Hi! I’m Bill Kelly.
I retired from a successful career in sales management on March 31st, 2016. It has always been a dream of mine to spend an extended period of time in Ireland after I retired. That will happen this summer when I become a resident of the city of Dublin and enroll in two Irish history courses at Dublin City University. I feel very fortunate to have found exactly what I wanted at DCU and an administration willing to admit a 66 year old man into program designed for undergraduates wishing to study abroad.
SESSION II
EIRE 3002 IRSU/HIST 3001 IRSU
The Shaping of Modern Ireland
This course examines the complex relationship between Britain and Ireland, including the rebellions and eventual “union” of Britain and Ireland. It would be impossible to understand Irish history without studying the colonial conflict between the British and the “Native” Irish. The 19th century is central to Irish history, it chronicles the history of Ireland in the 1840s—the decade in which The Great Hunger (An Gorta Mor) occurs. The causal factors of the famine are analyzed, including the reliance of the “Native” Irish on the potato crop. The failure of the crop in the period from 1845–1849 and the consequences of that failure are also examined in terms of the economic, socio/cultural, and political landscape of the period.
SESSION III
EIRE 3003 IRSU/HIST 3002 IRSU
Irish Culture and Society
This course is an introduction to the Irish Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries, providing an analysis that encompasses the landscape of Ireland, post independence to date and including poverty, immigration, religion, and the political divide between the north and south of Ireland. The purpose of this course is to enable students to gain a critical understanding of the foundations of modern Ireland in terms of politics, society, and culture. Emphasis is placed on four key themes of Irish life: emigration/immigration, religion and its decline, socioeconomic inequality, and national identity. The primary objective is to provide students a clearer understanding of the influences that have shaped and formed a dominant sociocultural system in today’s Ireland.