“As the twenty-first century opened, Irish was everywhere all at once—on television, the internet, stages, screens, and bestseller lists,” Marion R. Casey writes at the outset of her latest book, “The Green Space.”
“Every March, supermarkets sold shamrock-shaped ravioli, and retailers pushed green. New York’s Museum of Modern Art named the Aran sweater one of the world’s most iconic garments,” she continues. “To explain this requires a history.”
And Casey is an historian. She’s written, according to fellow scholar Timothy J. Meagher, “a provocative, imaginative and strikingly innovative study of how the image of the Irish was constructed in America over the first half of the twentieth century.”
Casey told the Echo that the book “follows the transformation of the Irish image from downtrodden and despised (‘No Irish Need Apply’) to universally claimed and acclaimed (‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish’). That dramatic change in less than a century involves a matrix that I call the green space. This is like a virtual storage unit to which everyone has the key. Open the door and rummage through the artifacts and detritus of high and low culture. There is no one to stop you, as there once was.
“Pull out whatever you want,” she said, “and adapt it as needed: from the familiar repertoires of vocal ensembles on American stages and television screens to the magic clovers that turn milk green. How did this happen? Why do people think the way they do about Irish? The green space offers a suggestive model for understanding the power dynamics behind any ethnic image and the ramifications of exerting or losing control over time.
My book is therefore not a traditional history of an ethnic group because Irish as an image evolved only partly within the history of the Irish in America,” she added. “Its full dimensions unfolded in a much broader national and international context. Both Ireland and the United States were inextricably linked to how various iterations of Irish were deployed over time – whether as a straightforward noun about a specific people with a national identity or a loose, endlessly malleable adjective only tangentially connected to actual ethnic identity.”
Casey, who established the Archives of Irish America at New York University in 1997, said, “‘The Green Space’ is a history of contested image-making that examines who the stakeholders were and why; the media, cultural, commercial, and political forces that shaped their debates; and how certain representations became enduring. Irish as a multidimensional discourse is now so elastic and time-tested that its historical, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, and cultural challenges have faded. This enables images made on both sides of the Atlantic to influence how people understand Irish around the world today.”
Marion R. Casey
Date of birth: Taurus
Place of birth: New York
Spouse: an aspiring actor!
Children: an aspiring writer!
Residence: Brooklyn
Education: BA in History & English, University College Dublin; PhD in History, New York University
Published works: “The Green Space: The Transformation of the Irish Image” (New York University Press, 2024); “Making the Irish American: History and Heritage of the Irish in the United States,” edited with J.J. Lee (New York University Press, 2006); Seminal essays in “Joe Lee’s Ireland 1912-1985: Politics and Society-A Retrospective” (2024), “Forged in America: How Irish-Jewish Encounters Shaped a Nation” (2024), “Ireland’s Allies: America and the 1916 Easter Rising” (2016), “The American Journal of Irish Studies” (2011, 2013, 2015), “The Encyclopedia of New York City” (2010), “Encyclopedia of New York State” (2005), “Race and Ethnicity in America: A Concise History” (2004), and “The New York Irish” (1996).
Professional: Historian & Associate Producer, “From Shore to Shore: Irish Traditional Music in New York City” (1993); Curator, “Ireland America: The Ties that Bind,” New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (2011); Co-Curator, “The Fifth Province: County Societies in Irish America” (2010); Co-Curator, Labor & Dignity: James Connolly in America” (2013).
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Persevere
Name three books that are memorable in terms of your reading pleasure.
Umberto Eco, “Travels in Hyperreality”; E. Charles Nelson, “Shamrock: Botany and History of an Irish Myth”; Gail Honeyman, “Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.”
What book are you currently reading?
Niall Williams, “Time of the Child.”
What book changed your life?
Robert Ernst, “Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1865.”
What is your favorite spot in Ireland?
Lovely Annascaul on the Dingle Peninsula.
You're Irish if...you have a tear and a smile in your eye (to paraphrase the great Thomas Moore!)
