Author: Building Design PartnershipPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
Author: Wesley JohnstonStewart Parker
Author: Marilynn RichtarikPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191655163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
Born in Belfast during World War II, raised in a working-class Protestant family, and educated on scholarship at Queen's University, writer Stewart Parker's story is in many ways the story of his generation. Other aspects of his personal history, though, such as the amputation of his left leg at age 19, helped to create an extraordinarily perceptive observer and commentator. Steeped in American popular culture as a child and young adult, he spent five years teaching in the United States before returning to Belfast in August 1969, the same week British troops responded to sectarian disturbances there. Parker had developed a sense of writing as a form of political action in the highly charged atmosphere of the US in the late 1960s, which he applied in many and varied capacities throughout the worst years of the Troubles to express his own socialist and secular vision of Northern Irish potential. As a young aspiring poet and novelist, he supported himself with free-lance work that brought him into contact with institutions ranging from BBC Northern Ireland to the Irish Times (for which he wrote personal columns and the music review feature High Pop) and from the Queen's University Extramural Department to Long Kesh internment camp (where his creative writing students included Gerry Adams). It is as a playwright, however, that Parker earned a permanent spot in the literary canon with drama that encapsulates his experience of Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Marilynn Richtarik's Stewart Parker: A Life illuminates the genesis, development, and meaning of such classic plays as Spokesong, Northern Star, and Pentecost - works that continue to shed light on the North's past, present, and future - in the context of Parker's life and times. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, this critical biography rewards general readers and specialists alike.
Author: Building Design PartnershipThe International
Author: Glenn PattersonPublisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771071124
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
Acclaimed Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson's classic novel of a day in the life in that city: a funny, brilliantly observed, bittersweet snapshot of a moment in 1967 just before everything changed. "If I had known history was to be written that Sunday in the International Hotel I might have made an effort to get out of bed before teatime." So begins The International. Danny Hamilton takes us back over three troubled decades to one wonderfully ordinary Saturday, in January 1967, when his 18-year-old self had no idea — most people had no idea — that ordinary days in Belfast would soon become tragically rare. Ordinary, but packed with extraordinarily observed characters; and extraordinary enough for Danny to fall in love twice (and think about sex a few more times than that). Ordinary, but when someone calls out "Be careful" in parting, no one takes it lightly and for good reason. First published in the UK in 1999, and reissued by Blackstaff in 2008, The International is a timeless novel: funny, bawdy, deftly crafted, and heartwrenchingly humane. Featuring an essay “On Reading The International” by Man Booker-Prize winner Anne Enright
Inventing the Myth
Author: Connal ParrPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019250925X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Book Description
This book approaches Ulster Protestantism through its theatrical and cultural intersection with politics, re-establishing a forgotten history and engaging with contemporary debates. Anchored by the perspectives of ten writers - some of whom have been notably active in political life - it uniquely examines tensions going on within. Through its exploration of class division and drama from the early twentieth century to the present, the book restores the progressive and Labour credentials of the community's recent past along with its literary repercussions, both of which appear in recent decades to have diminished. Drawing on over sixty interviews, unpublished scripts, as well as rarely-consulted archival material, it shows - contrary to a good deal of clichéd polemic and safe scholarly assessment - that Ulster Protestants have historically and continually demonstrated a vigorous creative pulse as well as a tendency towards Left wing and class politics. St. John Ervine, Thomas Carnduff, John Hewitt, Sam Thompson, Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Christina Reid, and Gary Mitchell profoundly challenge as well as reflect their communities. Illuminating a diverse and conflicted culture stretching beyond Orange Order parades, the weaving together of the lives and work of each of the writers highlights mutual themes and insights on their identity, as if part of some grander tapestry of alternative twentieth-century Protestant culture. Ulster Protestantism's consistent delivery of such dissenting voices counters its monolithic and reactionary reputation.
Women Divided
Author: Rosemary SalesPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134775083
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
The ongoing Irish peace process has renewed interest in the current social and political problems of Northern Ireland. In bringing together the issues of gender and inequality, Women Divided, a title in the International Studies of Women and Place series, offers new perspectives on women's rights and contemporary political issues. Women Divided argues that religious and political sectarianism in Northern Ireland has subordinated women. A historical review is followed by an analysis of the contemporary scene-- state, market (particularly employment patterns), family and church--and the role of women's movements. The book concludes with an in-depth critique of the current peace process and its implications for women's rights in Northern Ireland, arguing that women's rights must be a central element in any agenda for peace and reconciliation.
Author: Urban Design and the British Urban Renaissance
Author: John PunterPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135263914
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 539
Book Description
Are Britain’s cities attractive places in which to live, work and play? Asking that question, this is a critical review of how the design dimension of the Urban Renaissance strategy was developed and applied, based on expert academic assessments of progress in Britain’s thirteen largest cities. The case studies are preceded by a dissection of New Labour’s renaissance agenda, and concluded by a synthesis of achievements and failings. Exploring the implications of this strategy for the future of urban planning and design, this is a must-read for students, practitioners of these subjects and for all those who wish to improve the quality of the British urban environment.
The Great Reimagining
Author: Bree T. HockingPublisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178238622X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
While sectarian violence has greatly diminished on the streets of Belfast and Derry, proxy battles over the right to define Northern Ireland’s identity through its new symbolic landscapes continue. Offering a detailed ethnographic account of Northern Ireland’s post-conflict visual transformation, this book examines the official effort to produce new civic images against a backdrop of ongoing political and social struggle. Interviews with politicians, policymakers, community leaders, cultural workers, and residents shed light on the deeply contested nature of seemingly harmonized urban landscapes in societies undergoing radical structural change. Here, the public art process serves as a vital means to understanding the wider politics of a transforming public sphere in an age of globalization and transnational connectivity.
