ARCHAEOLOGY & EUGENICS: Harvard, Celtic skulls and eugenics in de Valera’s Ireland

The Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland, 1932–6.   By Mairéad Carew The driving force behind the Harvard Archaeological Mission to Ireland was eugenics, now considered a pseudo-science and a variant of scientific racism. It was then regarded as the science of better breeding for human beings and had been established as a discipline in several … Read more

‘Everyone knows what blasphemy is’

Ireland and the history of blasphemy. By David Nash For much of the twentieth century, western governments believed either that blasphemy laws were long-dead fragments of a bygone age or that they simply sat quietly and unnoticed in dust-laden legal volumes away from the public gaze. Events at the end of the twentieth century indicated … Read more

‘Has he called you frigid lately?’

How women’s magazines handled sex and the Irish ‘guilt complex’ in the 1960s.   By Ciara Meehan Dr Martin Kennedy posed this question in his column for Woman’s Choice magazine in 1968. It was followed by another question, relating to intimacy during pregnancy: ‘How are you to keep him happy during these difficult months?’ The … Read more

‘A mixture of flattery and insult’

Women’s opposition to the 1937 Constitution. By Joyce Padbury The women’s campaign against the 1937 Constitution was a short and, in the end, unsuccessful intervention in a major political debate, though it did initially achieve amendments to some provisions of the draft document. The campaign is worth remembering as a lively articulation of feminist opinion … Read more