Green Pastures

After a Successful Start, UM’s Irish Studies Program Looks to Stay Ahead of the Competition

Story by Chad Dundas

Traolach Ó Ríordáin, UM’s director of Irish studies, and his daughter, Róisín-Marie.

Growing up in Seattle, Constance Shepardson never gave a second thought to The University of Montana.

When she imagined herself getting a degree, it was always from a cozy, private liberal arts school like Reed in Portland, Ore., Whitman in her home state of Washington, or Iowa’s Cornell College. She already knew her ultimate goal was to attend graduate school in library science, and Shepardson was looking for the undergraduate experience that would best prepare her for that future.

“Honestly, when I first started looking I had no interest in going to a big state school,” she says. “I wanted the small, private, heavy-duty four years to set me up for grad school.”

While casting around for an institution that would accept the college credit she’d earned in high school, however, she unexpectedly found herself perusing UM’s course catalog. There, the fourth-generation Irish American made a discovery that would significantly alter her plans.

“When I saw that Montana offered Irish Studies, it was a game-changer,” says Shepardson, who explains that pride in their heritage has always been strong in her family. “When I realized it was a full-fledged minor with the language fully integrated and an emphasis both on the history and the modern, I was just blown away. How did I not realize this existed before?”

She didn’t realize it because even today, UM’s young—but rapidly growing—Irish Studies program is one of the school’s best-kept secrets.

What began with one instructor teaching the Irish language to thirteen pupils in 2006 has grown to include around 200 students. About fifty of those are pursuing the full-scale eighteen-credit minor, which folds classes on language, history, literature, music, and dance into a cohesive field that organizers say make it a one-of-a-kind experience for scholars.

“There are very few universities that teach the Irish language,” says Traolach

Ó Ríordáin, UM’s director of Irish Studies. “You have kind of a unique program here because it embraces all elements of the Irish culture. You have the Gaelic culture and you have the Anglo culture of Ireland. You have the music and you have the dance, so you have the performing arts involved as well. That sets us apart as unique in a national context.”

That distinctive feel gives the Irish Studies program almost unmatched potential for growth, Ó Ríordáin says. It is currently the only program of its kind west of the Mississippi and—along with the University of Notre Dame—one of just two nationally that offers students a minor with an emphasis on the Irish language. UM’s program also is the only one in the country located at a state school.

“It’ll cost you fifty grand a year to go to Notre Dame,” Ó Ríordáin says. “It’ll cost you fifteen here. This makes our program relevant on a national basis because if Mary up in Philadelphia wants to study the sciences or business but wants to pursue her passion for Irish language, literature, music, and dance, well, where’s she going to do that? There’s only one university where she can do it at an affordable rate, and that’d be The University of Montana.”

The program’s uniqueness is not just limited to the classroom, either. With a close relationship to community groups such as the Friends of Irish Studies, the Irish Studies program regularly sponsors public arts events like dance recitals, concerts, theater productions, and lectures by guest speakers. In 2008 it also began a partnership with the federal court in Missoula, offering an exchange program that gives Irish law students the opportunity to not only study our legal system on American soil, but to actually intern in a working courthouse. As far as Ó Ríordáin knows,

Many Irish relocated to Butte to work in the mines in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Photo courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives

that exchange is the only one of its kind in the nation.

All of this comes together to make the University’s Irish Studies program distinctly different, and that, Ó Ríordáin says, could make it a powerful tool in attracting students who might not otherwise have considered UM as an option.

Students like Constance Shepardson.

Deep Roots

At forty-seven years old, Ó Ríordáin is a big man, with a thick shock of black hair and an even thicker Irish brogue. His knowledge and energy make him a charismatic speaker, and dual degrees in literature and language make him a formidable academic. He quotes Gaelic poetry and song in conversation, and ask him one question about Irish Studies and he might talk for twenty minutes without interruption. In short, he’s about as effective a spokesman for the fledgling program as UM could hope to have.

Eamon de Valera, center, president of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic, visited Butte in 1919 to encourage support for Ireland’s fight for independence.
Photo courtesy of Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives

“He’s an extremely bright kid,” says Pat Byrne, a Missoula Realtor and member of the Friends of Irish Studies, who Ó Ríordáin calls “Uncle P” and describes as instrumental in getting the program off the ground. “I think he oftentimes takes on more than he can chew, but he’s moving this program ahead very rapidly. His knowledge of Irish history and literature is just outstanding. We are very, very, very lucky to have him here.”

A native of Cork City near Ireland’s southwestern coast,

Ó Ríordáin spent time teaching and studying in better-known Irish-American hotbeds such as Boston and San Francisco before coming to Missoula. He now says there’s something distinctive about the spirit of the Montana Irish—who flocked to cities such as Butte and Anaconda during the hard-rock mining heydays of the late 1800s and early 1900s—which makes the state perfectly suited to host a comprehensive Irish Studies program.

Irish dancer Brian Cunningham performs at the University Theatre.

“The narrative that underpins the Irish in Montana is a pretty cohesive one,” Ó Ríordáin says. “There’s certain things about the Montana identity, about Montana culture. You have this shared heritage—a kind of very unifying and uniform historical narrative—and it has a very strong Gaelic component.”

The mining industry in Butte and Anaconda began its decline after World War II, and with the invention of open-pit mining during the 1950s, many of the old ethnic neighborhoods in Butte were lost. When the Irish decamped from those traditional cultural strongholds, they spread their influence to towns such as Great Falls, Helena, and Missoula.

Then in the 1990s, Professor David Emmons put UM on the Irish studies map when he published his seminal book The Butte Irish and began teaching classes on Irish history. The Montana Gaelic Cultural Society was founded in 1997, and the success of its Irish language, music, and dance classes over the next decade prompted Byrne and other members to approach the University about the possibility of creating an Irish Studies program.

UM officials were interested, and Byrne’s connections within the Irish government made it possible for several dignitaries to visit Montana during the next few years. All of them were excited about the idea of establishing an Irish Studies program on campus. The University then struck up an exchange program with Ireland’s University College Cork, and in May 2006 Irish President Mary McAleese visited UM to help announce the official launch of the program.

Her endorsement came along with a $40,000 grant from the Irish government, and soon after Friends of Irish Studies was incorporated to help fund the program. During its first five years Irish Studies has hatched classes on a bevy of subjects, such as English, history, and foreign language, as well as the schools of Music and Theatre & Dance. So far, attracting students to fill those classrooms has not been a problem.

“We got it going, and now I believe it’s one of the fastest growing, if not the fastest growing, programs on campus,” Byrne says. “It just seems to be mushrooming.”

Eyes on the Future

Four years after beginning her search for the right school, Shepardson is now a senior at UM, preparing to receive her degree in English literature with a minor in Irish Studies. She may not have gotten the small, private-school feel she was looking for in her college experience, but wound up with something that might be even more important to her: the chance to study her Irish heritage as completely and comprehensively as perhaps any undergraduate in the country.

“I think infectious is the best word for it,” she says. “That’s one of the things about studying an entire culture. You start to realize there are so many things you want to learn about it and there are so many different aspects of it. It’s not just literature, and it’s not just history. It’s a living, breathing culture.”

After starting out intending to focus her studies only on language and literature, Shepardson says she branched out to history and even some music and dance. In January she took part in a two-week tour of Ireland organized by UM’s Davidson Honors College. Now she plans to make good on her dream of going to grad school in library science.

“What’s really important about the [Irish Studies] program is that it is so universal,” she says. “There is so much potential in the program with the language and the culture that exists in Montana. The people who are in the program are always really excited about it, always giving 110 percent.”

Bagpipers entertain the crowd gathered for the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Butte.
Photo courtesy of Traolach O’ Riordain

So far the program has exceeded all expectations,

Ó Ríordáin says, and the next few years will be critical to ensuring it stays that way. To this point, the program’s biggest strength has been its uniqueness, but that will change as more universities begin to recognize UM’s success and follow suit.

“We’re ahead of the posse now,” Ó Ríordáin says. “But two years from now, will we still be ahead of the posse? Unless we get the word out there and get ourselves established in the pole position pretty soon, we’re going to have challengers.”

For one thing, Ó Ríordáin would like to see the Irish Studies minor expanded into a full-blown major. To do that, UM will need to expand its offerings to include more Irish-centric classes in more disciplines. Ó Ríordáin says he would also like to do more outreach to Montana high school students, in addition to the Irish language classes the program currently offers online through the Montana Digital Academy.

Accomplishing any or all of that will take funding, obviously, something that is always a challenge. It’ll also take more community outreach, more marketing, and a concerted effort to keep UM’s program a step ahead of the competition.

“Hopefully when everything gets done, what we’d like to see here is a national center of Irish and Irish Gaelic studies,” Ó Ríordáin says, “so that anybody who wants to learn the Irish language can come to Montana. When they want to study Irish music, they can come to Montana. When they want to study Irish dance, literature, or history, they can come to Montana. We could provide it all.”

For more information or to get involved in the Irish Studies program, go online to www.cas.umt.edu/irishstudies or

www.friendsofirishstudies.org.