history and its reassessment into public daily discourse. Current politics and society are being shaped by integration of increasingly open and diverse pasts – from archives of manuscripts and print sources to statues, monuments and oral histories. This seminar looks at how we encounter the past of everyday life through current contemporary experience, and reflect on how we interpret the marginalised histories we meet anew through our archives, libraries, museums and public spaces.
All are welcome to this public seminar.

Programme:
1.30pm: Arrival - Tea/Coffee

2pm: Welcome and Introductions

2.15pm Niamh NicGhabhann – “Curating as a research practice – engaging with the histories of St Davent’s Hospital, Monaghan through exhibition-making.”

2.35pm Deidre McParland: “Shedding Light on ESB’s Archives”

2.55pm Emily Mark-FitzGerald: “Methodologies of Irish Memory: Making Sense of Public Monuments”

3.15pm: Q & A Roundtable Discussion moderated by Conor McNamara

3.45pm Break – 15 minutes

4pm Keynote Address: John McDonough, Director, National Archives of Ireland

‘The public record as a public good. The role of archives in creating a future.’


5pm Finish

You  can register to attend this free seminar at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/seminar-archives-and-public-historywitnessing-the-past-tickets-44262956695?aff=es2

Biographical information and Abstracts

Niamh NicGhabhann – “Curating as a research practice – engaging with the histories of St Davent’s Hospital, Monaghan through exhibition-making.”

Abstract: The range of research practices that enable our engagement with, and understanding of, the past include archival research, oral history gathering, the critical analysis of published texts and the observation and forensic examination of buildings, monuments and archaeological sites. They also include the development of new work through creative practice that represent and engage with the past within a research context. This paper considers the extent to which curating can become a research practice which actually generates new research findings, as well as presenting ideas and objects surfaced from a prior body of work. This will be examined in the context of the development of the ‘World Within Walls’ exhibition, developed at Monaghan County Museum in 2015, which explored the histories and memories of St. Davnet’s Hospital in Monaghan town, originally built as the Cavan and Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum in 1868.

Biographical Note: 
Niamh NicGhabhann is Assistant Dean, Research for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and Course Director of the MA Festive Arts Programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. Her current research project explores the Territories of the Devotional Revolution between 1850-1930, and she is also interested in the cultural construction and expression of respectability in Irish culture. She is also engaged in research projects on the subject of interdisciplinarity and on the creative and cultural industries. Her monograph, Medieval Ecclesiastical Buildings in Ireland, 1789-1915: Building on the Past was published by Four Courts Press in 2015.


Deidre McParland: “Shedding Light on ESB’s Archives”

Abstract: The history of ESB is entwined with our national narrative. It’s foundation in 1927 was based on a vision to continuously improve the lives of Irish people. From the might y Shannon Scheme of the late 1920s to the transformative rural electrification scheme of the 1940s – 1960s, Ireland was revolutionised through the first semi-state body in Ireland. Through the exploration of the content of ESB’s archives this paper will demonstrate the evidential and inspirational value of preserving and making accessible the story of the electrification of Ireland.

Biographical Note: Deirdre McParland was appointed Senior Archivist ESB’s Archives in 2015. Previously Deirdre was archivist and archive manager in the Guinness Archive, Consultant Archivist and Records Manager with Eneclann and archives administrator with GAA Museum. Deirdre has published papers in the Archives and Records Association, Irish Archives Journal, Engineers Journal, Sunday Business Post, Irish Roots and Irish Central and is a regular guest speaker, panellist at national and international conferences  and seminars. Deirdre has collaborated and curated on several exhibitions including Guinness Storehouse, Little Museum of Dublin, St. Patrick’s Festival and most recently with University of Hertfordshire.


Emily Mark-FitzGerald: “Methodologies of Irish Memory: Making Sense of Public Monuments”

Abstract:
The current Decade of Centenaries has been accompanied both by the construction of new public monuments and memorials, and an upsurge of research into previous forms of historical commemoration. Internationally, interest in the meaning and significance of public monuments has been re-ignited by controversies over Confederate statues in Charlottesville VA and elsewhere. This presentation will explore current debates in memory studies and methodological developments in researching public commemoration, drawing upon my own experience in the field of Irish Famine studies over the past fifteen years. Making reference to the ‘seven sins’ of memory studies recently critiqued by Guy Beiner in the Dublin Review of Books (Nov 2017) — laxity, dualism, crudity, moralism, insularity, myopia, and overlooking forgetting — this paper will explore critical intellectual and practical challenges in the study of public monuments.

Biographical Note
Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald is Associate Professor in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. Her monograph Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument (Liverpool UP, 2013) has been widely hailed as a landmark study in the field of Irish Studies, and accompanies other scholarship exploring the intersection of memory, public art, visual art and culture with poverty, famine, and emigration, including the forthcoming co-edited The Great Irish Famine: Visual and Material Cultures (Liverpool UP, 2018). She is a Director of the Irish Museums Association since 2009, and represents Art History on the Historical Studies Committee of the Royal Irish Academy. Her current research project is a visual cultural history of Irish poverty in the late 19th century, focused on the impact of visual technological developments including photography, stereoscopy, the magic lantern, and illustrated journalism, creating new forms of spectatorship and visual economies.

John McDonough

Biographical Note:

John McDonough was appointed Director of the National Archives in December 2014.  

Prior to his appointment, he worked as Head of Collections in the Library & Research Service of the Houses of the Oireachtas supporting and delivering online research outputs and information services to TDs and Senators.  He holds post graduate qualifications in Archival Studies and an MSc in ICT Systems.  John has previously worked as project manager of UCD’s Irish Virtual Research Library & Archive (now the UCD Digital Library) which developed a pilot repository infrastructure for digital humanities content, and in RTE. John has responsibility for the strategic direction and operational management of the National Archives, in addition to statutory duties under the terms of the National Archives Act, 1986 with regard to the preservation of, and access to, archives and the transfer and destruction of records. John is a member of the board of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and the Council of National Cultural Institutions, and represents Ireland at European and International events.

Remembering the Rising: The Pearse Brothers and QCG Visitor Book, 1899

Today, the third of May 2016, marks one hundred years to the day of the first executions of the leaders of the 1916 Rising. The executions were carried out at the Stonebreaker's Yard of Kilmainham Jail. On May 2nd 1916, the first courts martial sentenced Padraig Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh to death. Pearse, a founding leader of the Volunteers, Commander-and-Chief of the rebel forces and stationed at the G.P.O. on O'Connell Street at the height of the conflict, along with fellow signatories of the Proclamation, Thomas Clarke and Thomas McDonagh, were executed by firing squad. Between the third of May and the twelfth of May 1916, fifteen leaders of the Rising would be executed. Among the fifteen were others such as Willie Pearse, brother of Padraig. Though not considered a senior leader or instigator of the Rising, Willie Pearse was also executed by firing squad, largely because he was Padraig's brother, on the fourth of May. 

As part of A University in War and Revolution: 1913-191 The Galway Experience currently on at the Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway, a central item on exhibit is the University Visitor Book for Queen's College Galway (NUIG's former title). The visitor book records the signatures of both Pearse brothers, which they sign in Irish, Padraig agus William MacPiarais.

Q.C.G. Visitor book with signatures of Padriag and William Pearse

The visit by both Pearse brothers to the University campus in Galway in August 1899 is a truly unique moment in the University’s history. The presence of both signatures, when Padraig and William were nineteen and twenty years of age respectively, offers an illuminating insight into the exhibition, which tells the story of the University's impact and influence in major events of the time, such as the role of college students and academic staff in both the Rising and the War effort in Europe at the time; women in revolution; the place of the Irish language and also the post-1916 political landscape of the West of Ireland as seen at the 1918 election.

The exhibition is open to all and entry is free.

Pearse, Hyde, Casement, Markievicz and na Fianna Éireann

Cover of Na Fianna Handbook

An item of interest to historians of numerous aspects of revolutionary Ireland will be this volume from within the collections of the Hardiman Library - the Fianna Handbook, issued by the Central Council of na Fianna Éireann, the forerunner to the Boy Scouts of Ireland and published in Dublin by E. Ponsonby, Limited, 116 Graftom Street.

The foundation of this boy-scout movement can be traced back to prior the foundation of the Irish Volunteers, to 1913. Bulmer Hobson, having managed a successful version of the group in Belfast was keen, along with Helena Moloney and Seán McGarry, Countess Markievicz and others to recreate a new Fianna Éireann movement in Dublin in 1909.

Though not clearly or directly indicated in the volume, the Handbook is thought to have been issued in 1913, which would again coincide with increased engagement and involvement with youth organisations and the formation of the Volunteers in that year and in the run-up to events such as the Easter Rising in 1916. Though it is interesting to spot that on the inside front title page, the image on the left includes an artist’s signature of ‘C de M, 1914’, perhaps indicating this could be a later printing or edition.

Title pages of na Fianna Handbook

The volume is striking for many reasons but when one considers the list of contributors, there are very few publications of any kind that feature contributions from so many major protagonists and social and cultural figures of this time. The volume features an introduction from Countess Markievicz, President of na Fianna and who describes:

“the army of young people who are daily taking the Declaration of Na Fianna Eireann and banding themselves together in a glorious brotherhood of youth and hope to win Independence and Freedom for their country.”

Introduction by President of na Fianna, Countess Markievicz

Following this is a chapter entitled ‘Filleadh na Feinne” by An Craoibhinn Aoibhinn (Douglas Hyde); a statement on the mission and objectives of na Fianna, which reference its commitment to the re-establishment of the Independence of Ireland and the declaration of Na Fianna which every boy had to give but only after three weeks of training and that declaration reads:

“I promise to work for the independence of Ireland, never to join England’s armed forced and to obey my superior officers.”

As well as chapters laden with diagrams for support of information on topics such as drilling, rifle exercises, camp life, knot-tying, signalling, first aid and swimming, there is also an essay on ‘Chivalry’ written by Roger Casement, who though writing for an audience of young boys was no less forthright and philosophical in his ideas on this topic:

“Chivalry dies when Imperialism begins. The one must kill the other. A chivalrous people must respect in others what they strive to maintain in themselves. Hence it comes when the age of empire begins the age of chivalry dies.”

Padraig Pearse, signing himself here as P.H. Pearse, B.A., Barrister-at-Law, invokes the folklore and history of the past Fianna, linking the recruits of ‘current historic companions’ to the first Fianna of over two thousand years ago. Pearse adds that “the story of those old Fianna of Fionn should be part of the daily thought of every Irish boy, and especially of every boy in the new Fianna.” Pearse relays in detail the story of the Fianna of Fionn and ends by reproducing Dr. [George] Sigerson’s translation of text from the book of Lismore which includes Acallam na Senórach, translated to English as The Colloquy of the Ancients, Tales of the Elders, etc. a Middle Irish narrative dating to the last quarter of the 12th century and an important text of the Fenian. It contains many Fenian narratives framed by a story in which featured the Fianna warriors Oisín and Caílte mac Rónáin. Following this poem, Pearse  issues this rallying cry to the boys of na Fianna:

‘Centuries afterwards an Irish poet said mournfully: “All the Fianna have passed away/There remains to them no heir.” – But what say the boys of na Fianna Eireann?”.

This volume is an incredible record of its time, when the leaders of this period and being contributors to this handbook were clearly focusing a lot of attention on the youth of the country.

Constitution of Na Fianna

A Nation Rising

This morning marks the launch of NUI Galway's calendar of events to commemorate 1916, A Nation Rising and the Archives Service is delighted to be hosting the launch here in the Special Collections Reading Room. A programme of events is available at http://www.nuigalway.ie/anationrising/

The archives service holds a range of material that refers to the events of 1916, some of which have a particular Galway focus. First of all there are the records from the College itself, which highlight the impact on the University in terms of staff and students arrested without trial in the immediate aftermath of the rising.

There is also an intriguing entry in the University's visitor book from the 4th August 1899 when Patrick and William Pearse sign their names in Irish. Pearse himself said that he first heard Irish spoken as a living language here in Galway, and it may well have been on this visit that this happened.

Other holdings in the James Hardiman Library Archives emphasise the links between the University and the events of 1916 and its commemoration. The Brian Cusack Papers show the student life of Dr. Brian Cusack, winner of the Moffet Medal for academic achievement presented by the President each year, for 1913. He was later to become the representative for Galway at the first Dail when it sat in early 1919.

Other material, from the G.A. Hayes-McCoy collection emphasise the commemoration of the Rising in 1966. Other items in our holdings include a special edition of the "Connacht Tribune" during the Rising detailing events in Oranmore and Carnmore in the outskirts of the town, as well as rumours of what was happening in Dublin.

From the Prionnsias Mac an Bheatha Collection there is copy of a special edition of the Irish language newspaper 'Inniu', which Prionnsias edited, commemorating the Rising in 1966.

Information on these items and other material relating to this time can be accessed at http://www.calmhosting01.com/NUIG/CalmView/default.aspx and is available for researchers in the Special Collections Reading Room.