Magdalen Laundries Joint Blog Post
Some information on the second joint blog post. As pointed out in class on Tuesday, you will need to take your OWN pictures for this post, and analyze those images. That means finding images online and using those will get you a poor grade. Finding and taking these pictures means that you will be able to directly engage with the way that these sites are (or are not) offering any tangible commemoration, since you will have to examine the context of the places as well, and identify how well (or how poorly) they are being marked and highlighted as memorial sites. The goal of this assignment is not broad general history, but a specific engagement with the process of history and memorial making in the present moment: how well or effective is this memory being recognized and acknowledged publicly? And what should we make of the way in which that particularly difficult and very complex history being dealt with in the places you are looking at? But first, the assignment:
Image and Analysis: Magdalen Laundries How is the history and memory of the Magdalen Laundries both visible and not visible in Dublin? How does the history and legacy surrounding the Magdalen Laundries appear in either direct or indirect ways? Think of the notions of history and memory in all of the complex manners that are possible: how does remembering (and forgetting) work culturally? How and what does it mean to create memorials for certain events or historical traditions, and why might certain events be intentionally left out of cultural or national memory? What does this inclusion or exclusion say about the process of national memory, specifically when considering the issues of gender and religion connected to the Magdalen Laundries? Find and photograph two examples, and then analyze how you see those pictures contributing (or not contributing) to the national memory surrounding the Magdalen Laundries. (200 words minimum)
Now, the places I can suggest that you go. This list is by no means the only places to go, but it is the main places to begin. They are at least a couple of other commemorative sites that I have encountered.
Glasnevin Cemetery: this cemetery is where the 155 anonymous Magdalens were interred after they were cremated (this was from the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity; St. Mary’s Asylum, High Park). There are also a couple of other commemorations and/or grave sites within the cemetery.
Sean McDermott St: Sean McDermott Street is in the north inner city and is a short walk from O’Connell Street (Dublin’s main street). If you walk up O’Connell Street from O’Connell Bridge on the right hand side of the street, turn right after the Gresham Hotel into Cathal Brugha Street which then runs in to Sean McDermott Street. The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity are at No. 68-9 and the premises currently provides long term accommodation for elderly women who have been in care for many years (these are former inmates of the Laundry). The laundry was known in Dublin as the Gloucester Street laundry and was the last Magdalene laundry to close, in 1996. The Laundry was at No. 63, but is no longer the same building when it was the Laundry.
These previous two are your best bet if you want to make sure that you can find something directly. The other two sites are farther away, and less clearly documented. I also know less about the actual spaces they are located in, so be aware of your surroundings if you explore.
Donnybrook St. Mary Magdalen Asylum: as of a March 9, 2016 news article (and see also this blogpost: https://mannixflynn.wordpress.com/tag/donnybrook/), the Laundry is for sale from a private owner, but did not have a clear address. It is described as intact with much of interest inside, and the article suggested the city buy it and turn it into a museum. This was the neighborhood we passed through on the bus ride home today; it is listed as being on Brookvale Road in Donnybrook in the Crescent section of town in Dublin 4. I could find Brookvale Road online (unlike some other addresses I located; see this blogpost from 2013 for some pictures of what to look for in locating the site: http://irishmemory.blogspot.ie/2013/02/mary-magdalenes-asylum-early-1900s-and.html).
High Park in Drumcondra: run by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity were at High Park in Drumcondra. The High Park laundry is now a men’s hostel run by the Respond Housing Association and is on Gracepark Road in Drumcondra in the northern suburbs, about 3 miles from Dublin city center. Gracepark Road runs for a couple of miles and the High Park site is towards the far end of the road on the left hand side if you are traveling from the direction of the city.
Here are a couple more blogposts from Angela regarding some of the memorials at Glasnevin and in Galway:
http://stiffsandstones.blogspot.ie/2010/10/simple-stone-belies-notorious-history.html
http://ronangearoid.blogspot.ie/2015/01/magdalen-laundry-monument-galway-city.html
And here is a link to the Justice for Magdalenes campaign:
http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/
For those of you travelling this weekend, there were Laundries in Galway, Limerick, New Ross, and Waterford, and Cork. If you are traveling to any of those places, and would like more information, please let me know.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Architecture and Gender: Bathrooms
This article was published earlier today The Guardian, and seems both useful and prescient given the most recent blogpost on thinking about the relation between architecture and gender. The title is “How did bathrooms get to be separated by gender in the first place?,” and the essay explores the ideological assumptions of “separate spheres” that were put in place to protect “inherently weaker” women as part of a strategy of “separation and dominance” by men. Not surprisingly, this is the same rhetoric that emerges today when challenges are made to separate sex bathrooms:
The Guardian also covered Cooper Union’s recent decision to strip all gender designations from campus restrooms:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/29/gender-bathrooms-cooper-union-college-new-york
Limericks in Limerick
Extra Credit Limerick: a limerick is a five line poem that most often focuses on humor and/or mockery, and can also be obscene, although as I noted, I want you to focus on the 
humor part and stay away from the obscene part–let’s keep the limericks PG-13. The rhyme scheme of a limerick is AABBA; lines 1, 2, and 5 are three beats/stresses, each of generally three syllables, while lines 3 and 4 are two beats/stresses, each of generally three syllables (this is generally refereed to as anapest meter; more below). I understand that probably sounds really scary, formal, and difficult, but it is easier (as it often is) with examples. Here are two limericks that I wrote on the way back from Doolin:
At Dayton there was once a teacher
Who studied the wording of preachers
But our monastic tours
Were really quite poor
With a lack of redeeming features
There once was a student from Dayton
Who set sail for the the island of Aran
He was made uneasy
By a ride that was queasy
And so on boat rides he is hatin’
Some more specific details on limericks from Wikipedia: “The defining ‘foot’ of a limerick’s meter is usually the anapaest, (ta-ta-TUM), but catalexis (missing a weak syllable at the beginning of a line) and extra-syllable rhyme (which adds an extra unstressed syllable) can make limericks appear amphibrachic (ta-TUM-ta). The first line traditionally introduces a person and a place, with the place appearing at the end of the first line and establishing the rhyme scheme for the second and fifth lines.” The Wikipedia entry is actually pretty helpful in terms of a more detailed run down of the genre along with numerous examples, so it might be helpful to give it a once over. For example, in the ones I wrote above, I inverted the person and place in the first limerick to make the person (“teacher”) the rhyming word rather than the place name. In the second one, Aran is a slant rhyme (i.e. it is not a perfect rhyme), which is also untraditional. There can also be wordplay within the form: the use of “redeeming” in the first one is intended to play with the religious sentiments that open the poem. After all, preachers/monasteries without redemption wouldn’t be very good religious people or sites, would they?
Another helpful suggestion would be to Google limericks and read several examples if you want to get a better sense of the form and how it works. Let me know if you have any questions. And happy writing!
Blog Post 2 for English
Blog Post 2 Image and Analysis: Architecture and Gender
In “Architectural metaphors: representations of the house in the poetry of Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Vona Groarke,” Lucy Collins observes “Feminist criticism frequently employs metaphors of space to interrogate the position of women within society and their ability to articulate that position in the wider world” (142). How might architecture—the way that space is designed, organized, and constructed—either implicitly or explicitly contribute to the containment and restriction of women? Consider as well the ways in which private and public spaces might operate differently. Find and photograph two examples of how architecture (broadly imagined) operates in this manner, and then analyze those photos for the ways in which those structures materially influence the experiences of women. (200 words minimum)
How I will grade your posts: each picture, explanation, and application will be worth 25 points, which will be combined for the 50 points total for the blog post. The 25 points will be broken down as follows: 8 will be for the picture, 8 will be for the explanation of the picture, and 8 will be for the application of the picture/explanation to issues regarding gender. You all get the last point free for being in the best class.
What I will be looking for in each of the three components. 8 points for the picture: Is the picture interesting, appropriate, and useful? Is it relevant and something that will lead in productive directions? I want good pictures as well as good explanation and application. 8 points for the explanation: Do you explain the specific elements of the architectural components that you are looking at in the picture? Do not assume it is transparent and clear from the picture itself. How or what about the picture are you interested in? What precisely are you focusing on in the picture? What type of context and explanation is required to make the picture clear to your readers? I expect to see detailed, developed information here. If it is simple and can be explained in a sentence, it is most likely not a very good answer. Finally, 8 points for application: What about the context and explanation from the last question translates to influencing the experiences of women? How can you apply the picture and the context to revealing the ways that architecture participates in creating gendered space? How is gender spatial? Again, if it is obvious and can be explained in one sentence, it is probably not a very good answer. The goal of this section is to synthesize and apply the information from the picture and the explanation to build an answer that is both specific and insightful
Other suggestions: don’t combine/discuss explanation and application at the same time. Build each separately. And avoid plot summary. Plot summary is bad.
Please let me know if you have any questions about any of the things I’ve said here.
Extra Credit: a couple of our tour guides have used sexist jokes and commentary as a means to relate to our group. Choose a particular example that you have observed, identify the particular sexist assumption that the example you are looking at was based upon, and tell me the problem that comes from using this assumption as a means to relate to other people. And yes, your analysis of the problem will have to be more than just that it is sexist. While it certainly is, I want to know why it is sexist.
Reading Poetry
When I briefly discussed poetry during the mini-course, I described a three-part way to think about reading and understanding poetry, which undoubtedly you all vividly remember:
- Text
- Text Context
- Text Context Theory
The first time you read a poem, read it straight through, looking to see/understand/follow as much as possible the basic elements of the poem. When doing this, you are just trying to understand the poem itself: what are the words saying/doing/conveying to readers. I refer to this as reading for text because you are focusing primarily on the poem as a linguistic utterance: you need to know what it says before you can identify what you do and don’t know. On occasion, you may need to read through the poem several times to just understand the text itself.
Once you understand that text as much as you can by merely reading it, it is time to add context to the poem. Look up any word that you do not know. Actually, look up any word that you think may be of significance in the poem, because the more you know about that particular term (and the part of speech that it is), the better you will be able to identify its function in the poem. For example, in “The Architectural Metaphor,” the word “cloister” operates as a noun, but the verb meaning of the term also has significance, and this verb meaning also has particular significance in a later poem, “The Cloister of Bones.” Knowing the variance of meaning between the parts of speech will make you a stronger reader. Similarly, look to identify any person, place, or historical event that you do not know, and look to identify how they relate to the poem and/or the poem’s subject matter itself. Knowing the historical timeline is relevant for understanding how poets are manipulating our knowledge and awareness, and playing between cultural expectations and actual historical fact. For example, how is the opening stanza of “Bessboro” dependent upon a history that is past (i.e. Bessborough is no longer technically open) but still has meaning that functions in the contemporary moment (i.e. the house’s name is a “warning” to women regarding their expected roles within society).
Additionally, you should look for poetic devices that get used by poets to structure and create meaning. Things like simile, metaphor, assonance, consonance, personification, internal line rhyme, alliteration, etc. all contribute to how meaning works. Two examples: in “Alcove,” the entire second stanza is an extended simile (a simile draws a comparison using like, as, or than)–how does the comparison drawn in that stanza inform the rest of the poem? Or, in “Falling Away, a pathetic fallacy,” what is a pathetic fallacy, and what role does pathetic fallacy play in the poem itself?
Next, look for connections between ideas within poems. Once you begin to understand how particular ideas and meanings work, this can help you unpack and engage ideas in other poems, or find poems that might be either engaging similar ideas or providing insights into one another. For example, drawing upon the example of the opening stanza of “Bessboro” above, how does this stanza function in similar ways to the first two stanzas of “Saint Margaret of Cortona” in that both take up the expected gender norms for women to be considered respectable. While they may serve different purposes in the big picture of the poems themselves, those two passages word similarly for the way they engage socially constructed and accepted norms regarding women’s sexuality in the public sphere. Or, once you understand what a pathetic fallacy is from your reading of “Falling Away, a pathetic fallacy,” how can you apply that awareness to the second stanza of “The Cloister of Bones”?
Once you have finished working through the context of the poem, it is time to add theory. In relation to this course, Gender and Fiction, the theory has much to do with learning to see and understand how gender informs and influences peoples experiences in the world. As several of our speakers have identified, gender is a social construct (as opposed to sex, which is a biological reality, although it can wander into the land of social construction quite easily–if you are unsure what I mean be the distinction between gender and sex, don’t be afraid to ask), but as the first couple of theoretical readings are looking to add to this conversation, several other parts of our daily life contribute to structuring gender, like architecture (see Haberstroh and Collins readings, amongst others). The more you know how to see gender in all of its complex material realities–for example, the privilege of the male gaze as well as the mobility and opportunity that accompanies it, all of which are regularly denied to women, as in “Man Watching a Woman”–the better you will be able to see and understand the complex ways that poets like Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Rachel Dilworth present the experience of women in ways that cuts across the categories of religion, class, space, and time.
Exploring Belfast
Early explorations of Belfast included the Ulster Museum (located in the Belfast Botanic Gardens) and the downtown waterfront. The Ulster Museum contained a detailed timeline of the Troubles along with much of the usual museum fare: ancient people and stone tools, 
dioramas, stuffed animals, charts, and some smatterings of art. The current portrait display was outstanding, as was the addition of several rooms designed to entertain and edify children. Plus, waking around and checking out the plants and people in the Botanic Garden is always a plus.
We also rented some of the public bikes and took a spin on the towpath towards Lisburn, which was enjoyable. We didn’t quite make it to Lisburn, but we racked up 18 miles total on the trip. And got to see some countryside as well–the towpath runs through several smaller parts and along several waterways lined with cute stone walls.
On the tour of downtown, we made sure to find the Big Fish, which is rather self-explanatory when one really takes the time to think about it. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that it is really a Big Salmon, but the Big Fish name makes it a hell of a lot easier for all of the fish-challenged out there. Yes, I’m looking at you. After the Big Fish, we went in search of Irish craft beer in some of the downtown bars. Quite successfully, might I add.
Experiencing Ireland
“Swineherd”
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
When all this is over, said the swineherd,
I mean to retire, where
Nobody will have heard about my special skills
And conversation is mainly about the weather.
I intend to learn how to make coffee, as least as well
As the Portuguese lay-sister in the kitchen
And polish the brass fenders every day.
I want to lie awake at night
Listening to cream crawling to the top of the jug
And the water lying soft in the cistern.
I want to see an orchard where the trees grow in straight lines
And the yellow fox finds shelter between the navy-blue trunks,
Where it gets dark early in summer
And the apple-blossom is allowed to wither on the bough.
udirelandsummer2016tommorgan 