Mary M. Burke

Professor

Honors Program Director

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Professor; Irish Concentration Coordinator; Honors Program Director in English, UConn Storrs

INTERVIEW

Specialties: Modern & contemporary Irish drama and fiction, Irish & Irish-American identities, fashion history, Irish folklore & memory

BOOK “Tinkers”: Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller. Oxford UP, 2009. REVIEW

FORWARD

“Unfettered: Irish Traveller Children.” Forward to Jamie Johnson, Growing Up Travelling: The Inside World of the Irish Traveller Children (photography). Heidelberg, Germany: Kehrer Verlag Art and Photography, 2020.

Recent ARTICLES

“Disremembrance: Joyce and Irish Protestant Institutions.” Éire–Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies 55:1-2 (2020). 10.1353/eir.2020.0008

“Grace Kelly, Philadelphia, and the Politics of Irish Lace.” American Journal of Irish Studies 19 (2019): 31-46.

“Tuam Babies and Kerry Babies: Clandestine Pregnancies and Child Burial Sites in Tom Murphy’s Drama and Mary Leland’s The Killeen.” Irish University Review 49.2 (2019): 245-61.

Lead article: “Forgotten Remembrances: The 6 January “Women’s Christmas” and the 6 January 1839 Night of the Big Windin “The Dead.” James Joyce Quarterly 54.3-4 (2017 [2018]): 241-274.

Cover image: The Cottage, the Castle, and the Couture Cloak: “Traditional” Irish Fabrics and “Modern” Irish Fashions in America, c. 1952-1969. Journal of Design History, 31: 4 (2018): 364-382.

“The ghost of Roger Casement/Is beating on the (closet) door”: Dissident Voices in MacMahon’s Easter Rising Pageant, American Journal of Irish Studies 14 (2017): 5-30.

Claire Kilroy: An Overview and an Interview. LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 28:1 (2017): 13-33.

The Marriage Plot and the Plot Against the Union: Irish Home Rule and Henry James’s ‘The Modern Warning.’” Irish Studies Review 23: 2 (2015): 184-93.

Selected CHAPTERS

“Challenging ‘good taste’: Roslaeen McDonagh’s The Baby Doll Project (2003) and the creation of a ‘Traveller canon.’” The Golden Thread: Irish Women Playwrights (1716-2016). David Clare et al, eds. Liverpool University Press, forthcoming 2021.

“The Riot of Spring: Synge’s ‘Failed Realism’ and the Peasant Drama.” Invited Synge and Stravinsky chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2016, 87-102. Paperback, 2019.

“Killing the Queen: Yeats, McDonagh, and Punk.” Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. Critical Insights Series. Ed. Margaret Breen. M.A.: Salem Press, 2014.

“Synge, Evolutionary Theory, and the Irish Language.” Synge and His Influences: Centenary Essays from the Synge Summer School. Ed. Patrick Lonergan. Dublin: Carysfort P, 2011, 55-72.

“Synge’s The Well of the Saints and The Tinker’s Wedding.” The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Synge. Ed. P.J. Mathews. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009, 41-51.

“Famished: Alienation and Appetite in Edna O’Brien’s Early Novels.” Edna O’Brien: New Critical Perspectives. Eds. Maureen O’Connor et al. Dublin: Carysfort P, 2006, 219-41.

Selected FICTION, PRESS, & RADIO

“A Cultural History of Taylor Swift’s Aran Sweater,” RTÉ (Irish national broadcaster) website, August 17, 2020.

Interview for James Joyce Quarterly “Clever, Very…” series, November 20, 2018.

“The Night of the Big Wind– January 6th, 1839: The Worst Storm in Irish Recorded History” (“Irishwoman’s Diary” column), Irish Times, January 12, 2016.

Interview on Ireland’s Same-Sex Marriage Referendum on current affairs series Where We Live. With John Dankosky. WNPR (Connecticut public radio), Hartford, CT, June 11, 2015.

Radio segment on Irish Traveller Women for “The Hidden World of Girls.” NPR, April 29, 2010.

“Hy-Brasil.” The Faber Best New Irish Short Stories, 2004-5. Ed. David Marcus. London: Faber & Faber, 2005, 101-05. Broadcast on RTE Radio 1 (Irish national broadcaster) on April 10, 2004.

View Mary Burke’s Faculty Bookshelf

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