Tessera

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

@studiesirishreview.bsky.social

Studies is a cultural journal of the Irish Jesuit province, founded and in continuous publication since 1912. It examines Irish social, political, cultural and economic affairs. www.studiesirishreview.ie Instagram: @studiesirishreview

91 Posts198 Follower 343 Folgt

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last wk.

In the light of the recent midterm elections in the US, this article by Dermot Roantree from last year on the politicisation of Catholicism among the Catholic right is of interest. Link in comments. #midtermelections2026 #J.D.Vance #USElections #Renegirard #Politics #Catholicism #UnitedStates

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 2w ago

In the Autumn 2026 issue of Studies, Martin Hawkes reflects on the origins and promise of Ireland’s National Convention on Education — and the opportunity it presents to rethink the purpose of education and the values that should shape its future. #Education #StudiesJournal

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 3w ago

In this 1922 article, Herbert Thurston challenges the theories of Margaret Murray on the origins of witchcraft, questioning the evidence behind claims of a surviving pagan religion and highlighting the role of fear and superstition in the European witch trials. 📖 #Studies #Witchcraft #IrishHistory

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 3w ago

In the Autumn 2026 edition of Studies, Kathleen Lynch invites us to imagine an education rooted in care, connection, ethical responsibility and social and ecological justice. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Autumn 2026. #Education #Care #SocialJustice #EcologicalJustice

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last mo.

In the Autumn 2026 edition of Studies, John Walshe looks back at how the 'First National Education Convention' came about, the people and politics that shaped it, and what happened before, during and after the convention.

JCFJustice @jcfjustice.bsky.social · last mo.

Full house in Upstairs Books last night for launch of @bryanfanning.bsky.social academic memoir "Ideologies Are Not Your Friends." Bryan is a Professor of Sociology at UCD and a former board member of @studiesirishreview.bsky.social

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@studiesirishreview.bsky.social recently featured in the @irishtimes.com in an article by Brian Mooney. "The journal Studies is publishing a special issue, Shaping the Future of Irish Education: A Contribution to the Conversation, brought together by Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh."

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@studiesirishreview.bsky.social Autumn 2026 issue is available now. The issue is a contribution to the conversation about primary and post-primary education in Ireland in the context of the current National Convention on Education. #education #ireland #studies #primaryeducation #futureofeducation

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 8mo ago

@studiesirishreview.bsky.social Spring 2026 is available now. The issue commemorates the Jesuits' formal commitment to social justice as a constituent of faith. Found at select bookstores and online at studiesirishreview.ie #socialjustice #jesuits #studies #faith #faithandjustice

Kevin Hargaden @kevinhargaden.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Literature advice, please! I have Nesting by Róisín O'Donnell and I Want to Go Home by Róisín Lanigan - two Irish novels about the housing crisis. Is there a third option? If I can get a trifecta, then I could convince @studiesirishreview.bsky.social to take a triple review

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 10mo ago

In his Winter 2025-2026 article, Dr Kevin Williams (@dcuioe.bsky.social) explores the contradiction between France's official policy of laïcité vs the prominence of religion in its public culture, assessing literature's role in the transmission of religious concepts as a live cultural resource:

Quotation from Kevin Williams' article "Literature as Theology: A French Paradox"

“Religious themes abound in many French literary works. This obviously applies to those who write from a committed Catholic perspective (Claudel, Mauriac, Bernanos, and Julian Green), but it also applies to the work of such authors as Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo, Maupassant, Flaubert, and Gide. Songs about the clergy and about God feature frequently in the oeuvre of the twentieth-century chansonnier/balladeer George Brassens, whose work is studied in schools. A recent special issue of the literary magazine Lire devotes almost a hundred pages to the theme ‘Jesus and Literature’.

...Literature has a special resonance in understanding religion because it shows how issues of faith gain purchase in people’s lives. Texts can show how religious beliefs are mixed into the molten material of how people experience life through thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. Rooted in imagined and real world experience, narrative allows us to enter very directly into the Lebenswelt of other people. The images generated by narratives can serve as a rich conduit of understanding of human practices, possibly more capable of reaching a wider audience than conventional theological discourse. This should come as no surprise, because many people connect more readily with stories than with theories. The images embedded in stories can exercise a powerful influence on our minds, and when most of what we have learned has dropped into the deep well of human forgetfulness, some images often endure in our consciousness.

...Of necessity there is a greyness in much theological work, but narrative does offer something of the ‘green’ of life’s ‘golden tree’. Literature communicates some of the pulse of human lives, and, despite the limitations imposed by laïcité, arguably permits a thicker encounter with religious belief than traditional instruction in religion.”

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 10mo ago

In our current issue Nuala King recalls the Aboriginal Australian concept of Kanyini - a sacred principle of practicing responsibility for the land and all beings - and explores resonances with 'the deep ecological consciousness embedded in Irish myth and language’. Read now at the link in bio ⬆️

This image contains a quote from Nuala King's article "Holding the World Together: Myth, Language, and the Reawakening of Kanyini in the Irish Imagination" from the Winter 2025-2026 issue of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review.

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 10mo ago

In his Winter 2025-2026 article, @liammacamhlaigh.bsky.social describes the late Manchán Magan as a disciple of Irish - not only challenging the Irish people to reflect on their valuing of the language, but bringing it into conversation with other minority/indigenous cultures throughout the world:

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 10mo ago

We are back from our (longer than normal) holiday break with a blog from the archives, for a cold but sunny Saturday read: From 2014, Dr. Hana F. Khasawneh on the Irish oral tradition ⬇️ www.studiesirishreview.ie/2026/01/10/i...

Irish Oral Tradition and Print Culture - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In this article from 2014, author Hana F. Khasawneh provides a detailed dissection of the nature of the Irish oral tradition, the difficulties in its definition, and in the delineation between the ora...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Wishing all our readers and contributors a very Merry Christmas, and an early Happy New Year 🎄🌟⛄

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

An extract from Tom Casey SJ's article in the Winter 2025-2026 issue of Studies. An extended version of the words he spoke at Manchán's funeral, he presents Manchán as a prophet – ‘not who foretells the future, but who...speaks with the voice of the spirit into the silence of our forgetfulness’.

The image contains an extract from Tom Casey SJ's article "The Fifth Province: A Tribute to Manchán Magan" included in the Winter 2025-2026 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review.

Image text below:

“There is, they say, a fifth province in Ireland: an Cúigiú Cúige. Although it is not found on any map, it is alive in the spirit of those who awaken to wonder. It is the province of soul, of silence, and of story. It is the realm that lies between the seen and the unseen, between the old language and the new world. And it is Manchán Magan who has opened that fifth province for us. He pointed to a doorway that we did not even know was there. And he invited us, gently, laughingly, and lovingly, to step through.

I visited him a few days before he died. Frail, yes, but bríomhar fós, still full of life. Ruán, his ever-faithful brother, whispered to me, ‘Speak to him in French.’ So I did. And at the sound, he leapt, as though some spark from another world had caught fire in him again. We began a quiet duet. As he once wrote in Thirty-Two Words for Field: ‘Different languages dance differently in the world.’ And how he danced them! Irish, English, French: all were music to him, for he knew that language was not just an instrument for talking but a path for walking through the world.

Manchán loved Ireland. But he loved the world as well. He was fíor-Ghael i gcroí is i gcnámh, a true Gael in heart and bone. But he had the vision of one who saw the sacred in every tongue, in every creature, and in every dawn...it was Aisling Rogerson, the love of his life, whom he married just weeks before his death, who helped him deepen and express this love for the world. She encouraged him not to limit himself to Ireland alone, but, without ever losing his roots, to open his heart to the whole world, to see home everywhere, and everywhere as home.”

Manchán was in truth, a prophet. Not one who foretells the future, but one who tells forth into our present, who speaks with the voice of the spirit into the silence of our forgetfulness. His prophecy was not command but invitation. And his message for our time? It is as simple as it is seismic: if we do not walk the path of spirit, our footsteps will fade from the world...Manchán walked the spiritual path quietly, joyfully, and with a rare fidelity. He was both rooted and roaming. He travelled widely, yet his soul was anchored in ten acres of Westmeath, that green middle ground where the four provinces perhaps once met. There, near Lough Lene, in a grass-roofed house in an oak wood, he found home. And it was from that hearth that he reawakened for us an Cúigiú Cúige: the Fifth Province. In Irish, we call a province a cúige, a word born from cúigiú, meaning fifth. So, hidden in every province’s name is a whisper of another, unseen province, one beyond the map and beyond measure Yet, as every schoolchild learns, there are only four provinces: Leinster, Munster, Connacht, and Ulster. All of Ireland, it seems, is already accounted for. But still the word itself remembers that there is more. The word itself carries within it the memory of that fifth province, an Cúigiú Cúige, the province of the heart. Where is this fifth province?...It lies in the realm of the spirit, in the country of the imagination. It is the Ireland that cannot be conquered or divided, because it is the Ireland of the soul. It is a province where the Irish tongue rises again, ina n-éiríonn an Ghaeilge arís, not only in word, but in way...Manchán [showed] us that Ireland is not merely a land to inhabit but a mystery to enter. He reminded us that we are not only people of place, but people of presence. We cannot reach this fifth province by road or rail...We only reach it by kindness, by vision, and by faith, by walking softly on the earth and listening keenly to its song.

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Studies Winter 2025-2026 issue has an extensive array of contributions from authors such as Bryan Fanning, Peadar Kirby (@kirbypeadar.bsky.social), Kate Costello-Sullivan (@costelkh.bsky.social), and Carmel Gallagher. Available now from studiesirishreview.ie

This image contains a list of articles included in the Winter 2025-2026 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. The articles are:

Immigrants, Diasporas and Faith-Based Welfare by Bryan Fanning

Literature as Theology: A French Paradox by Kevin Williams

The Impact of Demography and Migration on Employment in Ireland by Martina Lawless and Tara McIndoe-Calder

Life to the Full: The Experience of Returned Irish Missionaries by Carmel Gallagher

Roman Catholicism at a Crossroads by James Kelly

Catholicism, Motherhood, and Intergenerational Agency in Elaine Feeney’s As You Were by Kate Costello-Sullivan

This image contains a list of the review articles and book reviews contained in the Winter 2025 - 2026 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. They are:

Uncovering the Deep Crisis of the Liberal Status Quo by Peadar Kirby

Answering an Impossible Call by Ursula Halligan

A review by Johnston McMaster of Avi Shlaim's book Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine

A review by Nicholas Canny of Neasa MacErlean's book Telling the Truth Is Dangerous: How Robert Dudley Edwards Changed Irish History Forever

A review by Keith Adams of David Hollenbach SJ's book Human Rights in a Divided World: Catholicism as a Living Tradition

A review by Stephen Collins of Niamh Howlin and Felix Larkin (eds) book Confluences of Law and History

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

An extract from Dermot Roantree’s editorial for the Winter 2025-2026 edition, in commemoration of the life and work of the great Manchán Magan (@manchanmagan.bsky.social) Available now from select bookshops and online at studiesirishreview.ie

An extract from Dermot Roantree’s editorial for the Winter 2025-2026 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. Extract as follows:

…it is not uncommon for scientists to be reductive – to regard a castle as really
nothing more than the stones, roofs and furnishings that make it up; to view
a landscape, for all the beauty we perceive in it, as merely a set of contiguous
material forms: earth, water, rocks, plant life, and clouds, each with its own
molecular makeup and all illuminated by photons. Whatever significance we
find beyond these base elements, they may think, is of psychological interest
indeed – as an expression, perhaps, of Freud’s ‘oceanic feeling’, that sense of
being one with the external world – but it is not a significance that is in the things themselves. The world, on this view, consists only of brute ‘stuff’; any
meaning it has is merely what we project onto it.

…Language is key. The indigenous language of a place carries a wealth
of memories and meanings that an imposed language may never fully
access, a truth which holds in the Irish case as much as anywhere else in
the colonised world. For Manchán Magan, the Irish author, documentary
maker, and broadcaster whom we commemorate in this issue of Studies, this was a critical and inciting conviction. ‘An Ghaeilge’, he wrote in his hugely
popular Thirty-Two Words for Field,

is a complex and mysterious system of communication. It has
encoded within it the accumulated knowledge of a people who
have been living sustainably on these rocky, verdant Atlantic
islands for millennia. As a result, it is profoundly ecological, with
an innately indigenous understanding that prioritises nature and
the land above all things.

An extract from Dermot Roantree’s editorial for the Winter 2025-2026 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. Extract as follows:

For Manchán, the Irish language has a ‘hidden wisdom’, just like so
many other old languages that evolved ‘before the strictures of reason
and rationality were imposed upon society’. These indigenous languages
preserved that special relationship to place that made them repositories of
an ancient knowledge which is threatened with extinction by present-day
technological sophistication.

The bond, then, between language and land is intimate. The language
holds the means of articulating the wisdom, and the landscape acts as a
kind of ‘mnemonic’6 – it helps us, as Manchán puts it in Listen to the Land
Speak, ‘remember things that are often greater than the landscape itself’. The
geographical features, he adds ‘are vessels for the history, beliefs and culture
of our people, going back thousands of years’.

At times Manchán wrote critically of Christianity’s contribution to the
rupture between the Irish people and their land through its suppression of
older systems of belief, but he acknowledged that Celtic Christianity also
served to retain an intimate connection with the natural world through its
unique form of ‘animistic Christianity’, one the monks then brought to
Europe between the sixth and the ninth centuries:

These oddball missionaries who wrote poems about the beauty
of the blackbird’s call, or the whitethorn’s berries, or a midland
lake at dawn, became beacons of light for a culturally slaughtered
Europe. These were the likes of St Feargal from Co. Laois,
who went to Salzburg, or St Killian from Cavan, who went to
Würzburg, or the many other Irish monks who went to Italy and
France to bring light to the darkness.

Manchán Magan died on 2 October 2025. After just a few months of
enduring an aggressive cancer, he was imithe, as his website now announces,
ar shlí na fírinne. He was gone ‘on the path of truth’.

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Studies Winter 2025 - 2026 is available now, with lead articles from Tom Casey SJ, @liammacamhlaigh.bsky.social, Nuala King, and Siobhán McNamara. Found at select bookstores and online at www.studiesirishreview.ie

The image explains the titles of the lead articles from the Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Winter 2025 - 2026 edition, which is titled 'Tributes to Manchán: Language, Spirit, Place'.

The articles listed are:

The Fifth Province: A Tribute to Manchán Magan, by Tom Casey SJ

Influence in Transmission: Scéal an Deisceabail Teanga, by Liam Mac Amhlaigh

Holding the World Together: Myth, Language, and the Reawakening of Kanyini in the Irish Imagination, by Nuala King

Memories of Manchán, by Siobhán McNamara

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Another Sunday evening read from the archives: from 2015, Dr Catherine Lawless on the origins and impact of the cult of St Anne www.studiesirishreview.ie/2025/12/06/s...

St Anne and the 'Fleshly Trinity' - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In this article from 2015 Dr Catherine Lawless looks at the cult of St Anne (mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Christ), her role in the establishment of the Immaculate Conception as dogma, ...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Some bardic poetry for a rainy Monday - on the archival blog, two 1951 translations by Lambert McKenna - in the spirit of the upcoming Winter issue on language, the landscape, and the legacy of Manchán Magan. www.studiesirishreview.ie/2025/11/30/t...

Two Irish Bardic Poems - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In honour of the upcoming Winter issue of Studies, which will focus on language, the landscape, and the life and work of Manchán Magan, this week’s archival blog presents two translations of Irish bar...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Another read from the archives this Sunday - from 1998, Joseph Feeney SJ on the origins of Martin McDonagh: www.studiesirishreview.ie/2025/11/22/m...

Martin McDonagh: Dramatist of the West - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In this article from 1998, Joseph Feeney SJ explores the origins and rise of Martin McDonagh, one of modern Ireland’s most successful playwrights. Joseph Feeney SJ was professor of English Literature ...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 12mo ago

The upcoming Winter issue of Studies will focus on 'Language and the Landscape', with a leading theme of the life and work of Manchán Magan and lead articles by @liammacamhlaigh.bsky.social, Siobhán McNamara, and Tom Casey SJ.

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Enjoy some Sunday morning reading with a visit to our archives and a brief history of the deep connections between Ireland and the Camino de Santiago: www.studiesirishreview.ie/2025/11/15/i...

Ireland and the Camino de Santiago - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In this article from 1948, Dr Richard Hayes provides a brief history of the deep religious, military, and educational links between Ireland and Spain, via the Camino de Santiago de Compostella. Richar...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last yr.

Studies' editor Dermot Roantree was the featured guest on Joe Humphreys' Unthinkable column in this week's @irishtimes.com, discussing JD Vance's misappropriation of the work of René Girard and the subsequent impact on Vance's Catholicism and politics

RTÉ News @news.rte.ie · last yr.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has paid tribute to Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, describing the campaigner and advocate as a "true Christian who dedicated her life to helping those on the margins" www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/1103/1541852-sister-stan/

Taoiseach leads tributes to 'tireless' advocate Sr Stan

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has paid tribute to Sr Stanislaus Kennedy, describing the campaigner and advocate as a "true Christian who dedicated her life to helping those on the margins".

rte.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last yr.

In honour of our outgoing President, this week's archival blog presents four poems by Michael D. Higgins: www.studiesirishreview.ie/2025/10/28/m...

Michael D. Higgins - A Selection of Poems - Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review

In honour of the forthcoming end of his second and final Presidential term, this week’s archival blog features a number of poems by President Michael D. Higgins. First published in Studies in the Autu...

studiesirishreview.ie

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last yr.

In Studies Autumn 2025, Laurie Reilly, Conchúr Ó Maonaigh & Jennie C. Stephens argue the impact of financially-motivated collaboration between universities & industry has led to - amongst other detrimental effects - prioritisation of research with commercial value over non-commercial research:

Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review @studiesirishreview.bsky.social · last yr.

One of four poems by John F. Deane published in our Autumn 2025 issue:

A poem by Irish poet John F. Deane, published in the Autumn 2025 edition of Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review.

Title: Nora's Story: Featherfall

They have winched and tackled her bed downstairs;
her hair and face are potter’s clay, and her mind

rumbles the hayfields and blackberry laneways
of her island. But the suburbs are loud, intrusive;

she is far from the old country, far from the hush
of high-tide Atlantic waters. She lay still, striving

to hold the pain at bay while long-gone friends
paused by her bedside; she spoke aloud to them

of the white loveliness of her wedding-gown,
their voices whisperingly assenting. Now she lies,

the senses numbed, prepared for the encounter,
waiting until she hears the words: “Nora, Nora,

today I have given you your name”. She is like
the fulmar, soaring out and upheld on the arms

of air, arcing beautifully back to the cliff-face
ledge. When the air scants,she will ease away,

wings failing, featherfall. For the earth, she knows,
will envelop, in love, all this bewildering making.

Kennys Bookshop & Art Gallery @kennysbookshop.bsky.social · last yr.

'Tent at Gaza' by John Behan RHA Bronze, Unique, 8x18x12in €6,250 Part of new works by John Behan, currently running in the gallery: shorturl.at/8dqjI