Consultation Hours Academic Year 2012-13

By appointment

Dr Moynagh Sullivan is a University Lecturer with research interests in Psychoanalytic and Gender Theory, Twentieth Century and Contemporary Poetry, Women’s Writing, Postmodernism and Popular Culture, and welcomes applications in any of the above for postgraduate work. She has published a number of articles in these areas, and she has co-edited two collections of essays on contemporary Irish Culture and Society, Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays on Race, Gender and Social Justice in Contemporary Ireland, and Postmodernism and Popular Culture, as well as a special issue of The Irish Review  on Irish Feminisms. She lectured in Tokyo and at UCD for a number of years before she came to the English Department at NUI, Maynooth. She previously held an IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UCD, and in 2009 was awarded the inaugural Fulbright Fellowship in Irish Literature and Culture  at UC Berkeley, CA, where she taught and undertook research on her monograph on contemporary Irish poetry, psychoanalysis and gender. She has been invited to lecture across Europe and America, including Sofia, Monaco, Cardiff, UC Berkeley, CA, Wake Forest University, NC, and Notre Dame University, IN, San Francisco, CA, as well as being a keynote speaker at a number of Irish Universities and other public forums.

Recent Publications

Facing the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays on Race, Gender and Social Justice in Contemporary Ireland 

This collection offers a multi-faceted investigation of the critical issue of the creation and place of the “Other” in Ireland. The extraordinarily rapid recent economic development of Ireland has effected a profound transformation in the island’s social and cultural life. In the process, old verities and assumptions concerning the nature of Irish society and culture have been called into question, with a whole variety of new challenges coming to light. The developments of the last two decades have transformed questions of what and who constitutes the “Other” within Irish society, but in the process older societal faultlines based on gender, disability, class and religious difference have not disappeared, and historical processes of “Othering” continue to play a critical role in influencing and moulding the social contours of the new Ireland of the twenty-first century. Drawing on a number of different disciplinary perspectives, this collection presents a number of key analyses of social and cultural practices and policies that reflect anxieties about and negotiations of these changes, examining historical and contemporary representation of fears about the porousness of national borders; the increasing racialization of the Irish state through social and juridical proscriptions, and the popular and official narrative of ‘progress’. 

Postmodernism and Popular Culture

Postmodernism and Popular Culture Book CoverThis groundbreaking collection reframes how popular culture in Ireland and Ireland in popular culture can be understood. The essays examine in unique ways, local and global Irishness, focusing on current versions of traditional culture and new modes of representation, how issues such as gender, sexuality, and race shape contemporary postmodernism in Ireland. From Fanfic to Orange Parades, from Boybands to the Blessed Virgin Mary, from Celebrity Tourism to the Gaelic Athletic Association, the essays address new territories.

'This remarkable collection of essays robustly displays the exciting diversity of contemporary Irish studies' engagement with global popular culture. Interrogating gender, genre, race, space, and migration, this volume brilliantly reassesses the Irish academy's ideological and theoretical commitments.' - Professor Cheryl Herr, Department of English, University of Iowa

'The 'new Ireland' so often made the subject of political commentary and economic reports still wants for engaged critical commentary. Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture theorises Celtic Tiger Ireland in all its cultural complexity. A fresh, lively and challenging collection.' - Claire Connolly, Cardiff University.
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The Irish Review, Irish Feminisms, Volume 35,Number 1, Spring 2007

Irish Review Issue 35With misleading terms like ‘post-feminism’ used liberally in the media to denote all feminist practice, it becomes even more of the essence to keep discourses of gender and feminism alive and open. One cannot but remain unconvinced of the kind of entrepreneurial, self-congratulatory, a la mode so-called feminism that follows the capitalistic model closely and is an indulgent form of bourgeois individualism, encoding a contradiction in terms that pits the group (women) against the self (woman). Until the old issues have been resolved and the movement towards social justice has ceased to be relevant, questions of gender remain one of the central grounds of contention in modern society. In this special issue of The Irish Review, Wanda Balzano and Moynagh Sullivan bring together a important group of distinguished feminists, Pat Coughlan, Ivana Bacik,  Maria Luddy, Gerardine Meaney, Susan McKay, Pat O Connor and, Ailbhe Smyth, each of whom either revisits earlier germinal essays of their own, or revisits points in Irish legal, constitutional or social history to illuminate present day practices and beliefs, bringing their earlier perspectives up to date.
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Media Appearances

The Tubridy Show, RTE Radio 1 - Tuesday 27th February
Author Patricia Scanlan, Michael Mc Laughlin, MD of Penguin Ireland and Dr Moynagh Sullivan of the Dept. of English in NUIM join Ryan for a discussion about Chick Lit - does the term cover the range of women's popular fiction and does it suit authors, readers or the marketing departments of the big publishers? A recently-published book called See Jane Write: A Girl's Guide to Writing Chick Lit by Sarah Millnowsky and Farrin Jacobs is available to buy online.

The Dave Fanning Show, RTE Radio 1, Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Do punctuation, grammar and spelling matter? We are joined by Dr Moynagh Sullivan of NUI, Maynooth andRory O'Keeffe, music editor of 'The Dubliner' magazine.

Radio Zeitreinen, Germany
Rebel Sisters: Struggle between Freedom and Feminism, 6. December.
Dr Moynagh Sullivan of NUI, Maynooth , Ireland and Dr Sonja Tiernan of the National Library, Ireland discuss the sisters Eva Gore-Booth and Constance Markievicz with Imogen Herrad.