The essays in this volume examine diverse aspects of the Irish-American community during the postwar years and cover both the immigrant community within the US which witnessed a surge in immigration from Ireland and the subsequent expressions of an Irish identity among later generation ethnics. Essays consider both social and political history, such as ethnic anti-communism and American responses to Partition, and significant representations of Irish life in popular culture, such as The Last Hurrah (1956) or The Quiet Man (1952). The study shows that the Irish-American community was lively and, in many ways, dissimilar from mainstream American life in this period. The supposedly deracinated descendants of earlier immigrants were nonetheless well aware that the larger culture perceived something distinctive about being Irish, and throughout this period they actively sought to define often in deflected ways just what that distinctiveness could mean.

About the AuthorsIntroduction - Matthew J. O'Brien and James Silas RogersPART ONE: THE SEARCH FOR CONTINUITIES1 Dance Halls of Romance and Culchies in Tuxedos: Irish Traditional Music in America and the 1950s - Gearoid A" hAllmhurain 2 Playing 'Irish' Sport on Baseball's Hallowed Ground: The 1947 All-Ireland Gaelic Football Final - Sara Brady 3 'The Irish Movement in this Country is Now Moribund': The Anti-Partition Campaign of 1948- 51 in the United States - Troy D. DavisPART TWO: RESPONSES TO SOCIAL CHANGE4 'Hibernians on the March': Irish-American Ethnicity and the Cold War - Matthew J. O'Brien5 Shamrocks and Segregation: The Persistence of Upper-Class Irish Ethnicity in Beverly Hills, Chicago - Margaret Lee6 Irish New Yorkers and the Puerto Rican Migration - Eileen Anderson 7 From 'Peace and Freedom' to 'Peace and Quiet': The Quiet Man as a Product of the 1950s Edward A. Hagan8 Ahead of Their Time: Irish-American Women Writers, 1945-1960 - Sally Barr EbestPART THREE: RE-ARTICULATING THE MEANINGS OF IRISHNESS9 Ireland as a Past Life: Bridey Murphy and Irish-American Tourism to Ireland, 1945-1960 - Stephanie Rains10 Ignorable Irishry: Leprechauns and Other Tropes of Irishness in Postwar American Popular Culture - James Silas Rogers11 Unnatural Law: William McGivern's Rogue Cops - Tony Tracy12 Beyond St. Malachi's, There is Nothing: Edward McSorley and the Persistence of Tradition - Christopher Shannon13 Present at the Creation: John V. Kelleher and the Emergence of Irish Studies in America - Charles Fanning