Prof Caroline Magennis' Outputs (18)

Harpy: a manifesto for childfree women (2024)
Book

Rewriting the Irish Mother Figure: Dismantling Stereotypes of Motherhood and Maternity in Contemporary Irish Literature (2025)
Thesis

This thesis will argue that contemporary Irish women’s literature challenges
traditional tropes of motherhood and reframes the Irish mother as a multidimensional
figure who is separate from both the church and state. Drawing upon a range of
theore... Read More about Rewriting the Irish Mother Figure: Dismantling Stereotypes of Motherhood and Maternity in Contemporary Irish Literature.

‘corporeal, raging’: Body Work in New Writing from the North of Ireland (2024)
Journal Article

Each academic year, I begin a seminar on my final year module, Alternative Ulster, with a broad prompt to get us talking – tell me what comes to mind when you think about the body in Northern Ireland/The North of Ireland. They begin to respond after... Read More about ‘corporeal, raging’: Body Work in New Writing from the North of Ireland.

Embodied Pasts and Precarious Futures: Somatic Storytelling in Trespasses (2022) and Close to Home (2023) (2024)
Book Chapter

Things don’t seem right: The Affective and Institutional Politics of Writing about the North of Ireland from the North of England (2023)
Book Chapter
Magennis, C. (2023). Things don’t seem right: The Affective and Institutional Politics of Writing about the North of Ireland from the North of England. In The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace. Routledge

Northern Irish writing after the Troubles : intimacies, affects, pleasures (2021)
Book
Magennis, C. (2021). Northern Irish writing after the Troubles : intimacies, affects, pleasures. Bloomsbury. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350074750

The period since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 has seen a sustained decrease in violence and, at the same time, Northern Ireland has undergone a literary renaissance, with a fresh generation of writers exploring innovative literary forms. This bo... Read More about Northern Irish writing after the Troubles : intimacies, affects, pleasures.

Sex and violence in Northern Irish women’s fiction (2020)
Book Chapter

Northern Irish fiction (2018)
Book Chapter
Magennis, C. (2018). Northern Irish fiction. In D. O'Gorman, & R. Eaglestone (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction (190-198). Routledge (Taylor & Francis). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315880235-18

The period following the Good Friday Agreement has seen a marked increase in fiction, particularly collections of short stories, by women. This writing extends and develops the tradition of Northern Irish women’s writing which, since the inception of... Read More about Northern Irish fiction.

Fiction from Northern Ireland, 1921-2015 (2018)
Book Chapter
Magennis, C. (2018). Fiction from Northern Ireland, 1921-2015. In C. O'Gallchoir, & H. Ingman (Eds.), A History of Modern Irish Women’s Literature (365-382). Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Responding to The Glass Shore : An Anthology of Readers (2017)
Journal Article
McWade, S., Legg, G., Hughes, E., Mills, L., Magennis, C., Heafey, C., & D’hoker, E. (2017). Responding to The Glass Shore : An Anthology of Readers. Irish University Review, 47, https://doi.org/10.3366/iur.2017.0309

‘Bubbles of joy’ : moments of pleasure in recent Northern Irish culture (2017)
Journal Article

This essay considers the representation of pleasure in three “post”-conflict Northern Irish texts: Glenn Patterson’s novel The Rest Just Follows (2014), Billy Cowan’s play Still Ill (2014) and Lucy Caldwell’s short story collection Multitudes (2016).... Read More about ‘Bubbles of joy’ : moments of pleasure in recent Northern Irish culture.

“That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?’ : the spectre of misogyny in The Fall (2016)
Book Chapter

'My narrative falters, as it must' : rethinking memory in recent Northern Irish fiction (2016)
Book Chapter

This chapter explores Nadine Gordimer's profound commitment to change and transformation in South Africa. Aware of the profound impact of colonialism and racism on all South Africans, she used her position as a white South African writer, to bear wit... Read More about 'My narrative falters, as it must' : rethinking memory in recent Northern Irish fiction.

Re-writing Protestant History in the novels of Glenn Patterson (2015)
Journal Article
Magennis, C. (2015). Re-writing Protestant History in the novels of Glenn Patterson. Irish Studies Review, 23(3), 348-360. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2015.1058143

This article considers the representation of the history of Belfast in Glenn Patterson's 2012 novel The Mill for Grinding Old People Young. It situates this novel within the context of Patterson's previous work and the history of the Northern Irish n... Read More about Re-writing Protestant History in the novels of Glenn Patterson.

‘He devours her with his gaze’ : Maurice Leitch’s stamping ground and the politics of the visual (2014)
Journal Article

This essay is a critical reappraisal of Maurice Leitch's 1975 novel Stamping Ground through theories of the gender, sexuality, and the visual. The novel will be read as a disruptive critique of hegemonic Unionist identity and the rural idyll in North... Read More about ‘He devours her with his gaze’ : Maurice Leitch’s stamping ground and the politics of the visual.

‘Each fantasy chosen begin’: the music of The Divine Comedy (2013)
Journal Article
Magennis, C. (2013). ‘Each fantasy chosen begin’: the music of The Divine Comedy. Irish Studies Review, 21(2), 178-187. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670882.2013.774229

This article considers the cultural and social context for the music of the Northern Irish band The Divine Comedy. It focuses on three mid-1990s albums – Liberation (1993), Promenade (1994) and Casanova (1996) – and debates the significance of this p... Read More about ‘Each fantasy chosen begin’: the music of The Divine Comedy.

Sons of Ulster (2011)
Book
Magennis, C. (2011). Sons of Ulster. Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0043-7

Both masculinity and the Northern Irish conflict have been the subjects of a great deal of recent scholarship, yet there is a dearth of material on Northern Irish masculinity. Northern Ireland has a remarkable literary output relative to its populati... Read More about Sons of Ulster.

‘… that great swollen belly’: the abject maternal in some recent Northern Irish fiction (2010)
Journal Article
Magennis, C. (2010). ‘… that great swollen belly’: the abject maternal in some recent Northern Irish fiction. Irish Studies Review, 18(1), 91-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/09670880903541782

This essay will consider the representation of the maternal in some contemporary Northern Irish fiction written by men. It will examine, using feminist theories of embodiment and subjectivity, the power of the maternal image in Irish literary and cri... Read More about ‘… that great swollen belly’: the abject maternal in some recent Northern Irish fiction.