Gavin M Foster
Biographic Data
| ID | 5141384 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gavin M Foster |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gavin M |
| FAMILY NAME | Foster |
| SIGNATURE | FOSTER G M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8529-0753 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Judith, Éowyn, and the Alloying Effects of Sexualized Violence
Critics have argued that J. R. R. Tolkien uses his northern heroic characters to fix the broken heroism of Old English characters. However, I suggest that Tolkien does not pursue the same motivation in constructing his heroines. Rather, women demonstrate a distinct form of “alloyed” northern heroism due to their experiences of marginalization. When we compare the heroic actions of the Old English Judith to Tolkien’s Éowyn, while demonstrating nor…
Patterns of Irish Civil War Memory in Later-Generation Oral Histories
No phase of Ireland's 1913–23 revolution has proven as challenging for social remembrance as the 1922–3 civil war. While the conflict structured party politics and fuelled political agendas for decades, its toxic memory was widely regarded as best forgotten. Yet, as Beiner has argued, even ‘when communities try . . . to forget discomfiting historical episodes’, they still ‘retain muted recollections’. Drawing on oral history interviews, this arti…
The Varieties of Social Conflict in the Civil War
With few exceptions, historical narratives of the Irish Civil War tend to be devoted almost exclusively to political developments and/or to the military contest between pro- and anti-treaty parties. While obviously critical for understanding the conflict, this focus on the more clearly delineated political and military arenas has obscured additional lines of fracture and deeper clashes of material interest in Irish society that also exercised an …
Winners and Losers: Financial Victimization and the Economics of Animosity after the Civil War
During the tumultuous twilight of Ireland’s revolution many thousands of nationalist activists were forced to grapple with a similar cluster of dilemmas, choices, and challenges concerning not only the country’s destiny and the future of the republican struggle, but also their own individual trajectories in the uncertain post-revolutionary years ahead. Economic considerations necessarily loomed large for many activists in this fraught period of t…
Re-approaching the Social Dimensions of the Irish Civil War
Between the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish Truce of July 1921, the nationalist project in Ireland reached its apotheosis with the emergence of an effective mass movement for an Irish Republic that achieved a remarkable degree of unity even as it accommodated a diverse collection of interests. Six months into the fragile truce with Britain, the Sinn Féin movement (as it was known) began to fracture as differences within it arose over the A…
IRA Emigration and the Social Outcomes of the Civil War
In July 1923, roughly two months after the IRA abandoned its armed campaign against the Free State, Éamon de Valera issued a defiant statement on behalf of the anti-treaty cause. ‘There will be no “Wild Geese”... this time’, he vowed. ‘The soldiers of the Republic have been ordered to live and die in Ireland, and they will obey. Living or dead, we mean to establish the right of Irish Republicans to live and work openly for the complete liberation…
Pro-Treaty Social Attitudes and Perceptions of Republicans
When assessed in terms of casualty figures or the duration and scale of fighting, the Irish Civil War scarcely measures up to many other countries’ experiences of civil war. 1 But while hardly prominent in the annals of military history, the 1922–3 fight between Irish nationalists stands out for the ferocity of the invective and partisan rhetoric that accompanied it. 2 The notorious intensity of enmities between ‘Staters’ and ‘Irregulars’, among …
Republican Social Attitudes and Perceptions of the Free State
The preceding chapter examined the social attitudes, animosities, and perceptions that underlay pro-treaty critiques of the republican movement during the civil war. This chapter will take up the other side of the treaty split by examining the social content of anti-treaty or republican discourses in the civil war, particularly concerning how republicans viewed their opponents in the conflict. As with the pro-treaty camp, issues of nationalist le…
Social and Political Meanings of Clothing Pre- to Post-Revolution
The preceding chapters demonstrated that the partisan animosities and perceptions that defined pro- and anti-treaty discourses were heavily colored by divergent social outlooks and assumptions, but crucially, that these had more to do with contested measures and notions of status or respectability than with rigid socioeconomic conceptions of class. According to Weberian theory, social status is ‘conditioned as well as expressed through a specific…
State Repression in the Civil War’s Aftermath
The half decade between the ambiguous end of the civil war and the rise of de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party in the late 1920s was a deeply traumatic period for the losers of the conflict. In his oration at the 1924 Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, republican propagandist Brian O’Higgins spoke of ‘the cesspools of calumniation ... the thorny ways of poverty ... the torture-hells called prisons and the bitterness of exile’ that ‘republican idea…
Epilogue
In the summer of 1973 the Merriman Summer School in County Clare organized a series of public lectures on ‘Eamon de Valera and His Age’, an appropriate theme given the elderly President’s retirement from public life a few months earlier. Among the speakers on the programme was (anti-treaty) IRA veteran and fixture of the Irish left, Peadar O’Donnell. In ‘A Social Commentary on the Age of de Valera’, O’Donnell opined that, with the old controversi…
The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict
The Irish Civil War and Society sheds new light on the social currents shaping the Irish Civil War, from the 'politics of respectability' behind animosities and discourses; to the intersection of soci
The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict
The Irish Civil War and Society sheds new light on the social currents shaping the Irish Civil War, from the 'politics of respectability' behind animosities and discourses; to the intersection of soci
The Varieties of Social Conflict in the Civil War
With few exceptions, historical narratives of the Irish Civil War tend to be devoted almost exclusively to political developments and/or to the military contest between pro- and anti-treaty parties. While obviously critical for understanding the conflict, this focus on the more clearly delineated political and military arenas has obscured additional lines of fracture and deeper clashes of material interest in Irish society that also exercised an …
Winners and Losers: Financial Victimization and the Economics of Animosity after the Civil War
During the tumultuous twilight of Ireland’s revolution many thousands of nationalist activists were forced to grapple with a similar cluster of dilemmas, choices, and challenges concerning not only the country’s destiny and the future of the republican struggle, but also their own individual trajectories in the uncertain post-revolutionary years ahead. Economic considerations necessarily loomed large for many activists in this fraught period of t…
Re-approaching the Social Dimensions of the Irish Civil War
Between the 1916 Easter Rising and the Anglo-Irish Truce of July 1921, the nationalist project in Ireland reached its apotheosis with the emergence of an effective mass movement for an Irish Republic that achieved a remarkable degree of unity even as it accommodated a diverse collection of interests. Six months into the fragile truce with Britain, the Sinn Féin movement (as it was known) began to fracture as differences within it arose over the A…
IRA Emigration and the Social Outcomes of the Civil War
In July 1923, roughly two months after the IRA abandoned its armed campaign against the Free State, Éamon de Valera issued a defiant statement on behalf of the anti-treaty cause. ‘There will be no “Wild Geese”... this time’, he vowed. ‘The soldiers of the Republic have been ordered to live and die in Ireland, and they will obey. Living or dead, we mean to establish the right of Irish Republicans to live and work openly for the complete liberation…
Pro-Treaty Social Attitudes and Perceptions of Republicans
When assessed in terms of casualty figures or the duration and scale of fighting, the Irish Civil War scarcely measures up to many other countries’ experiences of civil war. 1 But while hardly prominent in the annals of military history, the 1922–3 fight between Irish nationalists stands out for the ferocity of the invective and partisan rhetoric that accompanied it. 2 The notorious intensity of enmities between ‘Staters’ and ‘Irregulars’, among …
Republican Social Attitudes and Perceptions of the Free State
The preceding chapter examined the social attitudes, animosities, and perceptions that underlay pro-treaty critiques of the republican movement during the civil war. This chapter will take up the other side of the treaty split by examining the social content of anti-treaty or republican discourses in the civil war, particularly concerning how republicans viewed their opponents in the conflict. As with the pro-treaty camp, issues of nationalist le…
Social and Political Meanings of Clothing Pre- to Post-Revolution
The preceding chapters demonstrated that the partisan animosities and perceptions that defined pro- and anti-treaty discourses were heavily colored by divergent social outlooks and assumptions, but crucially, that these had more to do with contested measures and notions of status or respectability than with rigid socioeconomic conceptions of class. According to Weberian theory, social status is ‘conditioned as well as expressed through a specific…
State Repression in the Civil War’s Aftermath
The half decade between the ambiguous end of the civil war and the rise of de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party in the late 1920s was a deeply traumatic period for the losers of the conflict. In his oration at the 1924 Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, republican propagandist Brian O’Higgins spoke of ‘the cesspools of calumniation ... the thorny ways of poverty ... the torture-hells called prisons and the bitterness of exile’ that ‘republican idea…
Epilogue
In the summer of 1973 the Merriman Summer School in County Clare organized a series of public lectures on ‘Eamon de Valera and His Age’, an appropriate theme given the elderly President’s retirement from public life a few months earlier. Among the speakers on the programme was (anti-treaty) IRA veteran and fixture of the Irish left, Peadar O’Donnell. In ‘A Social Commentary on the Age of de Valera’, O’Donnell opined that, with the old controversi…
The Irish Civil War and Society: Politics, Class, and Conflict
The Irish Civil War and Society sheds new light on the social currents shaping the Irish Civil War, from the 'politics of respectability' behind animosities and discourses; to the intersection of soci
Patterns of Irish Civil War Memory in Later-Generation Oral Histories
No phase of Ireland's 1913–23 revolution has proven as challenging for social remembrance as the 1922–3 civil war. While the conflict structured party politics and fuelled political agendas for decades, its toxic memory was widely regarded as best forgotten. Yet, as Beiner has argued, even ‘when communities try . . . to forget discomfiting historical episodes’, they still ‘retain muted recollections’. Drawing on oral history interviews, this arti…
Judith, Éowyn, and the Alloying Effects of Sexualized Violence
Critics have argued that J. R. R. Tolkien uses his northern heroic characters to fix the broken heroism of Old English characters. However, I suggest that Tolkien does not pursue the same motivation in constructing his heroines. Rather, women demonstrate a distinct form of “alloyed” northern heroism due to their experiences of marginalization. When we compare the heroic actions of the Old English Judith to Tolkien’s Éowyn, while demonstrating nor…
Irish and British Studies (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Spanish Civil War (9 works) · History (8 works) · Irish (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Political economy (6 works) · Treaty (6 works)