New Book on Periodical Memory and the Great Famine
Lindsay Janssen shares the publication of her new monograph, Periodical Famines: Irish Memories in Transatlantic News Media, 1845–1919 (2025), now available from Indiana University Press!
This new study examines how nineteenth- and early twentieth-century periodicals shaped collective memory of the Great Irish Famine and its aftermath. Through a transatlantic lens, Periodical Famines traces the circulation of famine narratives across periodical networks in Ireland, Britain, and North America, revealing the press’s crucial role in constructing, contesting, and commercializing Irish history. As the publisher writes, “Lindsay Janssen argues that famine memory was deployed transhistorically to help represent other crucial events in the Irish past, and periodicals used Famine recollections transnationally to give new meaning to events outside of Ireland, such as labor issues in the United States and the Second Boer War.” By analyzing a variety of periodical publications (including over 600 texts of poetry and prose fiction!), Janssen demonstrates how famine memory was mediated through evolving journalistic infrastructures and how these periodical representations influenced Irish identity both at home and in the diaspora.
Congratulations, Lindsay, and thanks for sharing your news!
About the Author
Lindsay Janssen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at Radboud University. She is editor (with Marguérite Corporaal, Christopher Cusack, and Ruud van den Beuken) of Global Legacies of the Great Irish Famine: Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Peter Lang, 2014); (with Christian Noack and Vincent Comerford) Holodomor and Gorta Mór: Histories, Memories and Representations of Famine in Ukraine and Ireland (Anthem Press, 2012); and (with Marguérite Corporaal and Christopher Cusack) of Recollecting Hunger: An Anthology (Irish Academic Press, 2012).
