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Dublin is a complex, multi-faceted city-region which has in turn generated a complex, multi-faceted culture traversing a wide array of genres and narratives. Literary Dublin is widely known and celebrated; but the popular arts – cinema and music, for example – are likewise implicated in the imaginative representation of the city. Of these, the latter possesses an especially rich genealogy: a reservoir of images and associations accumulated over an extended period of time, itself based on an older ballad tradition in which the city functioned as an imaginative spatial resource for a diverse array of discourses (class, gender, nation, community, profession, etc.). Given the city's continuing centrality to the economic, cultural and political organisation of Ireland as a whole, it is likely that Dublin's significance will only grow as the country endeavours to come to terms with the extinction of the Celtic Tiger.

Pt. I. Theorising identities across the Atlantic Archipelago -- 1. Ireland, verses, Scotland : crossing the (English) language barrier / Willy Maley -- 2. 'A warmer memory' : speaking of Ireland / Colin Graham -- 3. 'Where do you belong?' : De-scribing imperial identity from alien to migrant / Peter Childs -- 4. Gender and nation : debatable lands and passable boundaries / Aileen Christianson -- 5. The union and jack : British masculinities, pomophobia, and the post-nation / Berthold Schoene -- pt. II. Cultural negotiations -- 6. Paper margins : the 'outside' in poetry in the 1980s and 1990s / Linden Peach -- 7. Sounding out the margins : ethnicity and popular music in British cultural studies / Sean Campbell -- 8. Cool enough for Lou Reed? : the plays of Ed Thomas and the cultural politics of South Wales / Shaun Richards -- 9. Waking up in a different place : contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction / Glenda Norquay and Gerry Smyth -- 10. Finding Scottish art / Murdo Macdonald -- Bibliography -- Index.

Space has emerged in recent years as a radical category in a range of related disciplines across the humanities. Of the many possible applications of this new interest, some of the most exciting and challenging have addressed the issue of domestic architecture and its function as a space for both the dramatisation and the negotiation of a cluster of highly salient issues concerning, amongst other things, belonging and exclusion, fear and desire, identity and difference. Our House is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays taking as its focus both the prospect and the possibility of 'the hous

"Across the margins offers a comparative, theoretically informed analysis of the cultural formation of the Atlantic Archipelago. In its overall conception and in specific contributions (including an introductory essay), this collection demonstrates the benefits of working across the disciplines of history, geography, literature and cultural studies, but also presents new configurations of cultural forms hitherto associated with specifically national and sub-national literatures. The essays, from both established and new scholars working in the fields of British, Irish and comparative cultural studies, addresses broad questions raised by the interface between language, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in relation to marginal identities, but also includes specific genre-based case studies on contemporary poetry, fiction, drama, popular music and art. This format recognises the importance of specific concerns which emerge from different geographical locations, but also encourages movement beyond traditional formations of national cultures. Responding to recent constitutional developments in Great Britain and Ireland, it explores their implications both for the cultural negotiations of marginality and for established critical paradigms. It is therefore of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics working in the areas of comparative literature, postcolonial theory, Irish, Scottish and Welsh studies, and British political/cultural studies." [author's abstract]


Table of contents:
Ireland, verses, Scotland: crossing the (English) language barrier / Willy Maley
'A warmer memory': speaking of Ireland / Colin Graham
'Where do you belong?': De-scribing Imperial identity from alien to migrant / Peter Childs
Gender and nation: debatable lands and passable boundaries / Aileen Christianson
The Union and Jack: British masculinities, pomophobia, and the post-nation / Berthold Schoene
Paper margins: the 'outside' in poetry in the 1980s and 1990s / Linden Peach
Sounding out the margins: ethnicity and popular music in British cultural studies / Sean Campbell
Cool enough for Lou Reed?: The plays of Ed Thomas and the cultural politics of South Wales / Shaun Richards
Waking up in a different place: contemporary Irish and Scottish fiction / Glenda Norquay and Gerry Smyth
Finding Scottish art / Murdo MacDonald

Across the margins offers a comparative, theoretically informed analysis of the cultural formation of the Atlantic Archipelago. In its overall conception and in specific contributions (including an introductory essay), this collection demonstrates the benefits of working across the disciplines of history, geography, literature and cultural studies, but also presents new configurations of cultural forms hitherto associated with specifically national and sub-national literatures. The essays, from both established and new scholars working in the fields of British, Irish and comparative cultural studies, addresses broad questions raised by the interface between language, gender, sexuality and ethnicity in relation to marginal identities, but also includes specific genre-based case studies on contemporary poetry, fiction, drama, popular music and art. This format recognises the importance of specific concerns which emerge from different geographical locations, but also encourages movement beyond traditional formations of national cultures. Responding to recent constitutional developments in Great Britain and Ireland, it explores their implications both for the cultural negotiations of marginality and for established critical paradigms. It is therefore of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics working in the areas of comparative literature, postcolonial theory, Irish, Scottish and Welsh studies, and British political/cultural studies.