UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies
UCD, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland | Director: Professor Liam Kennedy
PhD PROGRAMME
The Clinton Institute offers suitable candidates the opportunity to pursue a research-based PhD degree in American Studies.
The Institute gives all possible support to candidates, developing the resources available at UCD and encouraging an active postgraduate environment for the exchange of information and ideas.
Our research students contribute to the Research Seminar and are advised on the preparation of scholarship for publication and conference presentation.
The Institute directly supervises or supports supervision of thesis topics in many areas of American culture and politics, domestic and international.
Application Forms for PhD in American Studies
Students can now apply online for our PhD programme. Please click on the link and apply for PhD in College of Arts & Celtic Studies and then apply for American Studies
Please remember to forward the following documents when completing your online application
- A Research Proposal - please give a provisional title for your proposed thesis and attached the following to it.
- Include a concise statement (between four and six A4 pages) indicating the (i) background, (ii) objectives and novelty, (iii) methodology, and (iv) resources of your proposed research. You should also indicate how the thesis you propose to write might be organized.
- Include a provisional bibliography of the major scholarly works in the field you wish to research and a schedule of how you intend to complete your research within three years ( full time).
- Two sealed letters of reference, testifying to your academic abilities.
- A current passport-size photograph
If you are not a UCD graduate, please also remember to include the following documents.
- One copy of the official transcript(s) of your academic qualifications.
- An original birth certificate
- One copy of certificates of any additional qualifications, or evidence of any expertise, which may be advantageous to your studies.
- Evidence of English language qualifications.
Fees and Funding
Fees
For up to date information on fees please go to the Fees & Grants Office
Scholarships and Funding
Ad Astra Research Scholarships
For information on scholarship and funding opportunities you should visit the UCD Graduate Studies website.
Government of Irish Research Scholarships in the Humanities and Social Sciences - IRCHSS.
These awards are for postgraduate research in the historical, analytical and theoretical study of Humanities and Social Sciences, including Law and Business Studies . Applicants must be a national of the European Union. Further information from www.irchss.ie
The Department of Education & Sciences - www.irlgov.ie/educ
The Department provides a number of scholarships to students wishing to study in Ireland
Newman Scholars
These endowed fellowships are normally held at senior postdoctoral level for a period of two years. A number are advertised each year and may be either in a specified area identified with the Sponsor or open to all disciplines. Information and application forms are available from personel@ucd.ie or the Office of the Dean of Doctoral Studies pgstudy@ucd.ie
Royal Irish Academy
The Royal Irish Academy awards approximately sixty research grants each year in both the humanities and the natural sciences.
O'Reilly Foundation Scholarship
O'Reilly Foundation Scholarships, with preference being given to Business Studies, Law, Marketing, Media Studies, Technology and the Arts.
American students may wish to consult the guidelines for scholarship awards, such as the Fulbright Award and the Mitchell Scholarships
Loans
US citizens and permanent residents only should contact Ms. Sarah Holt (Sarah.Holt@ucd.ie ) in the UCD International Office for information on the Stafford/PLUS Loand Programmes
PhD Students & Research
Barry Shanahan
Academic Qualifications
B.A., (Mus), University College Cork
M.A., American Studies, University College Dublin.
Working Dissertation Title
'Telling It Like It Is': Hip-hop as representative tool in extra-musical forms.
Research Aims
Hip-hop has been relied upon by artists in various artistic fields since the inception of the genre in the late 1970s. This projects deals with analyses of musical examples and “extra-musical” texts (literary, visual, etc.) that utilise hip-hop to various ends, with a view to illustrating how the inherent heterogeneity and complexity of the form lend themselves unusually well to the artistic representation of the urban American experience.
This project will cover the period from the late 1970s to the present day, and will examine the representation of African-American identity through the medium of hip-hop culture in various “extra-musical” forms. The fiction and non-fiction of Lisa “Sister Souljah” Williamson, the political and autobiographical writings of Carlton “Chuck D” Ridenhour and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, along with David Simon’s HBO series The Wire and the films of Spike Lee, manipulate and utilise the ideologies of hip-hop to diverse ends. What this project examines is just how these various treatments can justifiably draw on the same source to illustrate their often contradictory sentiments, and by extension will show why hip-hop, as a dynamic musical form and wider culture, is particularly suited to this.
Research Papers
"Haters Were Throwing Shade": Hip-Hop’s Cult of Personality in the Novels of 50 Cent- Cornbread and Cuchifritos: Ethnic Identity Politics, Transnationalization and Trans-culturation in American Urban Popular Music Workshop, University of Bielefeld, May 2009.
“Clocking The Wire”: Hip-Hop and Representation in the Work of Richard Price- BAAS International Conference, University of Nottingham, April 2009.
“Ask a Baltimore Question”: Hip-hop, Realism, and Identification in The Wire”- IAAS Postgraduate Symposium, Clinton Institute for American Studies, January 2009.
“What You Know About Baltimore?”: Verisimilitude, Space and Place in The Wire- Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, 2008.
“Tell It Like It Is”: The Role and Representation of Hip-Hop in Musical and Extra-Musical Forms- BAAS International Conference, University of Edinburgh, March 2008.
Wendy Ward
Academic Qualifications
B.A., English and Political Science, Vanderbilt University
M.A., English Literature, University of Illinois-Chicago
Working Dissertation Title
Writing in the Photographic Boom: Modes of Visual Encounter in American Fiction,
1968-80
Research Aims
This dissertation traces and assesses the influence photographic practice, criticism and theory had on American fiction writers during one of the most pivotal time periods in American culture (1968-80), when photography was canonised within the art world and democratised amongst the greater whole—becoming both a fine art and the everyday grammar of how we perceive, engage with and understand reality. We as a culture might easily receive as much information from the photographic image as the written word, and it has become imperative to study this boom of photography and its fluctuating potential as a narrative tool. Largely a case study of writerly responses to this explosion of photographic discourse and imagery, in particular that of snapshot and vernacular formats, this project analyses significant signposts in an evolving American verbal photography, and speculates as to its persistence in more contemporary fictional work. Writing that is highly pictorial or sensory is nothing new or extraordinary by far, but there is a certain image-pressure exerted on the word arising in this age, largely due to the growth and circulation of new media and contexts that drastically impacts American culture and literature. In particular, fluctuating anxieties over a “postmodern” existence and “exhausted” literary forms combine with a mounting wariness that everything will end up as or be reduced to an image, or that fiction must somehow take recourse in the authentic appeal of the photograph for survival. My project further investigates how this new “photographic enterprise,” to use Susan Sontag’s term for holistic purposes, challenged narrative traditions, styles and approaches, and how we came to picture and narrate ourselves differently as individuals, communities and nation in this photographic boom.
Research Papers
BAAS Annual Conference, 16-19 April 2009, University of Nottingham, UK
“Homeward Bound by China: Susan Sontag’s American Project”
UCD Graduate School Symposium, 7 February 2009, University College Dublin, IE
“Dreaming Driftwood Country: Vacant Portraits in Alec Soth’s Photography.
Postgraduate IAAS Conference, 24 January 2009
“Susan Sontag’s American Project”
Visual Culture and the Everyday Conference, 11-14 September 2008, University of Nottingham
“Everyday Displacement, Vacant Portraits: Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi
Louise Walsh
IRCHSS Scholar
Ad Astra Research Scholar
Academic Qualifications
B.A. English and History (Joint Honors) University College Cork
M.A. 20th Century American Literature and Film – University College Cork:
M.A. Thesis: Black and Green Blueprints: A Comparative Analysis of the Harlem Renaissance and the Irish Literary Revival
Research Aims
My research centers on a comparison of the Harlem Renaissance and the Irish Literary Revival with particular attention to the respective locations of these movements within the landscape of literary modernism. A large part of my project therefore involves an interrogation of what constitutes modernist writing, a literary praxis which is currently being revisited by the academy. To this end, I am assessing the contemporaneous impact of the ethnographical research undertaken in Ireland and African America, as important aspects of folk culture common to both movements were unearthed and reclaimed through its enterprise. My project will evaluate to what extent these engagements shaped the creative literary output of the writers of both movements and examine whether it underscored (or indeed attenuated) their modernist credentials.
IAAS Postgraduate Caucus Co-Chair
Conference Papers
Bookends Postgraduate Conference - March 2007 – University College Cork
Ireland, a Blueprint for Black Writing: A Comparison of the Poetics of W.B. Yeats and Sterling Brown.
Transatlantic Studies Association Conference – July 2007 – University College Cork.
Ireland, a Blueprint for Black Writing: An Analysis of the Impact of the Occult and Voodoo on Creative Processes of W.B. Yeats and Zora Neale Hurston Respectively.
IAAS Annual Postgraduate Symposium – January 2008 – Clinton Institute of American Studies.
The Vindication of Vernacular: Representations of Dialect in Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes’ Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life and J.M. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.
Transatlantic Studies Association Conference – July 2008 – West Park Conference Centre, Dundee.
Dialect(ics) in Common: Anglo Irish and African American.
IAAS Annual Postgraduate Symposium – January 2009 – Clinton Institute of American Studies.
Dialect(ics) in Common: Anglo Irish and African American.
Transatlantic Studies Association Conference – July 2009 – Canterbury Christ Church University.
Transatlantic Tricksters: Camouflage and Challenge in the Harlem and Irish Renaissances.
American Literature Association Symposium – October 2009 –Hilton DeSoto Hotel, Savannah, Georgia, USA.
Transatlantic Tricksters: Camouflage and Challenge in the Harlem and Irish Renaissances.
Martin Russell
martinrussell01@yahoo.com
IRCHSS Scholar
Academic Qualifications
B.A. (Joint Honours) in History and Mathematics, University College Cork, 2004-2007.
M.A. in American Studies, Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin, 2007-2008. Thesis entitled “Northern Ireland and U.S. foreign policy: Reasoning and Limitations of Memory”.
Working Dissertation Title
Irish-America in the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Challenging the cultural paradigms of memory and identity in U.S. foreign policy.
Research Aims
My research is designed to challenge and redefine the current conceptualisations of how U.S. foreign policy is created and assessed. I aim to focus on the areas of memory studies and identity studies as the paradigms for such reconfiguration. The study aims to examine some core contentions of how memory and identity interact in the domain of U.S. foreign policy. The project is aimed at examining the Northern Ireland peace process as a possible source of lesson learning for U.S. foreign policy on many diverse formats, ranging from the social to the cultural. I will examine how the memory, media and identity inform political process and how this episode of U.S. foreign policy constitutes an innovative framework for our understanding of how U.S. foreign policy is produced and capable of transformation. The research is a further extension of my earlier M.A. work.
Research Papers
‘Northern Ireland and US Foreign Policy: Reasoning and the Limitations of Memory’, at Clinton Institute Summer School Symposium, 2008
‘Irish-America and the Northern Ireland Peace Process: Cultural Transformation of Identity in Response to Crisis’, at the Postgraduate History Conference, Trinity College Dublin, May 2009.
‘Redefining Collective Aggression: Memory and the role of Irish-America in the Northern Ireland Peace Process’, at the 3rd Annual CICA-STR International Conference, ‘Political Violence and Collective Aggression: Considering the Past, Imaging the Future’, University of Ulster, Jordanstown, Belfast, September 2009.
Desmond Traynor
Desmond_traynor@yahoo.com
Dr. Ciaran Barry Research Scholarship holder
Academic Qualifications
B.A., (Hons) in Greek and Roman Civilisation, University College Dublin
M.A., (Hons) in Anglo-Irish Literature, University College Dublin
M.Phil (Distinction) in Creative Writing, Trinity College Dublin
Working Dissertation Title
‘Dissent in Contemporary American Popular Music: Aesthetics Meets Politics’
Research Aims
I am exploring the relationship between popular music and political activism in America, at key points over the last fifty years, and the extent of music’s influence on social change, and vice versa. I am interested, conversely, in interrogating aesthetic notions of how music may become ‘contaminated’ as it becomes more polemically partisan. I am also interested in the history of dissent in the U.S., its origins in religious dissent, and the notion of manufactured dissent. Postcolonial theory, particularly with reference to hybridity, is also a focus, since America’s former status as a colony should not be overlooked, and that its culture is not specifically African, American, Caribbean, Mexican or British, but often all of these at once, transcending ethnicity and nationality to produce something new and, until recently, unremaked.
Research Papers
Publications
‘Zaireeka by The Flaming Lips: An Introduction and Some Implications’, in Performing Technology: User Content and the New Digital Media, (proceedings of a conference at the Sonic Arts Research Centre, Queens University Belfast, May 2009), (Cambridge Scholars Press, November 2009)
‘Making History and Making It Up: On the Reliability of Herodotus, and Subsequent Historians’, in Literatures of War, (proceedings of a conference at the Durrell School of Corfu, May2007), (Cambridge Scholars Press, August 2008)
‘Tradition, Continuity and Innovation in Popular American Protest Song’ in The Journal of Music in Ireland, The Volume 6, Number 5, September/October 2006
Conference Presentations
‘The American Taliban: Steve Earle, John Walker Lindh, and the ‘problem’ of socio-political commentary in songwriting at times of (inter)national crisis’, at the IAAS Postgraduate Symposium ‘Engaging Exception: Perspectives of Cultural Identity and the Nation’ (UCD Clinton Institute, January 2009), and at the ‘War and Identity’ International Conference (UCD Clinton Institute, March 2009)
Fiona Hackett
IRCHSS Scholar
Academic Qualifications
B.A. (Hons), Psychology, University College Dublin
B.A Photography, Institute of Art, Design & Technology
MSc Occupational Psychology, Queens University, Belfast
Dissertation Title
Terra Incognita: Visualising Southern California – Human Dreams and Fragilities in the Landscape
Research Aims
The aim of this research is exploration of the uneasy relationship between humans and the landscape using, as a primary tool, the camera. The research is positioned in the context of the well-recounted history of the Frontier American West and the Geological Survey expeditions of the Nineteenth Century which traveled from East to West. Photography played an integral role in this exploration of the American West, as both ‘came of age’ together and photography’s visual representation of the land informed our knowledge, understanding and use of that landscape, providing the primary ‘way of seeing’ it. With the unique geology of Southern California, which has literally hundreds of fault lines - some more active than others - running beneath, and carving through, the surface of the Earth, the representation has created a landscape which is closer to imaginary than real. In this specific geographic area seismic activity and, as if in defiance of this geological fragility, the population has grown steadily and continuously since the region was ‘discovered’ and explored with the aid of the new technology of the camera. Hundreds of thousands of ‘settlers’ since the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, all sharing a common goal, headed to California to attain their slice of the American Dream.
Julieann Galloway
Academic Qualifications
B.A. English and Communications, The University of Austin Texas at Austin
Bachelor of journalism, The University of Texas at Austin
M.A., American Studies, University College Dublin
M.A Thesis ‘Going Google: Cyberculture and Globalisation on the World Wide Web, 1998-2008’
Dissertation working title
Google Work: Globalisation and the New Corporate Environment in Ireland
Research Aims
My research draws upon the changing labour environment in Ireland, primarily as it relates to the influence of American corporations in the State. I am interested in the theory of globalisation and cosmopolitanism, and its affect upon the modernization of Irish labour culture. My research aims to assess globalisation from a localized perspective, with Dublin’s economic, structural and social landscapes at the centre of my observations.
Research papers
‘The New Corporate Responsibility’ for the IAAS Postgraduate Symposium, Dublin 2009
‘The Cosmopolitan Internet?: American Web Corporations and the Globalisation of Internet Culture’ for the Biannual Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2009
Javad Alipoor
Academic Qualifications
Diploma of continuous Master’s Degree in the field of Islamic Studies and Political Science (International Relations Approach), Imam Sadiq University of Tehran.
M.A. Thesis ‘The Role of Soft Power in the U.S. Foreign Policy towards I.R. of Iran
M.A. North American Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran
M.A Thesis ‘Soft Power in the Foreign Policy of Clinton and Bush, a Comparative Study on Iraq’
Research Aim
The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of soft power in the foreign policy of the U.S. towards Iran and Iraq. This thesis is a step forward in understanding the differences between power and influence as well as the effects of soft power in U.S. foreign policy, in the post-Cold War ear. A historical comparative and case analysis examines specific short-term and long-term goals of American policies, analyzes strategic efforts to achieve those stated goals, and consider their impacts
Research Papers
Translating and summarization of 3 books from English to Persian: -
- American Foreign Policy in a New Era
- Critical Theories, International Relations and the Anti-Globalization Movement; the Politics of Global Resistance
- American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World
Translation of 4 articles about “Globalization and Higher Education”
Contributor in writing a book about The Role of Energy in Foreign Policy of the EU in Persian
Nine Short Essays in Ezinearticles.com (http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=javad_Alipoor): Wither Power of American Empire?; Cultural Circulation of Global Objects; Constructive Elements of American Culture; Methodological points of American Studies; Ethno-racial Power and Social Power in American Society; Globalization Consequences on Cultural Studies; American Exceptionalism & Unilateralism; Identity & 21st Century; American Soft Power
Grattan Lynch
Academic Qualifications
B.A. in Philosophy and Spanish, NUI Maynooth
M. Phil in International Peace Politics, Trinity College Dublin
M. Phil Thesis: ‘Do European Defence Initiatives Threaten NATO?’
Working Dissertation Title
‘Border Watch’
Research Aims
The primary focus of the thesis will be in comparing US and EU foreign policies and security measures along their borders. Despite the US using what has been coined as “hard power” and the EU “soft power”, I hope to find that there are similarities in their manner of maintaining their borders’ securities. In particular, I will be investigating part of the US/Mexico border and comparing it with the Spanish/Moroccan borders of Ceuta and Melilla with the central idea of researching whether a border actually incites cultural tension by defending different ideologies – That borders create a hatred of the Unknown, the Other(side). Regarding the methodology, I am planning to take a practical approach to the thesis by using photography to highlight the security measures as well using mapping in order to show the cultural osmosis that none the less occurs either side of a border.
Mehdi Bahmani
Academic Qualifications
B.A., Political Science & Islamic Studies, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran,
M.A., Political Science & Islamic Studies, Imam Sadiq University, Tehran
Dissertation Working Title
‘Image Building of Middle East Arab TVs about Iraqi Shiites’
Research Interests
The Sociopolitical status of Shiites
The effect of media on the political culture of Middle Eastern Countries
Barriers to the sociopolitical development of Middle Eastern countries
Research Papers
Book “The Turn of Events in Iraq!, Office of Social Planning and Cultural Studies, Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.
Article :”The Shiites of Iraq: From the Political Margins to Governance”, Journal of Political Science and Islamic Studies (No.18), Imam Sadiq University ,Fall 2008
Geoffroy O’Connor
Academic Qualifications
BA Sociology History UCD
MA in American Studies UCD Clinton Institute
MA Thesis: God’s Guidance A study of how religion influenced the Presidencies of John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter
Dissertation Working Title
Attracting Investment: American Investment In Ireland
Research Aims
There are two primary areas of research within my thesis, the first involves an analysis of the change in the socio-economic course of the country which came at the end of the 50s and the affects this had on Ireland’s international relationship and position within the international community. The second concerns the role of Irish agencies in attempts to foster American investment in Ireland, specific attention being given to the IDA and an Board Fáilte. I am specifically interested in how these agencies portrayed Ireland in the United States. My Primary Research Question is: How did the reorientation of the Irish Economic model and the policies and activities of specific Irish agencies alter Ireland’s relationship with the United State and Ireland’s geo strategic position? The period under examination begins in 1958 and ends in 1978.
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