Walking the Land of Irish Studies

Abstract

Using the old rural Irish custom of walking the land, this essay locates the Irish presence in the old and new world and surveys the global territory of Irish studies. It considers shared themes of language and cultural, responses to colonialism and history and national identity, and it charts the development of Irish Studies from Ireland to North and South America, to the continent, to Africa, to Asia and the Pacific. Perhaps the most astonishing development is the new page in Irish Studies, the New Irish of the twenty-first century.