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Humanities
Special Issues
Modernist Ecologies in Irish Literature
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Modernist Ecologies in Irish Literature

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2025 | Viewed by 315

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Eoin Flannery

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of English Language and Literature, Mary Immaculate College, V94 VN26 Limerick, Ireland
Interests: ecopoetics; ecogothic; literature and economics; contemporary Irish writing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A number of recent publications have drawn Irish modernist writing into the orbit of ecocritical analysis, including publications on James Joyce [Brazeau and Gladwin (2014)], [Barlow and Fagan (2024)], [Lacivita (2015)]; Flann O’Brien [Ebury, Fagan and Greaney (2024)]; and Samuel Beckett (Thobois-Gupta, McTighe, and Johnson (2025)]. The aim of this Special Issue is to build on such interventions. The essays collated here will develop on previous ecocritical engagements with Irish literary modernism, as well as relating this suite of authors to each other. The latter will facilitate conversations and comparisons to establish and develop Irish literary modernism as a vibrant field for ecocritical scholars globally. The Special Issue focuses on early to mid-twentieth century Irish writers. Research areas that might be addressed in prospective essays include the following: urbanization; animal rights and animal poetics; ecopoetics and experimental art; biopolitics and representation; modernism and materialist ecocriticism; modernism and the Anthropocene; modernism and temporal/spatial scales; and modernism and the more-than-human.

Dr. Eoin Flannery
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • modernism
  • ecocriticism
  • nonhuman
  • animal
  • blue humanities
  • anthropocene
  • irish modernism
  • text-as-ecology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 322 KB  
Article
Water, Noise, and Energy: The Story of Irish Hydropower in Three Plays
by Katherine M. Huber
Humanities 2025, 14(11), 214; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14110214 - 28 Oct 2025
Abstract
Hydroelectric power projects were an integral part of twentieth-century postcolonial modernisation in Ireland. In 1925, the Cumann na nGaedheal government began the Shannon Scheme, which created the then-largest dam in Europe at Ardnacrusha. Hydroelectric power stations have since emerged across Ireland, from Poulaphouca [...] Read more.
Hydroelectric power projects were an integral part of twentieth-century postcolonial modernisation in Ireland. In 1925, the Cumann na nGaedheal government began the Shannon Scheme, which created the then-largest dam in Europe at Ardnacrusha. Hydroelectric power stations have since emerged across Ireland, from Poulaphouca and Ballyshannon to Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid. Despite the importance of hydropower in shaping Irish environments, ecocritical scholars like Matthew Henry and Sharae Deckard have shown that depictions of hydropower are generally understudied in the environmental and energy humanities and in Irish studies. This article traces twentieth-century hydroelectric power projects in Ireland through three plays: Denis Johnston’s The Moon in the Yellow River (1931), Frank Harvey’s Farewell to Every White Cascade (1958), and Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1997). Depictions of hydropower in these stage and radio dramas reveal an ongoing cultural awareness of one of modernity’s more insidious pollutants, namely, noise pollution. Exploring sound elements in representations of hydropower across diverse media and genres requires grappling with the legacy of colonialism on material environments in technocratic solutions to postcolonial national development and to planetary crises like climate change. Using postcolonial ecocritical and ecomedia studies lenses, this article analyses aural environments in Johnston, Harvey, and McPherson’s plays to elucidate intersections of medium, energy extraction, and hydropower that continue to resonate across Ireland. Besides providing historical insight into changing relationships with material environments, these plays also expose environmental and multispecies injustices caused by energy extraction projects on Ireland’s rivers. The aural environments in these plays also raise questions about what kind of modernisation and infrastructure projects would support multispecies modernities for more just and decolonial futures. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how these twentieth-century literary representations of hydroelectric energy extraction imagine alternative possibilities to anthropocentric modernisation through attending to multisensory and multispecies attachments to place. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modernist Ecologies in Irish Literature)
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