Margo Shea

   I am teaching a first year seminar on the sitcom Derry Girls. It turns out that this is a very popular topic! I  am collecting some resources to use and  to share with students.   The articles may be of interest to others: A note to students: read the greats of Northern Irish literature. Then watch Derry Girls by Caroline Magennis       What The Troubles (and Derry Girls) are Teaching Students about 2020   ‘Derry Girls’ Teaches Us More About Ireland Than School Did   On ‘Derry Girls’ and remembering the Good Friday Agreement by Ian Clark   The Heart and Humor of Derry Girls by Lisa McDonough    'Derry Girls' writer and creator Lisa McGee on the final season of the show   Irish Studies Professor Reflects on Northern Ireland’s Troubles  

 I don't write a lot of poetry but sometimes it feels right.

 I am so pleased to have connected with the LAVA Arts Center/ECHO Greenfield history makers.  I met with them over the summer and then had a "redo" of that talk on Zoom last week.  Here is the talk! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7SvehK1Lgw

 Book Review of Derry City My book was reviewed and that is always good news! You may read the review, published in the Public Historian i and written by postgraduate researcher Naomi Petropoulos here .

 It was such a pleasure to talk with Ryan Shelton of New Books Network about my book, Derry City.   I've linked to the interview here . Enjoy! For a 40% off coupon and free shipping, enter (type, don't copy and paste) the promo code 14AHA22 . This offer is good for both print and ebooks, but it is only available through January 31st, 2022 .  

 My mom loved St. Patrick's Day. The retinue of "deedle-lee-dee" gave her great joy. At some point in the week leading up to the holiday, there would be singing in person or over the phone, depending on where I lived.  Her favorite song was "McNamara's Band" and she would giggle every time " Henessee Tennessee tootles the flute" was sung in the chorus.  She also loved that classic of Irish America, which has grown on me over the years, " If you're Irish come into the parlour." (In this version by the Irish Rovers, the two songs are played together.)   I hated it when I was younger for the clippy-clappiness of it.  Now, older and having lost my mom, there is something about the "big songs" of the Irish American songbook that cheer and ground me. I miss her "welcome mat" and the song, for a moment, returns it to me. When I spend time with my father these days, it is in a car.  We go for drives on Sundays a couple t...

 Last month, I had the pleasure of joining a panel hosted by Dan Lipcan of the Phillips Library and moderated by public historian Kristin Harris about the legacies of the Salem Witch Trials.  There are many events in Salem around Halloween that invoke, in one way or another, the witch hysteria that tore Salem apart in 1692 and led to the execution of 29 people.  This one, however, was different.  With Fara Wolfson from Voices Against Injustice and Erica Feldmann, who started HausWitch Home + Healing as part store, part community center and informal educational hub for 21st century witches,  Harris invited us to explore what the history of Salem means and how contemporary pa gans, wiccans and witches in Salem and around the world orient towards the town and its most celebrated holiday, Halloween.     You can watch the presentation here .  Be sure to let me know what you think.    

 The lovely people at Wistariahurst invited me to talk about Derry City and people got to jump in and ask questions, which was really fun.  The talk is a little different, though obvs the themes are the same! Let me know what you think! To learn more about my book, Derry City , click here .  For a 40% off coupon and free shipping, enter (type, don't copy and paste) the promo code 14AHA22 . This offer is good for both print and ebooks, but it is only available through January 31st, 2022 .  

  Want to hear more about my book?  You can watch an author talk here . For a 40% off coupon and free shipping, enter (type, don't copy and paste) the promo code 14AHA22 . This offer is good for both print and ebooks, but it is only available through January 31st, 2022 .  

It is rare that I speculate about the after life and rarer still that I anthropomorphize it, but I suppose childhood visions of heaven get stuck in our heads.   I amused myself while trying to fall asleep last night with this vision. The line-up was longer than usual at check-in, due to COVID-19 and the sheer psychic exhaustion of 2020.  C.T. Vivian and John Lewis stood in the line and were enjoying a catch-up when someone shuffled up behind them. "Yes, lads. What are we at?" Their first reaction was alarm.  Lads??????  They turned around slowly.  "Oh, it's OK.  It's just John Hume from Derry. Great to see you, John."   "Good to see youse both." As they began with pleasantries fit for men of their situation (Do you think they'll have baps/fritters/fifteens/fill-in-the-blank -- because the doctor has had me on a scarcity diet for the past two decades.....,) they were interrupted by a call from an ambient loudspeaker inviting "Joh...

In case you missed it on Historians Cooking the Past , I am posting my essay about my mom,  Janice Weigand Shea, here. June 30, 2020 If he had a tail, my father's would have been wagging. He would dash from wherever he was when the car approached the driveway and stand at the screen door, waiting. "Here she comes! All hail the Strawberry Queen!" My mother emerged from the shadows into the flourescent light of the garage, smile and sneer competing on her face as she kicked off muddy construction boots. "Oh, please." Still, she liked the title. Returning from a 16-hour work day at the pick-your-own strawberry farm she managed with fields in Plainville, Hamden and North Haven, Connecticut, she'd kiss him hello and head to the shower, first peeling off dirt-encrusted jeans and a tee shirt with a big red strawberry on it. My dad would bring her a cocktail or an icy glass of white wine and heat up whatev...

Photo credit: Phillipa Stanton I love to cook.  It will come as no surprise to most readers that my response to the suspension of ordinary life in the face of a public health emergency is to retreat to the kitchen and to experience and process this moment through and with food.  Over the next few weeks (or months,) I will be posting images of what I am cooking along with a short reflection on how the food relates to what is happening in my head and in the world. Am I fiddling while Rome burns?  Yes, of course.  I know this.  It is human, though, to try to retain control in spheres where we can, and to nourish ourselves and our loved ones...... The posts are in chronological order, with the most recent post appearing first.  It got difficult to continue to update this, so it is pretty dated.  AUGUST 3, 2020 Fresh Fruit Tarts Three months gone.  Just like that.  For all of that time, my energy around cooking, baking and writing...

I've been doing some more reading in this great book  in which I had the chance to include a chapter. It's made me want to generalize a little about emotion and affect in heritage -- to take some lessons away from the work I did for the book and try to apply it more generally. I see it this way: Affective practices simply refuse to be contained within binary frameworks like before/after, war/peace, public/private and us/them and insist on the traces that link ordinary and everyday experiences to histories of conflict. Bodies interrupt discourses as well as participate in them. Visitors, bystanders and participants in heritage practices may confirm, deny or, in this case, simply complicate the goals of heritage in the present.  My work here was in post-conflict societies.  Many post-conflict heritage projects aim to explore and expunge emotional burdens associated with histories and heritages shaped by conflict and forged in violence. But I really think th...

Very excited to share the catalogue info for Derry City !   (Note: If you want to buy the book, check here regularly, because I post discount promo codes from the press as they become available. The paperback won't be out for awhile, and the hardcover is pricey. ( Enter promo code 14AWP22  in the shopping cart to redeem 40% off your purchase and free shipping in the domestic U.S. until April 8, 2022.) The book traces the social and cultural history of Catholic and nationalist Derry from the end of the 19th century to the 1960s through the lens of memory and thus explores how engagements with memory might help us better understand history. Mapping memory work and historical consciousness, I argue through this book, illuminates a deep reservoir of a community’s experience and makes visible battles that were waged quietly, out of the limelight over long periods of time. When they were producing formal historical accounts, local chronicles, telling ghost ...