Irish Studies Seminar Series: “We were convinced that we would be cowboys when we grew up”

Irish Studies Seminar Series

Semester 1, 2023-24 (in person and on zoom) 

We are delighted to invite you to the first seminar of our Irish Studies Seminar Series for this academic year, and to welcome back Dr Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna who will speak on his new IRC postdoctoral research project, at 4pm Thursday 12^th October, Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, 4 Distillery Road, University of Galway.

The title of Dr Mathúna’s paper is, “We were convinced that we would be cowboys when we grew up”: Consuming the American West in Ireland, 1922-2022, and in this seminar he will explore many of the core themes associated with his wider project, while also discussing source works and relaying some early research findings to date. Please see further details below.

As an update for our Irish Studies community of scholars at home and overseas, all of our Irish Studies Seminars will be run this year as hybrid events. And while we are delighted to welcome you to join us in person here on campus, we are particularly delighted to have those of you who may be unable to travel to Galway to join us in our zoom room on the day. Please find the zoom link for the seminar here: https://universityofgalway-ie.zoom.us/j/96178601570

Seminar Abstract: 

The mass consumption and reception of the popular culture of the American West began in Ireland almost simultaneously with its rise in the US during the mid-nineteenth century. These early interests grew exponentially over the course of the twentieth century, bearing major influence on Irish conceptions of race and gender, even as other forms of American mass culture like jazz were shunned as being subversive. American Western shows, literature, music, films, and games were readily absorbed into the Irish mainstream, and in many instances, fused with Irish culture to create radical new transnational forms in both Irish and English. The continued place of the American West within the Irish cultural landscape is evidenced by contemporary Irish western films and literature, the prominence of TG4’s ‘weekly western’, and the unavoidable popularity of Garth Brooks.

Utilising the methodological frameworks of reception theory, this is the first major study to trace the consumption of popular American Western culture in Ireland from the post-independence period to the ever changing, and increasingly multicultural, society of today. Owing to the complexities of Ireland’s colonial past and the continued conflict on the island during the twentieth century, the reception of American Western culture differed significantly from other societies, offering unique perspectives on narratives of violence, masculinities, displacement, and power. More recently, consumption of the “new” or “post-western” has helped shape views on environmental and cultural conservation in the Irish West.

Dr. Pádraig Fhia Ó Mathúna is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow based at the Centre for Irish Studies, School of Geography, Archaeology and Irish Studies, University of Galway (2023-25). For the past two years, he served as a researcher on the Harvard-based Fionn Folklore Database. A former Fulbright scholar, in 2021 he published a critical volume of the translated works of Irish language writer Eoin Ua Cathail with UNT Press, entitled Recovering an Irish Voice from the American Frontier: The Prose Writings of Eoin Ua Cathail. His next book, The Fenian Empire: Irish Republicanism and American Expansion, 1865-71, is due for release with NYU Press in 2024.