Amy E. Martin

Associate Professor of English

Specialization
Nineteenth-century British literature; nineteenth-century Irish literature; Victorian studies; postcolonial theory and theories of nationalism; gender studies; Irish studies

Amy Martin is currently at work on a book titled Alter-nations: Representing Nationalisms, 'Terror,' and the State in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland. Her project examines the complex relationship between British imperial nationalism and Irish anticolonial nationalism as envisioned in a variety of cultural texts in the Victorian period. She argues that, at this interface of nationalisms in Anglo-Irish relations, certain formations central to modernity emerge, in particular new narratives of national crisis, the modern idea of 'terrorism,' the modern state form, and forms of anticolonial critique that anticipate postcolonial studies. She has published essays in Victorian Literature and Culture, The Field Day Review and several edited collections including Was Ireland a Colony?. Martin is also at work on a collaborative research project that investigates the British state's use of photography to document Irish political prisoners and internees in the 1860s.

Martin teaches Introduction to the Study of Literature; Gender and Class in the Victorian Novel; Modern Irish Literature; Post-colonial Theory; and Gender and Colonialism in Victorian Culture. In addition to being a member of the English department, she is involved in Mount Holyoke's program in Critical Social Thought.

Martin spends most summers in Dublin, Ireland, continuing her research at the National Library of Ireland and the National Archives. While in Dublin, she also lectures as a faculty member at the Notre Dame Irish Studies Seminar and has lectured at the James Joyce Summer School.

Selected Publications

" Blood Transfusions: Representing Irish Immigration, the English Working Class, and Revolutionary Possibility in the Work of Carlyle and Engels" Victorian Literature and Culture, 2004 (Cambridge University Press).

" Fenians in the Frame: Photographing Irish Political Prisoners" with Breandan Mac Suibhne The Field Day Review No. 1 , 2005

"Nationalism as Blasphemy: Negotiating Belief and Institutionality in the Genre of Fenian Recollections" in Evangelicals and Catholics in Nineteenth Century Ireland
(Four Courts Press, 2005)

"Becoming a Race Apart': Irish Racial Difference and British Class Consciousness in Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England" in Was Ireland a Colony? (Irish Academic Press, 2005)