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Dr Shane Alcobia Murphy

Dr Shane Alcobia Murphy The University of Aberdeen School of Language & Literature Dr Shane Alcobia Murphy Senior Lecturer work +44 (0)1224 272630

Senior Lecturer

BA, MA (Cork), PhD (Cantab)

Dr Shane Alcobia Murphy

Personal Details

Telephone: +44 (0)1224 272630
Email: sam@abdn.ac.uk
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Biography

   Shane Alcobia-Murphy completed his BA at University College Cork in 1990. He went on to complete an MA at the same institution (1991-1993) before going to Cambridge to read for a PhD at Trinity College (1994-98). He joined Aberdeen University as a lecturer in 1998. He doesn't really look like this anymore - he very rarely smiles. He likens himself to another 'Sam' - Sam the Bald Eagle:. But he likes chocolate. Please feed him.


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Research Interests

  His main research interests lie in modern Irish literature and contemporary Northern Irish visual arts. He has completed two monographs, both on Northern Irish culture: Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), and Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry (Liverpool University Press, 2006).

He has edited several books on Irish and Scottish Studies, including To the Other Shore: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies (2004) and Beyond the Anchoring Grounds: More Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies (2005).

He has just completed a book entitled Medbh McGuckian: The Poetics of Exemplarity for the Aberdeen Introductions Series.

He hates it when he gets writer's block - at such moments the chase after inspiration seems so futile and he becomes Wile E. Coyote hunting the elusive Roadrunner.

Dr Alcobia-Murphy welcomes inquiries from potential research students in the fields of Modern/Contemporary Irish literature and Northern Irish visual arts.

 Monographs:

 

Medbh McGuckian: The Poetics of Exemplarity (Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, 2012) ISBN 9781906108182 -Available via http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/publications/

 

 

Sympathetic Ink: Intertextual Relations in Northern Irish Poetry (Liverpool University Press – August 2006) ISBN 1846310326

 

 

Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland: The Place of Art/The Art of Place (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005) ISBN 1904303609 Sample: http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/9781904303602-sample.pdf  

Governing the Tongue in Northern Ireland: The Place of Art/The Art of Place (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008) - paperback edition. ISBN 1847187463

 Edited Collections:

   

     

Founder to Shore: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies, ed. with Lindsay Milligan and Dan Wall (Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, 2011). ISBN 978-1-906108-15-1

The Poetry of Medbh McGuckian: The Interior of Words (Cork: Cork University Press, 2010) ISBN 978-185918-465-3

The Enclave of My Nation: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies, ed. with Margaret Maxwell(Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, 2008). ISBN 9781906108038

What Rough Beasts?: Irish and Scottish Studies in the New Millennium  (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008). ISBN 978-1847185365

Ed. with Johanna Archbold et al,  Beyond the Anchoring Grounds Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies (Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2005) ISBN 0853898855

 Ed. with Neal Alexander and Anne Oakman, To the Other Shore: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Literature (Belfast: Cló Ollscoil na Banríona, 2004). ISBN 0853898634


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Current Research

Leuven 2012 2  Most recent publications:

'"Snared by Words": Trauma and the Shoah in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian', Études Irlandaises 36.1 (Spring-Summer, 2011), 109-20.

Article: '"Signs of the Still Recent War": Medbh McGuckian and Conflict', Irish Studies Review 20.2 (May, 2012): 115-33 ISSN 0967-0882 - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09670882.2012.680326

'"My Cleverly Dead and Vertical Audience": Medbh McGuckian's "Difficult" Poetry', New Hibernia Review 16.3 (Autumn, 2012): 67-82 - New_Hibernia_Review_McGuckian_article_-_2012.pdf

“‘Neurosis of Sand’: Authority, Memory and the Hunger Strike”, Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, eds. Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis. (Oxford: OUP, 2012). 387-402. ISBN 0199561249

'"Nobody Knows What Is in Them until They Are Broke up": Medbh McGuckian's Feminist Poetry', Études Irlandaises 37.2 (2012): 97-111.

 Forthcoming Publications:

'"I Could Not Tell": The Representation of Memory and Trauma in Northern Irish Culture', Changes in Contemporary Ireland, ed. Catherine Rees (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press).

 

 Contemporary Irish Culture and Trauma

 

Project leaders: Shane Alcobia-Murphy (Aberdeen), Richard Kirkland (King’s College, London), Stefanie Lehner (Queen's University, Belfast), Gráinne O’Keefe-Vigneron (Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique, Rennes)

3-year research project

Irish society in the period between 1990 and 2012 experienced numerous traumatic events, including economic collapse, enforced austerity regimes, large scale emigration, a fraught and complicated attempt at a resolution of conflict in Northern Ireland, the effective collapse of the Catholic Church’s influence in the affairs of state and the revelation of widespread institutional child abuse. Investigations into malpractice in the Irish beef industry, the corrupt management of planning applications, the bribing of politicians, the collusion of Church and State regarding the silencing of abuse victims and the events of Bloody Sunday all suggested that Ireland was characterised by a ‘tribunal culture’; indeed, during this period McCracken, Flood, Mahon and Saville each became household names. In light of the political, financial and religious scandals in the Republic, and the ongoing (albeit low-intensity) insurgency in the North, a number of questions must be asked: (1) To what extent have the contemporary traumatic events shaped the culture of the island of Ireland? (2) To what extent can Ireland itself be characterised as a traumatised society? (3) Have cultural responses – in literature, the visual arts, music, spatial planning/architecture – provided commentaries on or imaginative ways of dealing with these traumas in light of the continued failures in the political realm?

 This three-year project has four research strands:

 (1) An investigation of the cultural responses to the Belfast Agreement

 (2) An analysis of how one writer (Medbh McGuckian) has responded to the Northern Irish Troubles and the peace process

 (3) An exploration of the cultural responses to the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger

 (4) An analysis of the diasporic experience in the period coinciding with the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger


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Teaching Duties

EL1513 Controversial Classics (convenor)

EL30IH States of Mind (convenor)

EL35MG Modernism (tutor)

EL4OUT Elephant in the Kitchen (convenor)

EL48US Putting the Art into Atrocity (convenor)

EL5076 Contemporary Northern Irish Literature and Visual Art (convenor)

EL5576 Contemporary Women's Literature (Convenor)

EL5570 Dear Green Places (tutor)

Invesitgating Literature (Convenor)


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Publications

Contributions to Journals

Articles

Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings

Chapters

Forewords and Postscripts

Books and Reports

Books

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