Irish-American(s and) Periodicals

Kirsten McLeod and Tim Lanzendörfer

Sponsored by the Research Society for American Periodicals

In 1867, John Francis Maguire declared that “there are not many journals in the United States which are not, to a certain extent, under the control of Irishmen or the sons of Irishmen” (Irish in America 412). Irish immigrants played a significant role in the growth of the press, notable not only for establishing a robust Irish-American press but also for contributing significantly to the growth of periodical culture more broadly. This panel digs into the rich relations between Ireland and America in the 19th century as evidenced in the periodical print culture of both countries, both in terms of personal involvement (from the immense presence of Mathew Carey, printer, bookseller, and publisher, and a key figure in U.S. Early Republic periodicals, to Maguire’s belief in Irish omnipresence) and in terms of Irish-American periodicals and/or the presence of Ireland and Irish concerns in American periodicals. Newspapers such as the Shamrock or Hibernian Chronicle of New York (1810) catered to an Irish-American audience at a comparatively early date, while, in the wake of the great Irish migration in the 1840s and 1850s, both secular and Catholic Irish press and journalism became a greater presence. The panel explores this growth and its impact on the periodical press throughout the 19th century.

Topics the panel might take up include:

• Irish publishers, editors, and journalists and the American and/or Irish-American press (eg. Mathew Carey, William Duane, James O’Shaughnessy, Peter Finley Dunne, Patrick Ford, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, John Devoy, Margaret Sullivan, Father Peter C. Yorke, Emile Dillon, Martin A. O’Brennan, etc)
• Irish-American newspapers and magazines (eg. Shamrock, Green Banner, Irish Times, etc.)
• Irish culture, events, and politics as represented in the American and/or Irish-American press
• The Fenian press and Fenianism in America
• Irish writers in the American press (e.g. Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats)
• The Celtic Revival in the American and/or Irish-American press
• Irish humour in American and Irish-American periodicals 
• Connections between the Irish press and the black press in America

Please send 200 word proposals and biographical notes to kirsten.macleod@newcastle.ac.uk and tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de. We expect panel participants to be members of RSAP by the date of the conference.