Research in Women's Studies
Research in Women's Studies at UL takes place at a number of
levels. These include:
- Individual faculty research (see the
Staff Directory for individual research
profiles)
Books by Women’s Studies Staff at UL
 COSMOPOLITAN IRELAND: GLOBALISATION AND QUALITY OF LIFE (Pluto Press, 2007) by Carmen Kuhling and Kieran Keohane. Ireland is going through a period of unprecedented economic and cultural growth and renewal. These changes are due in part to neoliberal policies that have attracted foreign investment. The globalization of Ireland's economy has had major social consequences. Living standards are rising quickly. Emigration has reversed. Catholicism has been secularized, laws on divorce and sexuality have been liberalized. Ireland has become an urban society for the first time. But there is stark inequality and social exclusion; epidemics of depression, alcoholism, and obesity; traditional values and community are declining; and there is deep ambivalence towards immigrants. Ireland's economy is globalized, but is Irish society cosmopolitan? Wealth has increased, but has quality of life improved? The authors explore the developments of the last 15 years, capturing the intensity of the debates that make up the new cosmopolitan multi-cultural Ireland.
 MADE HOLY: IRISH WOMEN RELIGIOUS AT HOME AND ABROAD (Irish Academic Press, 2006) by Yvonne McKenna. Based on their oral testimonies, Made Holy explores the attraction to religious life and experiences therein of thirty Irish nuns. Chiefly, it is a book about identity, and an exploration of the ways in which women religious articulate a sense of self. The women's accounts provide a means of investigating the disadvantaged position of women in Ireland during a particular period and the decisions some women made in response. Interpreting them as legitimate but overlooked stories of migration, Made Holy probes the wider theme of social change in Ireland and productively explores the interrelationship of gender, religion, and diaspora, casting light on Irish culture and its neglected histories.
 COLLISION CULTURE: TRANSFORMATIONS IN EVERYDAY LIFE IN IRELAND (Liffey Press, 2004) by Kieran Keohane and Carmen Kuhling. The central premise of Collision Culture is that Ireland’s experience of “economic boom” has resulted in the collision of incompatible ways of life. These “cultural collisions” have become apparent in a variety of changes — changes in patterns of rates of suicide, in patterns of consumption, in representations of Irish “celebrities”, in patterns of home ownership, in the rise of tribunals, and in a variety of other points of public discourse and Irish culture.
 THE
NEW AGE ETHIC AND THE SPIRIT OF POSTMODERNITY (Hampton Press, 2004) by
Carmen Kuhling is an empirical and theoretical inquiry into what
constitutes the "new age," looking specifically at self-help therapy,
holistic health, environmentalism, belief in paranormal phenomena, and
other current tendencies considered to be "new age."
 WOMEN
AND THE IRISH DIASPORA (Routledge, 2004) by Breda Gray
looks at the changing nature of national and cultural belonging both
among women who have left Ireland and those who remain. Based on
original research with Irish women both in Ireland and in England, this
book explores how questions of mobility and stasis are recast along
gender, class, racial and generational lines.
 WOMEN AND PAID WORK, 1500 TO 1939 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001),
edited by Bernadette Whelan. This book seeks to further
unravel the working experiences of Irish women in the period
from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
 EMERGING VOICES: WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY IRISH SOCIETY (Dublin: IPA, 1998)
by Pat O’Connor, describes the position of women in Irish society. It is particularly concerned with changes in the world of the family and the world of paid employment over the past twenty-five years.
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FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN WOMEN: A CRITICAL REVIEW (London: Routledge, 1992)
by Pat O’Connor. |
