Irish Literature class supports Celtic Junction

By Callisto Martinez ’26

This semester, Professor Amy Elkins and students in her English-240: Irish Literature class are reminding us that Irish and Irish-American culture holds a more complex understanding of ‘home’ than what’s on the other side of the rainbow, or the Atlantic, for that matter. 

While planning out the Irish Literature course, Prof. Elkins knew that she wanted to implement a community-engaged learning component. In past iterations of the course, students had collaborated with Irish musicians and dance instructors, but this time, Prof. Elkins contacted the Irish consulate in Chicago for a community organization to serve. 

“The entire course was developed with [Celtic Junction’s Executive Director and Co-Founder] Natalie [Nugent O’Shea] to kind of think about their goals as an organization, what students might be able to contribute,” Prof. Elkins said. “…One thing she advocated for was an emergent pedagogy in terms of the service partnership, where we get the students in the room, we learn who they are …  and then we tailor the projects to the students in the room, but they are sort of targeted towards goals that the organization has.”

For many students, projects have entailed strengthening the Eoin McKiernan Library, which currently houses 5,400 books on Irish history and culture, as well as a plethora of oral histories, video recordings, and more. Prof. Elkins explained that projects look slightly different for everyone, but they all share the same goal: expanding access to Irish literature, history, and culture. 

“We’re kind of bridging academic research, archival research, and creating media that speaks to a really wide audience about Irish literature,” she said. “These various kinds of things that [students are] working on — everything from ecopoetry, to a really cool archival project on poetry pamphlets that the students are connecting, to zines by contemporary Irish zinemakers — they’re very cool projects.” 

English and Creative Writing major Viv Montgomery’s ’28 group is creating a study guide for one of the course texts. Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets is an anthology of contemporary Irish poets from across the globe who all hold “different relationships to Ireland,” according to Prof. Elkins. Viv’s group is creating a research guide based on Writing Home and the Irish diaspora and will interview one of the writers featured in the anthology. For Viv, the project has been much more than just a school assignment. 

“This class feels like a way to reconnect with my grandma,” Viv said. “It’s been[about10 years since she died, but in some way, I feel like I owe it to her to be more curious about her heritage because I wasn’t able to ask her those questions: What was it like growing up in Donegal? What was it like knowing that you and your cousins spoke different languages — because she only spoke English, but her cousins, just like over a hill, spoke only Irish. I think that this is a way to try and recreate that bridge.”

This class wasn’t Audrey Milk’s ’26 first time studying Irish culture, and it certainly won’t be her last. A history major and English and Creative Writing minor, Audrey studied abroad at Maynooth University in County Kildare, Ireland, and her history capstone focused on Irish American and Irish history. Next year, Audrey will be returning to County Kildare to pursue a master’s degree in Irish and local history at Maynooth University. 

Audrey’s projects include working with Dr. Elizabeth Stack, Celtic Junction’s director of education, to create informative social media posts about Irish history, book of the month posters for the Eoin McKiernan Library, and more mini research projects. 

“I grew up in a space where there really wasn’t a community and culture of anything, but seeing how passionate people can be about Irish culture in Minnesota has been so cool, after living in Ireland for study away,” Audrey said. “It’s helped me bring those things that felt like home in Ireland back here, and now I get to see how American culture has incorporated itself into these Irish American spaces, and bring that back [to Ireland] with me.”

A highlight for both Audrey and Viv was Kickin’ It Irish, Celtic Junction’s annual Irish dance and live music festival, which took place in March. On May 3rd, the Irish Literature class will return to Celtic Junction’s arts center to hear Gráinne Hunt, a queer, nu-folk singer-songwriter from Ireland, perform live. 

While this was the first iteration of an Irish literature class collaborating with Celtic Junction, it is Prof. Elkins’ last time teaching the class at Macalester. Next semester, Prof. Elkins will continue teaching literature at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Literature, Media, and Communications. The Words wishes her the best of luck on her future adventures and thanks her for all of her work in the English and Creative Writing department.