Localized Rural Histories and Connected Worlds: Interdisciplinary Narratives of Transformation, Emigration and Interaction

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith S Chesson. Isaac Imran Taber Ullah.

In the early 1800s wealthy landowners were granted or purchased lands in the San Pasquale Valley, located 50 km from the provincial capital of Reggio Calabria in southern Calabria, Italy. Internal migration of farmworkers to establish commercial bergamot, olive, grape, and mulberry orchards in this valley created a large and thriving community of farmworker families in the valley who built the landowners’ villas, the overseers’ and farmworkers’ houses, and the farming infrastructure of wells,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Lash.

Common in the post-medieval period, annual ‘patterns’ or feast day celebrations of local patron saints remains an ongoing tradition in parts of rural Ireland. At times suppressed by the Catholic Church, pattern day activities typically involve visiting sacred monuments (e.g. wells, stones, trees, and medieval monastic ruins) to carry out a series of devotional practices. Such traditions represent the intersection of medieval heritage with both specific local conditions and broader historical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sara Morrow.

How did people’s geographic position impact their access to material goods and necessities through trade and distribution within the 19th and early 20th century British world system? Throughout the 19th century an increasing distinction emerged between urban capitalist elites, the urban working poor, and a rural peasantry across Britain and Europe. While rural Ireland and Scotland were well connected to the urban economic centers of the United Kingdom, both nations were considered economically...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Eugene M Costello.

This paper compares the experiences of non-elite communities in Ireland and Highland Scotland, c.1700-1850. Culturally and environmentally, Ireland and (Highland) Scotland are seen to share a number of traits. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are very closed related and were spoken almost universally in rural areas up to the 19th century. Furthermore, much of the west of Ireland is characterised by expanses of peaty upland, which resembles the Highland landscape. Their settlement histories begin to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Kuijt. William Donaruma.

Migration is, above all else, a dissociative event that fundamentally challenges an individuals sense of home and identity. To a 19th century Irish islander living in America, a fishing net was not just an economic tool, or object, or asset; rather it provided a point of entry into the emotional landscape of memory, belonging, and place. Emigrates from rural settings traveled to America to establish better lives for themselves, their relatives, and their future offspring, often in new and very...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas P. Ames.

This paper focuses on the similarities of marginal development and population movement between 19th and early 20th century communities in Western Ireland and Southern Italy. Focusing specifically on the local development of historically marginalized communities in South-West Co. Mayo, Ireland against that of the San Pasquale Valley in Calabria, Italy, this paper investigates narratives of state-sponsored marginalization in these two disparate locations, and traces the entanglements between...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Shakour.

Scholars acknowledge that residential practices changed throughout 19-20th century Irish coastal villages,  Little research, however, has explored these residential changes from the conceptual frameworks of the Irish famine and consequential social upheaval. This paper explores 19th and 20th century social and residential history of Westquarter, Inishbofin, Co. Galway, Ireland. Centered on village residential changes, I track concurrent patterns of continuity, relocation and migration of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William L Donaruma. Ian Kuijt. Sarah Seaberg.

The post 1820 wooden barns of the American mid-west are both physical structures, made of large beams, pegs and stone foundations, and silent witnesses to the dynamic interface between local, national and global social and economic changes.  Drawing upon research in rural Indiania, this presentation explores the interface of regional historical research, personal interviews, and visual recording, to explore the process and potential contributions of documentary filmmaking in narrating local...