Latest Module Specifications
Current Academic Year 2025 - 2026
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Description The purpose of this module is to examine the recreations, sports, customs, rituals, and entertainments of ordinary people in Ireland between 1800 and 1950. Students will develop knowledge of the ways people lived and insight into how they understood and represented their world, what constituted the fabric of their everyday lives, how this differed between groups, and how this changed over time. They will interrogate the manner in which aspects of popular culture became sites of contest, including sites of resistance and control. By engaging with popular cultures the module will offer alternative avenues of understanding the history of this period, emphasising the inter-disciplinary tendencies within the study of popular cultures. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Learning Outcomes 1. Demonstrate a knowledge of and capacity to define key concepts associated with 'popular culture', and an understanding of the origins and development of the academic study of popular cultures. 2. Identify and analyse manifestations of Irish popular cultures during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 3. Apply knowledge of international trends in the study of popular cultures to the study of Irish culture. 4. Argue and reference a point of view on aspects of Irish popular cultures, supported by the relevant academic sources. 5. Exhibit an intellectual approach which comprehends diversity and complexity. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml |
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Indicative Content and Learning Activities
Popular Culture The concept 'popular culture' is explored, introducing the students to influential intellectual movements such as the Annales school of history, the new social history and subaltern studies. Religion Popular religious practice, particularly during the nineteenth century, will explore with a focus on the changes in pre-famine religious practice among Catholics, on to the devotional revolution, and incorporating the emergence of Knock shrine as a site of pilgrimage. The influence of evangelicalism on popular religious practice among various Protestant denominations (including the phenomenon of revival) will also be examined. The growth of literacy, new reading spaces (including reading rooms), and the popularity of particular print forms (most importantly newspapers) will be interrogated. The influence of print upon the growth of Irish nationalism and various social movements will be assessed. Politics Popular protest and popular political activity in various forms will be interrogated through explorations of agrarian agitation, rioting, mass demonstrations, and other strategies of protest. The relationship of leisure to politicization will be assessed. Sport The decline of blood sports and violent pastimes and the onset 'the sporting revolution' will be analyzed. The extent to which the new sporting world was divided by politics, class and gender will be examined. Alcohol and temperance Changing patterns of alcohol production and consumption will be surveyed, while the development of various temperance movements and attempts to control patterns of consumption will be considered. New techologies The advent of cinema, radio, the gramophone (and with these new forms of music and dance), their effects on popular culture, and the fears they engendered will be investigated. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indicative Reading List Books: None Articles: None | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Other Resources
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