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Winner, 2025 McGowan Prize, given by the Irish American Cultural Institute
Honorable Mention, 2025 ACIS Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize for Books on Irish America
A historical exploration of the Irish image in popular culture
It only took a century or so to segue from phrases like “No Irish Need Apply” to “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” in American popular culture. Indeed, the transformation of the Irish image is a fascinating blend of political, cultural, racial, commercial, and social influences.
The Green Space examines the variety of factors that contributed to remaking the Irish image from downtrodden and despised to universally acclaimed. To understand the forces that molded how people understand “Irish” is to see the matrix—the green space—that facilitated their interaction between the 1890s and 1960s. Marion R. Casey argues that, as “Irish” evolved between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, a visual and rhetorical expanse for representing ethnicity was opened up in the process. The evolution was also transnational; both Ireland and the United States were inextricably linked to how various iterations of “Irish” were deployed over time—whether as a straightforward noun about a specific people with a national identity or a loose, endlessly malleable adjective only tangentially connected to actual ethnic identity.
Featuring a rich assortment of sources and images, The Green Space takes the history of the Irish image in America as a prime example of the ways in which culture and identity can be manufactured, repackaged, and ultimately revolutionized. Understanding the multifaceted influences that shaped perceptions of “Irishness” holds profound relevance for examining similar dynamics within studies of various immigrant and ethnic communities in the US.
— Úna Ní Bhroiméil, author of Building Irish Identity in America 1870-1915
"Through impressive research, drawing on sources as diverse as congressional debates, St. Patrick’s Day party games, movie advertising campaigns, liquor company legal wars over trademarking, and much more, Marion Casey has written a provocative, imaginative and strikingly innovative study of how the image of the Irish was constructed in America over the first half of the twentieth century."
— Timothy J. Meagher, author of Becoming Irish American: the Making and Remaking of a People
"An illuminating, original contribution to our understanding of ethnic history, popular culture, media history, business history and political history."
— Robert W. Snyder, Professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies, Rutgers University
"Taken as a whole, these chapters render The Green Space an important new contribution to the field of Irish Studies. While focused on Ireland and the Irish, the book’s argument will speak to scholars working in various fields of ethnic and immigration history."
— American Historical Review