124220 SE Cultural and Media Studies Seminar (2022W)

Between 1994 and 2008, in the years of the so-called 'Celtic Tiger', Ireland underwent rapid and unprecedented changes in terms of its economy, internationalisation and globalisation, but also in terms of cultural concepts and its images of the nation and its identity. As traditional roles and models of male authority, the nation and its ethnic homogeneity, the role of religion and the relevance of rural lifestyles and traditions gradually eroded and Ireland became a more multicultural environment, popular culture assumed an ever-increasing centrality in exploring tensions in Irish conceptions of the nation.

In this context, the seminar explores the development of cinema in Ireland with a specific focus on Irish film after 1994. It analyses the relationship between film and national identity and critically interrogates the concept of a contemporary 'national cinema' in the context of an increasingly transnational film industry and globalised society. Among the questions we will ask are:

1. What is 'national' about Irish cinema and what does the label 'national cinema' imply?
2. What are the issues, problems and areas of Irish life that the films of the period tackle?
3. What are the (trans)national identities that the films propose, undermine or question?
4. In how far does the filmic medium lend itself to a visualization and questioning of national questions of identity, and how do the films visualize struggles for or rejections of a national self?

We will discuss pairs of films for each of the following thematic fields: Irish history; representing the 'new' Dublin; representing rural lives; poverty and discrimination during the Celtic Tiger.