Gerry Smyth
Reader in Cultural History
Research Interests
My current research interests are in music and cultural musicology. I also have research interests in environmentalism, cultural theory, Irish cultural history and spatial theory, especially in relation to the house. I would be interested in supervising doctoral students working on: music and popular culture; intermediality; music and the novel; twentieth-century Irish culture; representations of domestic space; "green" literature.
Current projects
I am finishing a book on music and contemporary British fiction which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. I am contracted to write a book of essays on music and Irish identity for Irish Academic Press, for publication in 2009. I am currently researching for a biography of the Franco-Irish composer Augusta Holmes. I also wish to write a study of the theme of betrayal in Irish cultural history.
Publications (Selected)
Books
Our House: The Representation of Domestic Space in Contemporary Culture (co-edited, with Jo Croft) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006)
Noisy Island: A Short History of Irish Popular Music (Cork: Cork University Press, 2005)
Beautiful Day: Forty Years of Irish Rock (with Sean Campbell) (Cork: Atrium Press, 2005)
Music in Contemporary Ireland: A Special Edition of the Irish Studies Review 12.1 (edited, April 2004)
Across the Margins: Cultural Identity and Change in the Atlantic Archipelago (co-edited, with Glenda Norquay) (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002)
Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001)
Explorations in Cultural History (edited, with T.G. Ashplant) (London: Pluto Press, 2000)
The Novel and the Nation: Studies in the New Irish Fiction (London: Pluto Press, 1997)
Journal Articles
'Tiger, Theory, Technology: A Meditation on the Development of Modern Irish Cultural Criticism', Irish Studies Review 15.2 (May 2007), 123-36
'Bringing It All Back Home? The Dynamics of Local Music-making in The Commitments', An Sionnach 1.2 (Fall 2005), 21-40
'Place, Noise, Nation: Toward a Spatial Analysis of Irish Popular Music', in Études Irlandaises 29.2 (Autumn 2004), 75-89
'"The same sound but with a different meaning": Music, Politics and Identity in Bernard Mac Laverty's Grace Notes', Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies 37.3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2002), 5-24
'Shite and Sheep: An Ecocritical Perspective on Two Recent Irish Novels', Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies. Special Issue: Contemporary Irish Fiction 30.1 (Spring/Summer 2000), 163-78
'Hippies, Liberals and the Ecocritical Sublime', Keywords: A Journal of Cultural Materialism 2 (1999), 94-110
'The Crying Game: Postcolonial or Postmodern?', Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory 20.2 (July 1997), 154-73
'"The natural course of things": Matthew Arnold, Celticism, and the English Poetic Tradition', Journal of Victorian Culture 1.1 (March 1996), 35-53
'Amateurs and Textperts: Studying Irish Traditional Music', Irish Studies Review 12 (Autumn 1995), 2-10
Book Chapters
'From Shellshock Rock to Ceasefire Sounds: Popular Music in Northern Ireland', in Colin Coulter and Michael Murray (eds), Northern Ireland after the Troubles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 174-96 (with Sean Campbell)
'Listening to the Future: Music and Irish Studies' in Liam Harte and Yvonne Whelan (eds), Ireland Beyond Boundaries: Mapping Irish Studies in the Twenty-First Century (London: Pluto, 2006), 198-215
'The Politics of Hybridity: Some Problems with Crossing the Border', in Ashok Bery & Patricia Murray (eds), Dislocations: Comparing Postcolonial Literatures (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 43-58
'Ethnicity and Language', in Peter Childs & Mike Storry (eds), British Cultural Identities (London: Routledge, 1997), 241-76
External Professional Activities
I have been an evaluator for the Irish Humanities Board; and was Academic in Residence at the Princess Grace Library, Monaco (2006).
Post-Graduate Teaching and Supervision
I have supervised PhD theses on Second-Generation Irish Rock Musicians in England; and RTÉ: as a Public Service Broadcaster.
Teaching: Undergraduate
I teach on a range of modules across all 3 levels including 'Novels of Empire and Adventure' and 'Modernism'.
