This collection raises incisive questions about the links between the postcolonial carceral system, which thrived in Ireland after 1922, and larger questions of gender, sexuality, identity, class, race and religion. This kind of intersectional history is vital not only in looking back but, in looking forward, to identify the ways in which structural callousness still marks Irish society. Essays include historical analysis of the ways in which women and children were incarcerated in residential institutions, Ireland's Direct Provision system, the policing of female bodily autonomy though legislation on prostitution and abortion, in addition to the legacies of the Magdalen laundries. This collection also considers how artistic practice and commemoration have acted as vital interventions in social attitudes and public knowledge, helping to create knowledge and re-shape social attitudes towards this history.

Reviews

'..an absorbing and insightful examination of one of the most traumatic and shameful legacies of Ireland's past. an invaluable resource for anyone interested in understanding how such institutions came into being
and the harm they wreaked on those women who spent time in them.'
Studies

Foreword: Memory, violence, and the body - Marianne Hirsch
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: Commemoration, gender, and the postcolonial carceral state - Miriam Haughton, Mary McAuliffe, and Emilie Pine

Part I Witnessing and remembering: Magdalen Laundries
1 Public performance and reclaiming space: Waterford's Magdalen Laundry - Jennifer O'Mahoney, Kate McCarthy, and Jonathan Culleton
2 'A document of truth?' Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the McAleese Report - Lucy Simpson-Kilbane
3 Unremembered in life and death: funeral and burial practices in Ireland's Magdalen Laundries - Nathalie Sebbane
4 Witnessing: testimonial knowledge as ongoing memory transmission - Audrey Rousseau
5 Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed in Brazil: resonances and reflections - Alinne Fernandes

Part II Parallel histories: then and now
6 From Tuam to Birmingham: a case study of children's homes in Ireland and the UK - Sarah-Anne Buckley and Lorraine Grimes
7 Reflections on Ireland's 'home(s)': shame, stigma, and grievability - Clara Fischer
8 'He'd never have gotten a job like that if he ' d stayed with me' - the uneasy comedy of Philomena - Mary McGill
9 'That stuff is FOI-able . and it could be used against us if someone takes a case': unlawful adoption in the past and the present - how much has changed? - Conall Ó Fátharta
10 Contract, the state, and the Magdalene Laundries - Máiréad Enright
11 Who is protecting who and what? The Irish state and the death of women who sell sex: a historical and contemporary analysis - Eilís Ward
12 Homing in on the states we are in - Speaking of IMELDA
13 Ireland's Direct Provision Centres: our past and our present - Vukasín Nedeljkovic

Index

Editors

Miriam Haughton is Director of Postgraduate Studies in Drama, Theatre and Performance at NUI Galway

Mary McAuliffe is Assistant Professor in Gender Studies at University College Dublin

Emilie Pine is Professor of Modern Drama at University College Dublin