Joanna Bruck

Lisa Godson

Reader in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology Joanna Bruck

The 1916 Rising is the pivotal yet highly contested moment in Irish history when militant republicans sought to seize political power from Britain, and declared - though unsuccessfully in the short term – an independent state. Credited with inspiring independence movements in other former colonies, the Rising has been the subject of histories from the political to the literary. Yet, the rich variety of objects and images associated with the Rising – from buttons and medals to souvenir postcards – have not formed a focus of academic research. This volume of essays will examine the material and visual culture of the Rising to consider how these illuminate changing ways of engaging with and understanding this iconic event. Family keepsakes such as autograph books from Frongoch internment camp, informal souvenirs such as pieces of rubble from Dublin’s General Post Office, and ‘official’ souvenirs such as photo booklets each played a significant role in the construction of individual and collective memory. In placing material and visual culture centre stage, this book will examine how the spaces, objects and images associated with the Rising are caught up in processes of identity production in both public and private space as changing socio-political conditions generated new understandings of 1916 and its aftermath. It addresses the ‘things’ of 1916 not as mere illustrations of history, but as having agency and effect on material practices central to contested concepts of identity and the creation of social memory.

The Material and Visual Culture of the Easter Rising

Making 1916

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Modernity and religion are not mutually exclusive. Setting German and Irish church, synagogue and mosque architecture side by side over the last century highlights the place for the celebration of the new within faiths whose appeal lies in part in the stability of belief they offer across time. Inspired by radically modern German churches of the 1920s and 1930s, this volume offers new insights into designers of all three types of sacred buildings, working at home and abroad. It offers new scholarship on the unknown phenomenon of mid-century ecclesiastical architecture in sub-Saharan Africa by Irish designers; a critical appraisal of the overlooked Frank Lloyd Wright-trained Andrew Devane and an analysis of accommodating difficult pasts and challenging futures with contemporary synagogue and mosque architecture in Germany. With a focus on influence and processes, alongside conservationists and historians, it features critical insights by the designers of some of the most celebrated contemporary sacred buildings, including Niall McLaughlin who writes on his multiple award-winning Bishop Edward King Chapel and Amandus Sattler, architect of the innovative Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich.

Lisa Godson

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