You are browsing the Blog for Northern Ireland - eirejames.com.

← Previous Entries
avatar

Daylight in Northern Ireland

February 7, 2012 in A Year in Ireland

I haven’t posted as many cultural experiences here as I had planned to. I’ll try to change that, for those who are interested. For my first post on that subject, I thought I’d express what has been the most difficult part of living in Northern Ireland so far. Life is pretty great here, I’ll admit, but there are drawbacks at times. The worst is one that caught me a bit by surprise though.

I knew Ireland would be cloudy and rainy a lot. That has been no surprise.

I knew there wouldn’t be many daylight hours in the winter. No surprise here.

What I didn’t expect was the actual sun angle.To be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever given sun angle much thought. I knew it wasn’t directly overhead at noon in the wintertime, but who cared really? Well, anyway I did expect it to be dark a lot here in the winter. Our latitude here is, after all, 54 degrees north. One expects less daylight. Plus, I’ve experiences summer daylight hours and, well when the sun rises at 4 am and sets at 11 pm, or thereabouts, you realize it can’t be like that in the winter. However, not only do daylight hours decrease, but so does the sun angle. Yes, this makes sense, but I still wasn’t prepared for it.

The sun, rather low at high noon

High Noon, not so high

See, in December, on the shortest day of the year, the sun is only 12 degrees off the horizon at high noon. That is barely above the trees! Thus the sun (when it isn’t cloudy) just barely arcs above the horizon. There are late afternoon-like shadows all day. Combine that with the already meager 7 hours and 15 minutes of daylight, and even the daytime can feel pretty dark. I’ve decided this alone explains the Irish pub culture–they must fight the depression somehow!

Now, lest you feel too sorry for me, things are on the mend. I was worried that, after sunny Arizona, Ireland would feel pretty dark and dim to me. But even by the 16 of January, when I returned, the sun had shot up to 14.5 degrees at noon (every degree counts at this point), and there were 7 hours and 53 minutes of daylight. It may not sound like much, but I could sure tell a difference. It wasn’t the 9+ hours in Arizona (which honestly felt like summer to me), but good enough.

Today the sun is now over 20 degrees at high noon (I’m going to be confused where to find it now), and there are 9 hours and 10 minutes of daylight. The sun sets after 5 pm, and I cannot tell you how exciting that is to me. We are adding over 4 minutes of daylight each day that passes, so it is becoming quite noticeable now (we’ll have over 10 hours of daylight by the end of the month, and a high noon of nearly 30 degrees).

Anyway, that’s been my main challenge of life in Ireland. Really rough, I know. But it has been really interesting to get a taste of the short daylight of the northern latitudes. I don’t think I’d fair well too much further north.

You can check out a great little almanac here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

avatar

History at Queens: Culture, Politics, and Identity course

February 4, 2012 in Class Summaries

I started the week with supervisor meeting and my Historical Documents class, which you can read about here. On Thursday, I had the first meeting of my second of the two spring courses: Culture, Politics, and Identity. This is a real, honest to goodness, class on history. Not theory, not practice, actual history. Though I’ve been sufficiently indoctrinated to question what ‘actual history’ is to begin with, we’ll put that aside. C.P.I., as I will probably refer to it for brevity’s sake, will cover ‘the interaction between culture and politics in different sections of Irish society between the sixteenth century and the recent past.’1

Irish history is a fascinating mix of differing views on culture and politics, and it should be much fun to study. For those of you who are unfamiliar with current political boundaries in Ireland, I’d definitely recommend this video summary by CPGray:


(if you want just the explanation of Ireland, skip to about 1:40 and play through 2:20 — I think the whole video is good, however)

I’ll be assessed2 by three papers, though one hardly counts at only 10% of my total marks. That leaves 90% of my marks contingent on two 4,000-5,000 word essays. Oh yay. Best line  from this part of the handbook: ‘It is your responsibility to organize your workload so that your two essays may be completed on time.’ There’s a shock. Anyway, the two essays must be on one of the topics covered in the class, but I can choose that, which is nice. The third essay is really just a short essay over a presentation we must attend, again of our choosing, and relating to the class.

The class topics will be:

  • 9 Feb: ‘More Irish than the Irish themselves’? The debate on culture and identity in early modern Ireland
  • 15 Feb: Anglo-Irish cultural identities in the 18th Century
  • 23 Feb: The culture and politics of O’Connellism 3
  • 1 Mar: Popular culture / language change
  • 8 Mar: Young Ireland and the politics of culture
  • 15 Mar: Cultural nationalism and revolution
  • 22 Mar: Diaspora and identity
  • 29 Mar: Religion and identity, 1800-1914
  • 26 Apr: Protestant politics and Ulster unionism, 1800-1914 4
  • 3 May: Politics, women and identity in Ireland, c. 1922-1972
  • 10 May: The politics of commemoration in modern Ireland

Should be fun, no? Well, I’m excited anyway. Stay tuned for updates along the way!

Read more from History at Queens:

 

  1. From the introduction to the wonderful module handbook ↩
  2. Remember dear American reader, that they say ‘assessed’ and ‘marks’ rather than ‘graded’ and ‘grades’ ↩
  3. I will be doing a presentation on this topic, yay! ↩
  4. If you are perplexed by the rather large gap between the last class and this one, it’s due to a university-wide 3 week break everyone gets. Yay! ↩

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

avatar

The Second Semester: History at Queens

February 3, 2012 in Class Summaries

I still haven’t posted all of my class summaries from last semester that I intended to do. Never fear, should you have some inner desire to read about historiography, there’s more where that came from! Nevertheless, I have begun my second semester as a Queen’s student. I’ll try to be more proactive in summarizing the history classes, for those of you who find this interesting.

First off, I now have a dissertation supervisor. I was assigned one, I’m assuming based in part on my research interests in the Troubles. Bragging moment, or perhaps moment of fear: he is the chair of the history department at Queens. Yes, I am mildly intimidated. But I met him for the first time Monday (actually, he led the discussion on Archives last semester–I met him for the first time in regards to my dissertation on Monday), and am excited to work with him. He definitely knows a lot, but seems like he’ll be supportive of my work too. He said he liked the general idea I had, and thought there would be plenty to write on (always a good sign!). I have to turn in a rough proposal outline next week, so I am currently skimming books and planing archive visits for the next few days. So much I want to do! Ah, I love academics.

Tuesday marked the first meeting of the ‘Historical Documents’ course. What, you may rightly ask, is historical documents all about? Well, aside from the obvious, the class is targeted at practical research skills. In fact, the ‘class’ is not so much a ‘class’ but a very, very large project. We’ll only meet regularly for about the next month, after which time we’ll be turned loose to produce fantastic original research aids. There are three options for projects in the class:

  1. Calendar. No, not the wall variety with cute puppy photos, or the popular doomsday Mayan calendar, this document is perhaps described as an annotated summary of a body of texts. Or to be more direct, a list of a collection of primary sources (such as newspapers or leters), which includes a transcription (perhaps the full text, or poignient quotations) and annotations (brief biographies, information on places, etc). It could be compared to a critical edition of a text, though a whole collection of material rather than a single text.
    Supposedly about 80% of students choose this route. Oh did I mention length? All projects have a 5,000 word introduction, the Calendar itself must be around 10,000 words. Final product therefore will be about 15,000 words, or approximately 50 pages, give or take.
  2. Finding Aids. Essentially a list of primary sources on a given subject. It aims at directing the reader to everything that might be relievant to a given subject. Fun subjects like ‘Northern Ireland & Canada: A Guide to Northern Ireland Sources for the Study of Canadian History, c.1705-1992.’ (lest you think I’m poking fun at some poor student’s topic, not only will I have to pick an equally narrow field whatever project I choose, but this was actually a book published by PRONI). Just in case you think this is somehow easier than a calendar, it’s not. It requires lots, and lots, and lots of comprehensive research. Remember I said everything? Yup.
    About 18-19% of students go this route. Goal is about 8,000 words, so mercifully a bit shorter than a calendar, though of course by the time you add your 5,000 word introduction, that is a small savings.
  3. Historical Database. This option, chosen by 1% or so of students, is certainly the most challenging of the three. In fact, no one has submitted one for the past several years. Why so few? Presumably because historians are generally afraid of numbers, and the database is essentially a statistical project and wholly devoted to numbers. Therefore the prospect of manipulating large amounts of them is quite terrifying. Equally terrifying is the prospect of using advanced computer databases and software. If this didn’t scare you, the size might. The website ‘London Lives‘ was given as an example. Check it out. The scope of such a project should scare you.
    Ok, in all seriousness, while difficult, this certainly would be interesting. And if you checked that site out, you’ll notice that a database need not be wholly devoted to numbers. It could also be, as in the case of ‘London Lives’, prosopographical (see what fun we historians have??). Also, it need not be as extensively large as the example.

Most likely, I’ll follow the route of 80% students, and produce a calendar. Maybe a collection of newspaper articles during the start of the Troubles, or something like that. The goal is, with any of these projects, to produce something useful to the wider scholarly audience. Some student projects even get published.
All in all, I’m quite excited, in a way, for the course. While I expect it to be a great deal of work, I think it could be quite rewarding.

Read more from History at Queens:

Tags: , , , , , , ,
4 Comments »

avatar

Research methods — Irish Historical Studies rules

January 23, 2012 in Class Summaries, History at Queens

I’m still playing catch-up on these class summaries from last semester.Oh well. This is from Monday ..2011

One part of being a historian that I am not as wild about is following style rules when writing. I understand why it’s important, but it is rather aggravating nonetheless. Naturally, no one has yet decided on a universal historical style citation guide. Someone should, seriously.

In the States, Chicago style is quite common. On this side of the pond, I believe Oxford—or something called something approximately like Oxford—is common. At Queens? Irish Historical Studies.

Since you probably won’t ever have to follow I.H.S. rules, I’ll spare you the boring details. Basically, they are the rules for contributors to the Irish Historical Studies journal. Some make sense. Some do not. Failure to follow them results in marks being taken away. I’m pretty sure I.H.S. is convinced failure to follow them will result in the collapse of the island.

If you are in the states, here are a few things you might find interesting (not all apply to I.H.S. specifically):

  • This side of the Atlantic prefers single quotation marks to double marks. Thus ‘To be or not to be’ rather that “To be or not to be”. Crazy. Quotations within quotations then become double marks. Logical, really, but confusing as heck when you still use the American system and simultaneously use the British system. My apologies if I switch in my writing here.
  • Capitals, according to I.H.S. are of the devil. Do not use capital letters.
  • Never abbreviate journal titles, except of course, I.H.S. ‘Cause it’s special.
  • Generally place a period after abbreviations, except those abbreviations which you don’t need to 1
  • For example: ‘eds’ is ok. ‘ed’ is not. You’ll get in trouble for just putting ‘ed’ down. 2
  • Never break up a citation with a period. Commas. Commas are your friend.
  • There is a significant difference between ‘p.’ and ‘pp’. And ‘p’ is incorrect while ‘pp’ is correct.

If for some reason you need to know I.H.S. rules, I’d suggest you visit their website: http://www.irishhistoricalstudies.ie/. And you can download the rules for contributors there.

Ok, ok in truth the rules are good to have. I feel like using a pretty specific journal for the rules might be, well, specific. But rules are good. And this class period was quite helpful to me to understand them better.

This is a part of my History at Queens series. I am writing on what I’m learning in my modules and as a part of my own research. Hope you enjoy!

  1. Confused? Yeah, it’s a bit convoluted ↩
  2. In truth, it generally is whether or not the abbreviation is truly an abbreviation or a contraction. Contractions=no punctuation. Abbr.=well, you see :) ↩

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

avatar

Quantitative History and Statistics — Research Methods 31.10.11

January 14, 2012 in Class Summaries, History at Queens

Historians aren’t generally known for liking numbers, if not for being downright scared of them. Which is probably why we discussed them on a chilly Halloween evening! In all seriousness, this was a good class, numbers and statistics are important in the study of history.

If you don’t believe history has any quantitative elements, go through your nearest history book, article, or whatever text you might have and underline any quantitative words. You’ll probably find a lot, even if they don’t seem directly connected with words. Look for words like growth, many, primarily, for some, increasingly/decreasingly, remote, popular, one of, mass, smaller, and so on. Our lecturer, to make his point, gave us a short excerpt which we underlined those quantitative words.

Some historiographical schools of thought use statistics and economics as as significant part of their analysis. Can you guess which one I’m thinking of at the moment? Yup–Marxism! Still, their use does not have to be confined to Marxists alone. We discussed several advantages to using quantitative history.

Downsides can include:

  • Imposing to rigid categories onto history
  • Loss of detail (summarizing data necessarily involves a loss of data)
How historians might intigrate numbers and statistics into their projects will of course vary by project. Certainly, at the very least, they ought to be aware of the words they use, as mentioned at the beginning. Tables and charts are probably one of the primary ways to present data, and we discussed formatting and uses for different types of charts. It isn’t anything I didn’t learn in my undergraduate stats course, but a good refresher anyway.

As with a lot of things, I think it is important for the historian to use numbers and statistics where appropriate, just as they ought to at least consider the impact of memory, gender, culture, and so forth in their historical analysis.

This is a part of my History at Queens series. I am writing on what I’m learning in my modules and as a part of my own research. Hope you enjoy!

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments »

← Previous Entries