Íde B. O’Carroll, visiting scholar at New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House, discusses her current oral history research, bilingual creative writing, and Emily Dickinson’s bedroom.
What is your area of research?
Posed in the singular, it’s a hard question to answer, because for decades, before I wound up my consultancy in 2014, I was commissioned to conduct research in the areas of migration (Irish diaspora in America and new migrants in Ireland), as well as social inclusion/justice and philanthropy (ocainternational.com), research that drew on my academic training across three areas—history, sociology, and social policy. However, I’ve always been fascinated by Irish-U.S. migration. In Models for Movers: Irish Women’s Emigration to America, originally published in 1990, revised and reissued in 2015 (Cork University Press), I used an oral-history approach to explore Irish women’s emigration. I returned to this area again in 2013 when I joined the Oral History Team at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU, where I am a visiting scholar. Each year I conduct interviews for the Archives of Irish America Oral History Collection—my focus is on “New Irish,” 1980s migrants.
Tell us why you decided to pursue your chosen field of study.
As an academic mongrel, I have merged methods from various fields of study in order to explore topics of interest. A hybrid approach to critical social inquiry was excellent training for a career that largely depended on my capacity to conduct original research, analyze various data and produce a readable report.
What have been the most rewarding experiences during your studies?
Three blessings: the Irish language, summers in our Lismore house, and creative writing. I’ve published poetry in Irish and English. In 2014 I was invited to spend time alone in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom, before it was renovated. The resulting publication, A Mighty Room (Emily Dickinson Museum, 2015), contains my poem, “Seomra Buí/Yellow Room.” In composing this poem, I imagined the narrator to be Margaret Maher, the Gaelic-speaking, Tipperary-born immigrant who spent thirty years working as a maid in the Dickinson household. That poem combines my many interests in one small work, created in my hometown in America.
What have been the most challenging experiences during your studies?
Probably giving up on the idea of getting a position in the academy, reckoning that my research on “difficult” topics in the 1990s, such as migrant histories of sexual abuse (in Irish World Wide, 1995) or experiences of Irish lesbians/gays (Lesbian and Gay Visions of Ireland, Cassells, 1995), may have been a barrier to entry into that world at the time.
What are you currently working on?
I just completed a chapter for a book on Ireland’s Marriage Equality campaign (The Marriage Equality Papers, Merrion, 2016), but for the past year I’ve been working on Irish Transatlantics, 1980-2015 (forthcoming from Cork University Press/Atrium, 2017), a companion volume to the Models work. Irish Transatlantics brings the story of Irish-U.S. migration up to the twenty-first century. It draws on interviews I conducted with Irish men and women in the United States and Ireland who were part of the “New Irish” migration in 1980s, many of whom returned to Ireland in the late 1990s. In this book I analyze the emergence of extensive transnationalism in Irish-U.S. migration and what it means to the people for whom it was/is a reality.
What are you currently reading?
I just finished Lia Mill’s The Fallen (2014), a beautifully written novel that forces us to consider the Rising from multiple perspectives. I’m savoring segments from the poet Paula Meehan’s Imaginary Bonnets with Real Bees in Them (2016), a gorgeous, unashamedly feminist work, part memoir, part meditation on life, on poetry—simply brilliant! Lastly, Roger Angell’s This Old Man: All in Pieces (2016) drawn mostly from his New Yorker essays.
How do you hope your work will impact Irish Studies?
I hope it highlights the value of narrative/oral history as a source in analyzing Irish processes and events, especially migration. In my interviews as part the Oral History Project Team at NYU, established by Prof. Marion R. Casey, I bring my knowledge of living in Ireland and the United States to these encounters, accounts preserved for interpretation by future generations.
What are your future plans?
I look forward to completing and publishing my book Irish Transatlantics in 2017, and hope that my colleagues at Glucksman Ireland House, NYU, my academic home, and friends at Trinity College, Dublin, will once again graciously host a launch as they did for the Models book in 2015.