Ireland: Place in the Literary & Spiritual Imaginations

We are excited to co-lead a second round of a very successful and innovative Carleton Ireland Program that brings together Religion & English in an interdisciplinary exploration of placemaking in the literary and religious imagination.  Michael McNally (Musser Professor of Religion) researches the protection of Indigenous sacred places and practices and has found a fascinating comparison in the Irish example .Greg Hewett (Professor of English) is a poet and fiction writer who teaches creative writing, poetry, and queer literature. He has led past Ireland programs.

The 2025 faculty team includes Dev Gupta (Professor of Political Science), who will lead a week in Belfast in order to deepen an understanding of the politics of place in Northern Ireland. She is an expert on the partition of Ireland, the city of Belfast, onto which the complexities of colonialism and resistance are mapped, and the“New Irish” communities from South Asia, Africa, Ukraine, and E. Europe. We see Ireland as an ideal place to explore big questions about place-making, colonial complexities, post-colonial identities, and the contemporary hunger for traditions that are “spiritual, not religious,” as well as a place to inspire your poems and stories.

Ireland’s sweeping landscapes and ancient earthworks have long captured literary imaginations, and inspired, through them, movements of cultural and political independence. Ireland has also long been home to a decidedly earth-based “Celtic Spirituality:” holy mountains, springs, islands, and lakes have enabled sacred encounters for pagan, Christian, and contemporary “post-Christian” seekers alike.

As much as Ireland’s places are steeped in these deep cultural traditions, Ireland is in the midst of profound and rapid change as it reasserts its place in Europe and finds new possibilities for addressing old challenges of partition. 

So we know the new idea for this program will be generative of learning that reaches a range of students: If you love poetry, fiction, and theater, this is for you. But so, too, if you love rambling on breathtaking landscapes, or exploring the practices of lived religion that flourish at the local level. And the program’s concern with pilgrimage offers tools to think about yearnings brought and self-discoveries made in travel abroad. On paper, the 18 credits are evenly split between English and Religion, but the courses inform one another such that Religion and English majors will receive 12 credits toward either major.  The courses are recognized as pertinent to other fields of study like Environmental Studies, History, Medieval and Renaissance Studies and European Studies, such that the Ireland Program is much more than the sum of its parts.

Learning Goals

• To understand how Ireland has been imagined and represented in selected works by distinguished 20^th and 21^st century writers.
• To learn about Irish history and politics, and how they have shaped, and been shaped, by Irish literature, religion, and culture.
• To learn how religious and literary practices are caught up in both accommodation and resistance within colonialism.
• To learn how place and place-making practices embody historical memory and shape religious, cultural, and political identities.
• To challenge and expand our cultural, aesthetic, and personal values through exposure to new ideas and environments.
• To reflect critically on the contemporary cultural practice of travel, self-discovery, and pilgrimage.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites. The seminar is open to students of any major at Carleton. Participants are urged, prior to the start of the program, to take any 100-level or higher English course.

Course of Study

18 Credits

RELG 214: Sacred Place & Pilgrimage in Ireland (6 credits)

Encounters with the sacred at “thin places” on the landscape present a throughline of Irish religion: pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian. Holy mountains, islands, stones, and wells materialize the sacred and organize the practices of lived religion. Such places are also charged sites of historical memory, colonization and resistance. Long wellsprings of Irish cultural nationalism, they now capture spiritual imaginations of global seekers of earth-based spirituality. Through readings, field visits, and walking pilgrimage routes, this course explores narratives and practices of sacred place, engages the blurry boundary between the sacred and secular entailed in pilgrimage, and queries the modern romance with “Celtic Spirituality.”
Instructor: Michael McNally   

RELG 216: Irish Landscape in Myth, Literature, History (3 credits S/Cr/NC) 

The past is a strong presence in Ireland.People live with Iron Age tombs in their backyards and Irish language place names embody scenes from ancient epics.  Places resound with collective memory as they have been storied through myth, literature and folklore.  So too are Irish political identities made and remade through evocations and practices of sacred place. This course explores the Irish epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, Celtic Revival spiritualizations of the landscape, and materials by and about “New Irish” communities. The course centers place-based learning: curated experiences at archaeological sites, historical walking tours of Galway and Dublin, and an immersive week in the politially charged cityscape of Belfast.
Instructor: Local Instructor     

ENGL 260/360: Writing Ireland (6 credits, may also be taken at a 300 level)

In this creative writing course, you will have the opportunity to put your study abroad experience into journal writing, short stories, poems and creative nonfiction (non-academic essays). The primary mode of instruction will be the workshop, where your writing is the centerpiece for discussion and critique. To supplement our work, and to inspire us, we will be reading select examples of literature by contemporary Irish writers and poets, some of whom will visit our class and talk about their careers, work, and the state of Irish literature today.
Instructor: Greg Hewett

ENGL 292:  Irish Field Studies (3 credits S/Cr/NC)

In consultation with the directors, students will design an independent research or creative project that allows them to pursue topics that extend our consideration of Irish culture and history or that enable them to go deeper into a topic covered in program courses.
Instructor: Greg Hewett

Required Leave of Absence

The Ireland program functions as a term of the Carleton academic year. Participants are required to take a leave of absence during the following winter term. Students unable to take their leave during winter term (due to required courses or participation in varsity athletics, etc.) may petition the Academic Standing Committee to request a change to fall or spring term. The deadline for submitting the petition is Friday, February 17, 2025.

Housing

Students will stay in self-catering university apartments and dorms, youth hostels, and cottages.

Excursions

Students will travel to the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, live in Dublin, Belfast, Galway, and an historic Gaelic lord’s manor in County Roscommon. In addition to regular visits to museums, there will be excursions to the Aran Islands, Croagh Patrick, the Cliffs of Moher, Newgrange/Boyne Valley, and many other significant sites.