Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: Joseph Valente, "Irish Shame: A Literary Reckoning" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Description: The first edited collection dedicated to the historical specifics of Irish shame
Offers an anatomy of Irish shame as a cultural predicament
Combines theoretical reading with historical and institutional context
Includes essays by some of Ireland’s leading researchers on trauma and sexuality studies
Shame has haunted Ireland since the inception of Irishness itself. As such, it has come to seem an ineluctable modality of Irish life. In fact, the contours of Irish shame have evolved over time, shifting with alterations in their colonial predicament, and in their response, whether complicit or resistant, to economic, political, and cu...