Our program at Villanova began over 25 years ago, and Ireland and Irish America have both changed a great deal since then. In that time, the whole world of Irish Studies has grown not only in numbers, but into new directions.

Much of this change reflects the way in which Ireland and its history is now seen as sharing a history with other cultures, due to such common issues as linguistic trauma, emigration, post-colonial identity, and so on. I think this helps to account for the increasing diversity of students doing Irish Studies, but other Irish cultural forces are also attracting students–music, dance, film, poetry.

When we began our program, our students were almost all Irish-American, usually only one or two generations removed from Ireland. That’s no longer an easy assumption.

Those who do come from Irish backgrounds are motivated by a need to understand a part of their identity that has been with them since childhood, but has been less and less understood as the generations pass.

A related factor is that there is now a less coherent, centralized Irish-American community, as there would have been for my parent’s generation coming to this country in the years before WW II. These students tend to come from more vaguely Irish identities, and they are looking for some meaningful connections to the historical past. They have grown up thinking of themselves as Irish, but in their hearts they seem to sense that much of that identity is clichéd and not a real reflection of the richness and the complexity of being “Irish.”  Many now live in rather anonymous, rootless suburbs, and they seem to find an important sense of connection in their lives by studying Irish texts and Irish History.

One aspect of Irish Studies that has grown dramatically is Study Abroad. In one way or another, we have 50+ students in Ireland each academic year. That experience now includes whole new areas–internships, service learning, and so on.

Is there more interest in Ireland proper than in the experience of the Irish in America and their descendants?

The greater interest seems to be in Ireland, but that may reflect our course offerings since we are only now expanding our work on Irish America and the global nature of the Irish Diaspora.

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For years, we have had a course on Irish-American drama and film. I expect we will do more along those lines. Mick Moloney has always been helpful in lecturing on Irish music in America. 

Some of the hard-core Irish-Americans I know seem less enamored of Ireland now, since the arrival of the so-called Celtic tiger. Indeed, it's a little jarring to see satellite dishes sprouting from thatched cottages. Do you think that a better understanding of Ireland's history might help those people better understand and appreciate where Ireland is today, and the challenges it faces?

I must say I don’t care for that term “hard core” so much, but I can see where it comes from.

I cherish my Irish identity, which is at the heart of my whole effort to explore Irish and Irish-American Culture.

True, some people may want to cling to an Ireland that, in most cases, no longer exists. I too lament a great deal of what has been lost in the wake of the Celtic Tiger’s prowl through the countryside, but I resist the romanticizing of the Irish past.

Today, Ireland is a thriving European community, confident in the spirit and energy of its new prosperity.  It’s hard for me to lament that, even if it brings satellite dishes to thatched cottages, damnable traffic jams, a polluted Galway Bay, and a crumbling faith in the Church. 

Today, unlike my mother, a young Irish person doesn’t have to leave home at the age of 16, never to return. That’s progress, albeit with some serious costs.

Ireland today is very different from the Ireland that exists in many imaginations. The “old Ireland” is essentially gone. Many of my generation grew up thinking "The Quiet Man" was a window into Irish life. Even my mother, from the film’s Mayo, would cry whenever she watched it. I still have a soft spot for it since it formed one my earliest images of what I believed to be my parents’ home. But, it’s a Hollywood vision of an Ireland that didn’t really exist, especially not in the time of the film. That was a country decimated by emigration with all its emotional and psychological pains, but the film avoids all that and gives us an Ireland we long for, but had no reality, except in the songs we sang in America, where everything was true.

Today, the second language spoken in Ireland is Mandarin Chinese. In Dublin today, there are 40,000 Chinese. In my mother’s home place of Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, the population of 1,300 now includes 300 Pakistani Muslims. The locals are OK with it, the kids are all in the same schools, a small mosque and its minaret meets your eye as you look over a Mayo hedge row, all this a few miles from Knock. A changing world.

Let the Irish be worthy of the challenge.

Ireland, which for so long sent its people away, now faces the challenge of welcoming its past as it shows up on the doorstep.

What draws you to this field of study?

My mother was from Ballyhaunis, County Mayo. My father from Cloone, County Leitrim. Ireland has always been a part of my world.

I read Joyce’s Portrait as a sophomore at Manhattan College and I’ve been searching for my Irish identity ever since!

If you had three to five books to recommend to Irish-Americans in Philadelphia to help them better understand their own history, what would they be? I assume any of the Dennis Clark books would be a good start.

All Philadelphia Irish should read Dennis Clark’s "The Irish in Philadelphia" and also his book "Erin’s Heirs." I think both are out of print, but should be available from Amazon and other vendors.

Also: Maureen Dezell,'s "Irish America: Coming into Clover (Doubleday)"

And: Just published and on my desk, but not yet read: "Making the Irish American," ed. JJ Lee and Marion Casey (NYU Press)