Oct 28, 2016 | 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM | Main Loft

Dr. Leigh-Ann Coffey, PhD

A Rediscovered Minority: Southern Irish Loyalists and Narratives of the Irish Revolution

In the years between 1914 and 1923 Ireland underwent significant political and social changes, most notably the partitioning of the country and the end of British rule in the south as a result of a vicious war of independence. Following the revolution, those in the southern Ireland who had been loyal to the British regime, largely members of the protestant minority, struggled to reconcile themselves to an independent Irish state. They also faced significant hostility and marginalisation in Ireland, and it is estimated that over 100,000 southern loyalists left the Irish Free State between 1911 and 1926. As noted by one historian, this is “the only example of mass displacement of a native ethnic group within the British Isles since the seventeenth century.”

The exclusion of southern loyalists from accounts of the revolution began in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, as the nationalist culture of the Irish Free State discouraged loyalists and other civilian victims of revolutionary violence from speaking of their experiences. Those who did challenge official accounts of the revolution were quickly silenced and the government of the Irish Free State publicly denied accusations that minorities had been unfairly treated during the struggle for independence. This paper will outline the tactics that were used by the Free State government as well as the wider nationalist population to discredit loyalist accounts of the Irish Revolution. This silencing of the loyalist community not only affected individual loyalists and their families, but also had wider social and political implications for the Irish Free State. This paper will also discuss how the southern loyalist community was recently rediscovered by a generation of revisionist scholars who face significant opposition in their efforts to incorporate Ireland’s forgotten minority into accounts of the Irish Revolution.

Dr. Teresa Iacobelli, PhD

Creating Memory: Commemoration, Popular Media and Evolving Narratives of the Great War

“Creating Memory: Commemoration, Popular Media and Evolving Narratives of the Great War" will address the conference themes of distortion and memory by examining the evolution of First World War commemorations in Canada and how these commemorative activities reflect Canada’s unique social memory of the war.

In Canada, two competing social memories of the Great War co-exist. Canadians generally think of the war as a tragic and futile event, a view that has been popularized since the 1960s. However, Canadians also regard the First World War as the symbolic “birth of the nation.” The Canadian experience at Vimy Ridge, as well as Canada’s enhanced international reputation and increased independence from Great Britain in the post-war era does much to support this view.

I intend to show how these competing memories have been constructed since the war’s end, and the ways in which these memories continue to shape commemorative activities, especially during the war’s centennial. I am especially interested in the ways in which these social memories have been shaped by, and are reinforced in popular media. Of particular interest is the role of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The CBC plays a pivotal role as a national broadcaster in both developing in its own historical programming, and in televising commemorative events and providing analysis of them. The CBC has been central in shaping the national narrative of Canada’s wartime experience, and in constructing Canadian identity and social memory as it relates to the Great War.

Dr. Laurence Kirkpatrick, PhD (Glasgow University)

Remembering 1916: Protestant and Catholic perspective on the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme.

Ireland is experiencing a 'decade of centenaries.' I wish to explore how significant event in 1916 are being commemorated; the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme.  The former is regarded as a predominantly Catholic event and the latter as a predominantly Protestant event. I will examine the reality of the events and the subsequent trajectory of interpretation, leading to contemporary questions about how such events can be commemorated in modern Ireland.  Must there always be a triumphalist approach, often selective and exclusive, which further exacerbates traditional antagonism in Ireland?

Biographies

Dr. Leigh-Ann Coffey

Leigh-Ann Coffey holds a Master’s degree in Modern Irish History from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and a PhD in History from Queen’s University. She has taught undergraduate courses on Irish history at Queen’s University and in the Celtic Studies Program at the University of Toronto. More recently she has been a lecturer at the Beaver Valley Association of Lifelong Learning. She has also presented a series of talks at the Chatham-Kent Museum and was a participant at the Ontario Genealogical Society’s “Workshop on Ulster Genealogy.”

Publications:

• “Drawing Strength from Past Migratory Experiences: The Church of Ireland Gazette and Southern Protestant Migration in the Post-Independence Period” in Hilary M. Carey and Colin Barr (eds.), Religion and Greater Ireland (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015)
•   “Loyalism in Transition: Southern Loyalists and the Irish Free State” in Jim McAuley and Graham Spencer (eds.), Ulster Loyalism after the Good Friday Agreement: Politics, Society and Post-Conflict Transformations (Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
• The Planters of Luggacurran, Co. Laois: A Protestant Community, 1879-1929 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006)

Dr. Teresa Iacobelli

Dr. Teresa Iacobelli is the author of Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts Martial in the Great War (UBC Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 Charles P. Stacey Prize for a distinguished work in twentieth-century Canadian military history. Iacobelli received a doctorate in history from the University of Western Ontario in 2010 and was a Social Science and Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellow from 2012-2015. She currently works as a consulting public historian and has curated physical and digital exhibitions for a number of clients, including Brooklyn Historical Society, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City, and the Canadian War Museum.

“From Armistice to Remembrance: The Evolution of Remembrance Day and the Canadian Social Memory of War” in Celebrating Canada, eds. Matthew Hayday and Raymond Blake (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).

Death or Deliverance: Canadian Courts Marital in the Great War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013).

“A Participant’s History?: The CBC and the Manipulation of Oral History.” Oral History Review 38.2 (Fall-Winter 2011): 331-348.

“The Sum of Such Actions: Investigating Mass Rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina through a Case Study of Foca,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009): 261-283.

“Arbitrary Justice?: A Comparative Analysis of Death Sentences Passed and Death Sentences Commuted During the First World War,” Canadian Military History 16.1 (Winter 2007): 23-36.

Review of ‘Canada in the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown,’ Book Review Supplement to Canadian Military History 19 (Spring 2007): 4.

“Simon Wiesenthal,” in Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, ed. Jonathan F. Vance (Millerton, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2006): 444.

Dr. Laurence Kirkpatrick

‘William Dool Killen: a Presbyterian perspective on Irish ecclesiastical history’ in Representing Irish Religious Histories Palgrave 2016

‘Irish Presbyterians and Death’ in Death and the Irish: a Miscellany, Wordwell Books 2016

‘Mission Statement of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1992’ in Reformiertes Bekennen Heute ed. Marco Hofheinz 2015

‘Peace Vocation of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland 1992’ in Reformiertes Bekennen Heute ed. Marco Hofheinz 2015

‘Francis Mackemie: father of American Presbyterianism’ in Treasures of Irish Christianity Volume III: To the Ends of the Earthy, Veritas 2015

James Glasgow: pioneer missionary in Treasures of Irish Christianity Volume III: To the Ends of the Earth, Veritas 2015

‘Poor Dark Connaught – an Irish Presbyterian case study'    Bulletin of the Presbyterian Historical Society   Volume 39 2015

‘Irish Presbyterians and the Ulster Covenant' in The Home Rule Crisis 1912-14 Mercier Press, Cork 2014

‘The Irish Progressive Presbyterian Tradition’ in Dissenting Voices, Ulster Historical Foundation, Belfast 2013