English - Irish Writing & Film (MA)

Our MA in Irish Writing and Film is offered by the English Department at University College Cork. This innovative programme will introduce you to an exceptionally rich body of cultural texts whose breadth and diversity continue to generate scholarly debate.

With expert guidance, you will discover the historical and cultural contexts that inform Irish culture up to the present day and engage in debate on a wide range of issues. You will read key texts from the eighteenth century to the present and be encouraged to engage with some of the most influential critical and theoretical models currently being applied in the analysis of Irish literature and film. You will also develop independent research in the field under the expert guidance of our academics, all of whom are themselves authors of important studies of Irish culture.

The writers we cover include the following luminaries: Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, James Clarence Mangan, Sheridan Le Fanu, James Joyce, WB Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, Samuel Beckett, Kate O'Brien, Brian Friel, John McGahern, Éilis Ní Dhuibhne, Anne Enright, Marina Carr, Colm Tóibín, Anna Burns and Melatu Uche Okorie.

We explore the canon of classic Irish films such as Man of Aran (Robert J Flaherty, 1934) and This Other Eden (Muriel Box, 1959), alongside the work of Lenny Abrahamson (Adam & Paul, Room, The Little Stranger) and other notable contemporary Irish filmmakers.