March is Irish-American Heritage Month, and while some Americans celebrated this by attending St. Patrick’s Day parades, drinking green beer or listening to bagpipes, there is more to learn about Irish Heritage and Irish culture year-round.
Marquette University offers different majors and minors related to cultural studies, and its most recent addition is a minor in Irish Studies. Students can declare the minor in the Fall 2025 academic semester and are able to take classes like Rhetorics of Irish Storytelling, James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Introduction to the Irish Tin Whistle and Introduction to Irish Dancing.
Program origins
Timothy McMahon, a professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, said that he and Leah Flack, a fellow professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, have had the idea for an Irish Studies Minor since 2016.
“[We] team-taught classes, she on the literature of the Irish Revolution and me on the history of the Irish Revolution, and we actually had students enroll in both classes and they could do a final project that kind of brought things together in an interdisciplinary way,” McMahon said. “It took a little longer for us to make [the minor] happen than we had wanted, but that was the genesis of it.”
McMahon said he and Flack have known each other for a long time and both have attended a number of meetings of the American Conference for Irish Studies, the largest Irish Studies organization in the world. They are just two of the faculty at Marquette who have Irish expertise.
“We have a number of people on campus who have Irish expertise, and more now, with people like Brigid [Kinsella-Alba] joining the Office of Ministry and then Father [Jim] Pribek, [S.J.], who’s in both that office and in English, and then Father [Ryan] Duns [S.J.] in Theology, we were like, ‘Let’s bring this thing together.’”
McMahon said that the classes in this minor will serve a variety of disciplines. It can help one who studies it broaden their academic horizons and gain new perspectives on thinking that they could only learn outside of their primary major. Archaeologists can learn from historians in this major and vice versa.
“I think what we’re doing is giving students the opportunity to get to know a place and a people in ways they might not otherwise,” McMahon said.
McMahon said this minor should be of interest to students because it provides an opportunity to learn about a unique group of people with culture and history all around the world, hinting that there are opportunities to earn credit while going abroad, but there is also a large Irish presence locally in Milwaukee.
“Here in Milwaukee, we have the world’s largest Irish music festival, Irish Fest, the third weekend every August,” McMahon said.
Rhetorics of Irish Storytelling
Jenna Green, a professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, said she will be teaching Rhetorics of Irish Storytelling for the first time next fall. She has taught classes on rhetoric before and is excited to incorporate Irish culture into her work.
“Ireland, for how small of a country it is, just has such a rich history of wonderful orators and storytellers, authors, so it just feels like there’s just like a wealth of culture and kind of gives us a framework to work through things,” Green said.
Green said she was excited for this minor to come through and that she can have a place in it. She said her class will bring in elements from Irish storytellers new and old.
“Specifically, what we’re looking at is Irish writers and more contemporary Irish writers. And again, not just like books and texts, we’re going to look at film and music. We’re going to do some experiential storytelling work as well. So, I want to make it really engaging,” Green said.
Green said much of Irish storytelling skills stem from historical struggles like colonialism, the Troubles and the famine. This shaped their clever use of language and storytelling. Despite Ireland’s small size, its linguistic diversity is striking.
Additionally, Green said that students will be working in tandem with Marquette’s Narrative 4 chapter on campus.
Narrative 4 is a storytelling exchange program that is owned and operated by Irish author Colum McCann, who visited Marquette for Mission Week.
“Students are gonna be in the class, but they’ll be working with Narrative 4 chapter as well to do some of those more integrative kind of active learning and participatory learning,” Green said.
Green said students should learn a lot about literature, but also about themselves in her course and this minor.
“Because it’s a minor, you can really study whatever career thing you need to study, but if you want to learn more about yourself and your past, and you think about your future in an engaged, experiential, less mediated way, I think there’s a lot of ways that these courses can help students grow,” Green said.
Introduction to Irish Dancing
One of the more unique classes students can take as a part of this minor is the Irish Dance class, taught by Brigid Kinsella-Alba, assistant director of Mission Engagement for the Office of Mission and Ministry.
The class has been running since last semester, but Kinsella-Alba has been teaching Irish dance for over 15 years. She said that no dance experience is needed to take the class.
“This is a real feel-good class,” Kinsella-Alba said. “The biggest part of the grade is attending.”
Each class starts with a student-led warm-up to a song of their choice, followed by conditional warm-ups with traditional Irish dance music before everyone dances in the Ceilidh.
Kinsella-Alba said a big part of her class is promoting community, so she has “bring-a-friend day,” where students in their class can bring their friends and everyone can dance together.
“I’ve never taken an Irish dance class, so I’m really excited, I’m just here with my friend,” Alexi Walker, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences who was visiting, said.
Walker said she was previously unaware that there was an Irish dance class offered at Marquette, but she may someday be open to taking it herself.
As students are selecting their classes for the upcoming academic year, they could consider looking into fitting an Irish studies minor into their plan of study.
This story was written by Ellie Golko. She can be reached at elizabeth.golko@marquette.edu.
