


Northern Ireland in Transition
HC 434 - WINTER 2008
T/Th 12:00-1:20
Chapman 307
Prof. David Frank
dfrank@uoregon.edu
Chapman 212 Tel 6-4198
Prof. Shaul Cohen
scohen@uoregon.edu
Condon 107G Tel 6-4500
This course will use Northern Ireland as a primary case to focus on social conflict, territorial disputes, and options for moving toward political accommodations. It will touch upon a range of issues that reflect the broad impact of zero sum conflicts, and examine the ways in which they have been changing in recent years. The course will explore structural elements that are part of the Catholic-Protestant/Republican-Nationalist-Unionist-Loyalist struggle, as well as the narratives that stem from and contribute to the encompassing dispute. In lecture and discussion we will move among several different scales as we incorporate the experience of the individual, the community, and the nation(s) and attempt to identify strategies that help mitigate or transform the zero sum situation that has characterized much of Northern Ireland through the period of the Troubles.
Requirements:
Regular attendance and participation in discussions is
essential for the success of the course. Reading material should be
prepared in advance of our meetings. You will be graded on a "position
paper", a mid-term
examination, an in-class presentation (as part of a working group) weeks 8, 9
and 10 of the term, and a
final paper. Each of these will be worth 25% of the grade. You must also learn a
list of terms, people, and places in Northern Ireland in order to allow for
discussion of course issues (look under the Assignments section on Blackboard). We are happy to
accommodate students with special-ed needs, please contact us at the beginning
of the term to make the necessary arrangements.
Readings:
Much of our reading material has been collated on the CAIN
website(Conflict Archive on the INternet) which can be found at
cain.ulster.ac.uk , and has an enormous
collection of original and secondary sources relating to the conflict in
Northern Ireland. For an ongoing discussion
of current events in Northern Ireland, plus commentary on various bits and
pieces, you can browse the Slugger
O'Toole blog. Additional weekly readings will be available through
Blackboard.
Week 1
Read John Darby's introduction to the conflict on the CAIN website,
http://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/peace/darby03.htm . Darby is a former
director of INCORE, the center for conflict resolution at the University of
Ulster - Magee in Derry/Londonderry.
Week 2
Read Claire Mitchell's 2003 "Protestant Identification and Political Change
in Northern Ireland," Ethnic and Racial Studies 26(4):612-631, and
her 2005 piece "Catholicism and the Construction of Communal Identity in
Northern Ireland" in Irish Journal of Sociology 14(1):110-130, both
available as pdfs in Blackboard.
Week 3
Read
Peter Shirlow's 2003 "Ethno-sectarianism and the Reproduction of Fear in
Belfast" in Capital and Class #80:77-93, available on Blackboard.
Slugger O'Toole assignment due Thursday.
Week 4
Terms Test on Tuesday!
Read Sheena McGrellis' "Pure and bitter spaces: Gender, identity and
territory in Northern Irish youth transitions," in Gender and Education
17(5), and Cohen's "Winning while losing: The Apprentice Boys of Derry
walk their beat" in Political Geography 26(8), both available on
Blackboard.
Week 5
Read Fealty
et al.'s 2003 A Long Peace: The Future of Unionism in Northern Ireland
available on Blackboard (and not nearly as long as it looks!)
Week 6
Read
Graham and Nash 2006 "A Shared Future: Territoriality, Pluralism, and
Public Policy in Northern Ireland," Political Geography 25:253-278,
available on Blackboard.
Week 7
Week 8
Tuesday - Presentations
Week 9
Tuesday - Presentations
Week 10
Tuesday -
Negotiation Wrap Up