English Department Faculty
James Smith
Professor of English & Irish Studies
James Smith
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S489
Telephone: 617-552-1596
Email: smithbt@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., English & History, University College Dublin, Ireland
- M.A., English, Clark University
- M.A., Anglo-Irish Studies, University College Dublin, Ireland
- Ph.D., English, Boston College
Department
Biography
Specializes in Irish literature and culture, especially contemporary narrative, and cultural studies. His graduate seminars include "Contemporary Irish Fiction," "Twentieth Century Irish Fiction," and "Ireland and Britain: Kingdom, Colony, Nation?” His undergraduate electives include "Reading Irish Childhood," "Family and Kinship: Reading the Adopted Child," “Boom, Bust, Austerity: Reading Ireland from the Celtic Ireland to Now,” “Outcast Ireland: Paupers, Penitents, Patients,” "Major Irish Writers," and both 19th and 20th century surveys of Irish literature. He has published articles in Signs, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Éire-Ireland, and ELH. His book, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Notre Dame UP/Manchester UP), was published in 2007 and was awarded the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book by the American Conference for Irish Studies. With Maria Luddy, he coedited a double special issue of Éire-Ireland (Spring/Summer 2009) and the collection Children, Childhood, and Irish Society: 1500 to the Present (Four Courts Press, 2014). He recently coedited a double special issue of Éire-Ireland (Spring/Summer 2020) and the essay collection REDRESS: Ireland's Institutions and Transitional Justice, both of which consider the ongoing legacies of institutional abuse in Ireland. He is a member of the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR) and co-author of Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Publications
Book
- Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice, Co-written with Claire McGettrick, Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke, and Mari Steed (London & New York: Bloomsbury/I.B. Tauris, 2021). 304 pgs.
- Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment (Southbend, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 312 pp. European Edition published by Manchester University Press, 2008.
Editor
- Co-Editor with Katherine O’Donnell and Maeve O’Rourke. REDRESS: Ireland's Institutions and Transitional Justice (University College Dublin Press, 2022). 514 pgs.
- Co-Editor with Katherine O’Donnell and Maeve O’Rourke. Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, “Toward Transitional Justice in Ireland? Addressing Legacies of Harm.” 55: 1 & 2 (2020): 341 pgs.
- Co-Editor with Maria Luddy. Children, Childhood and Irish Society: 1500 to the present. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014). 448 pgs.
- Co-Editor with Maria Luddy. Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, "Children, Childhood and Irish Society." 44: 1 & 2 (2009): 296 pp.
- Editor. Two Irish National Tales: Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent and Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl. New Riverside Editions. British Series Editor, Alan Richardson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. 447 pp.
Research Submissions
- Contributing author. Dublin Honours Magdalenes, Listening Exercise, Vol. 1: Report on Findings. Principal Authors Katherine O’Donnell and Claire McGettrick. Dublin: Justice for Magdalenes Research/Department of Justice, 2020. 96 pages.
- Contributing Author. Clann: Ireland’s Unmarried Mothers and their Children: Gathering the Date. Principal Submission to the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. Principal Authors, Maeve O’Rourke, Claire McGettrick, Rob Barker and Raymond Hill. Dublin: Justice for Magdalenes Research, Adoption Rights Alliance, Hogan Lovells, 15 October 2018. 154 Pages.
- Co-Author with Claire McGettrick, Raymond Hill, and Maeve O’Rourke, “State Involvement in the Magdalene Laundries: JFM’s Principal Submission to the Inter-departmental Committee to establish the facts of State Involvement with the Magdalene Laundries,” with additional contributions from Mari Steed and Katherine O’Donnell. 14 August 2012. 145 pages, plus 30-page index of materials, and 795 pages of survivor testimony and 3707 pages of archival and legislative documentation.
- Author. “A Narrative of State Interaction with the Magdalene Laundries.” Submitted to Ireland’s Minister for Justice, Mr. Alan Shatter, T.D., and Minister for State, Ms. Kathleen Lynch, T.D., on 4 July 2011. Submitted to Senator Martin McAleese and the Irish Government’s Inter-Departmental Committee on State Interaction with the Magdalen Laundries on 9 September 2011. 50 pages [17,001 words] and 450+ pages of appendices.
- Co-Author with Maeve O’Rourke, “Justice for Magdalenes: State Complicity and Constitutional Rights.” Submitted to the Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC)*, June 10, 2010. 22 pages plus 120 pages of supporting appendices.
*Irish Human Rights Commission, Assessment of the Human Rights Issues Arising in relation to the ‘Magdalen Laundries’ (Dublin: IHRC, 2010). Published on November 9, 2010. 35 pages.
Journal Articles
- “Editors’ Introduction,” with Katherine O’Donnell and Maeve O’Rourke. Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, “Towards Transitional Justice in Ireland? Legacies of Harm.” 55:
1 & 2 (Spring/Summer, 2020): 9-16. - “Knowing and Unknowing Tuam: State Practice, the Archive, and Transitional Justice,” Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, “Towards Transitional Justice in Ireland? Legacies of Harm.” 55: 1& 2 (Spring/Summer, 2020): 142-80.
- “Testimony.” Editor. Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, “Towards Transitional Justice in Ireland? Legacies of Harm.” 55: 1& 2 (Spring/Summer, 2020): 17-34.
- "Editors' Introduction," with Maria Luddy. Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. Special Double Issue, "Children, Childhood and Irish Society." 44: 1 & 2 (2009): 5-8.
- “The Magdalene Sisters: Evidence, Testimony … Action?” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 32, 2 (Winter, 2007): 431-58.
- “The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: The Origins of Ireland’s Containment Culture and ‘The Carrigan Report’ (1931).” Journal of the History of Sexuality. 13, 2 (2004): 208-233.
- “Remembering Ireland’s Architecture of Containment: ‘Telling’ Stories in The Butcher Boy and States of Fear.” Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies. 36, 3&4 (2001): 111-130.
- “Effaced History: Facing the Colonial Contexts of Ben Jonson’s Irish Masque at Court.” ELH 65 (1998): 297-321.
Essays
- “Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries: Confronting a history not yet in the past.” With Maeve O’Rourke. A Century of Progress? Irish Women Reflect. Eds. Alan Hayes and Máire Meagher. Dublin: Arlen House, 2016. 107-34.
- “Introduction,” with Maria Luddy. Co-Editor with Maria Luddy. Children, Childhood and Irish Society: 1500 to the present. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014). 15-28.
- “The Justice for Magdalenes Campaign.” In Plain Sight: Responding to the Ferns, Ryan, Murphy and Cloyne Reports by Carole Holohan. Commissioned by Amnesty International Ireland. Dublin: Amnesty International Ireland, 2011. 372-77.
- “Re-Imagining Ireland, Britain and Europe.” Traversing the Imaginary. Eds. Peter Gratton and John P. Manoussakis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007.
- “Sexual Abuse and the Irish Church: Crisis and Responses” (with Robert Savage). Occasional Papers, 2003. The Church in the 21st Century. Boston College Online Publication.
- “Retelling Stories: Exposing Mother Ireland in Kathy Prendergast’s Body Map Series and Mary Leland’s The Killeen.” Re/Dressing Cathleen: Contemporary Works From Irish Women Artists. Ed. Jennifer Grinnell and Alston Conley. Boston: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 1997. 42-51.
Miscellaneous
- “Transforming redress via transitional justice," Books Commentary. The Irish Times 13 June 2022.
- “Commissions of Investigations Act inhibits truth-telling about the past and present,” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Times 30 October 2018.
- “US calls for transparency from Irish State on child abuse and forced adoption,” Irish Central 1 November 2018.
- “Dublin Honours Magdalenes too late for Catherine but she would have liked it,” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Times 6 June 2018.
- “Two cathartic days for 200 dignified Magdalene survivors.” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Examiner 5 June 2018.
- “In Ireland, Recalling ‘a Very Dark Time’,” Letter to the Editor. New York Times 5 November 2017.
- “Tuam dead babies scandal is only the tip of the iceberg.” Opinon Editorial. Irish Central 31 October 2017.
- “Ireland’s Forgotten Diaspora—banished unwed mothers and adopted babies.” Opinion Editorial. Irish Central 23 March 2017.
- “Archdiocese of Tuam failed these children.” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Examiner 9 March 2017.
- “Will Mother and Baby Homes Commission advertise to the hidden Irish diaspora?” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Times Online. 9 November 2016.
- Rite and Reason: Brave Magdalene survivor leaves inspirational trail.” Opinion Editorial. The Irish Times 29 March 2016:16.
- “Magdalene survivors are still waiting for restorative justice.” With Maeve O’Rouke. Opinion-Editorial, The Irish Times. Wednesday, 5 February, 2014.
- “Magdalene need inquiry with legal and political clout.” Opinion-Editorial, The Irish Times. Wednesday, 24 July 2013.
- “Fair compensation must follow Magdalene apology,” Opinion-Editorial, Irish Times. Tuesday, 19 February 2013.
- “Abused in the past and abandoned in the present,” Opinion-Editorial, Irish Times. Tuesday, 5 February 2013.
- “Magdalene survivors still held hostage to politics,” Opinion-Editorial, Irish Times. Wednesday, 26 September 2012.
- “Irish Society Colluded in Betrayal of Magdalen Women.” Opinion-Editorial. The Irish Times 1 Sept. 2003: 12.
- “The Magdalene Sisters in America.” Commentary. The Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity & Kinship Newsletter 5 (Fall, 2003): 1 & 3-4.
- “Re-Imagining Ireland, Britain and Europe.” Rev. of Postnationalist Ireland: Politics, Culture, Philosophy by Richard Kearney. The Irish Literary Supplement 16, 2 (1997): 23-4.
Resources for teaching and studying Ireland's Magdalene Laundries
Download these educational resources in PDF format. These resources are representative and not meant to be comprehensive. Inclusion of materials does not imply an endorsement of opinions contained therein. You are welcome to contact me smithbt@bc.edu to report errors or to suggest titles for inclusion. Thank you.