UCD Scholarcast - Series 7: The Literatures and Cultures of the Irish Sea - Scholarcast 36: Draining the Irish Channel: Identity, Sustainability, and the Politics of Water

Scholarcast 36: Draining the Irish Channel: Identity, Sustainability, and the Politics of Water

01/07/14 • 50 min

UCD Scholarcast - Series 7: The Literatures and Cultures of the Irish Sea

In 1722 an anonymous author styling himself with the degree 'A. M. in Hydrostat' published a proposal in Dublin with the title, Thoughts of a Project for Draining the Irish Channel, a satire on both the South-Sea Bubble and Anglo-Irish politics, as well as a comment on the craze for projects and speculation, scientific advances in hydraulics and circulation, resource management and political arithmetic, and improvement and reclamation. The conceptual leap made in Draining the Irish Channel is that the sea can and should be improved: in other words, done away with. The sea could become not only the medium but the very ground of British colonialism; land could be created from unproductive water; the Irish Sea could literally become a new territory. In practical terms, then, the sea is recast as a geography of natural resources that could potentially be pumped, mined, and diverted using locks and drains, all for the health of the British nation.

Previous Episode

Scholarcast 35: Via Holyhead, Material and metaphorical meaings between Ireland and Wales

This lecture explores the Holyhead Road as a cultural corridor along which people, books, and ideas move, and is part of a larger project examining infrastructural links as sites of cultural exchange between Britain and Ireland from Swift to Joyce. The lecture begins by following Buck Mulligan's invitation in the opening of Ulysses to 'come and look' at the sea, and at the mailboat crossing from Kingstown to Holyhead. Looking at the sea takes us to questions of boundaries and connections, to the local, national, and global scales of identity and belonging, and to the contested and diverse meanings of routine journeys between Ireland and Britain. The representation of different aspects of this route by Katharine Tynan, W.B. Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Thomas Kinsella, Emyr Humphries and R.S. Thomas highlights the affective dimensions of the crossings and journeys made through Ireland, Wales and England, and suggests the lines of influence, connection, and contest that travel along these transport routes.

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Scholarcast 38: 'port-lights/Of a ghost-ship': Thomas Carnduff and the Belfast Shipyards

Belfast, as a city, has come to be represented in recent years by the shadow of its industrial heritage. The Titanic, and the shipyards in which it was built, have become central to the city's attempt to give cultural and economic purchase to its contemporary identity. This lecture uncovers some of the history behind that branding of Belfast. It takes Thomas Carnduff's shipyard poetry, written in the 1920s and 1930s, as a way in which to understand the complexities of labour which underpinned the products of the shipyards and to reconsider the meaning of the shipyards for Belfast today.