The Irish American Cultural Institute is the proud publisher of the journal Éire- Ireland, which since its first appearance in 1966 has been the premier journal devoted to Irish Studies in North America. The journal is published twice a year, with Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter issues. It is interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in scope, though articles on modern Irish history and modern Irish literature dominate the wide-ranging fare. The journal also features articles dealing with the literature and history of Irish America. One issue each year is devoted to a special theme or subject, with the 2019 special issue slated to examine “Irish Music” and the 2020 special issue scheduled to explore “Ireland and the Environment.”

Starting with the Spring/Summer 2018 issue, members will receive an electronic version, in addition to the print version. Please be sure to provide your e-mail to receive the electronic version.

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The annual IACI/NUIG Visiting Fellowship in Irish Studies is made possible by joint funding from the Irish American Cultural Institute and the National University of Ireland-Galway. The fellowship is awarded to an Irish Studies scholar, typically a resident of the United States, and provides a semester in residence at the National University of Ireland-Galway.

 

This year’s winner is Dr. Rebecca S. Miller, Professor of Music at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Her proposed research project expands on the work that she has done to date on Irish popular music in the twentieth century (specifically, the showband era from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s). The central focus of the proposed work is on the Irish dance bands and sit-down orchestras that proliferated throughout Ireland and Northern Ireland from the 1920s through the 1960s. These ensembles played arrangements of big-band jazz standards and Dixieland jazz imported from the United States and the occasional popular Irish and British song.

 

Despite the widespread popularity of Irish dance bands and orchestras in Irish rural and urban venues for some four decades, there is virtually no existing scholarship on the music, the musicians/arrangers, their performance practices, or their audiences. Nor is there much if any research on the few women who broke through gender barriers, appearing in these ensembles as “girl singers.” Dr. Miller’s proposed project aims to fill these gaps via archival research, music-score analysis, and most importantly, through ethnographic interviews with the few remaining practitioners of the music, their audiences, and others in this industry and cultural arena.

 

A professor of Music at Hampshire College since the year 2000, Dr. Miller received her Ph.D. in Music from Brown University in 2000, her M.A. in Music from Wesleyan University in 1994, and her P.A.-A.B. in Music from Bryn Mawr College in 1982.