Introduction

Since the 150th anniversary of the Irish Famine in the 1990s, the Famine has been the subject of a remarkable commemorative boom, with more than one hundred public monuments newly constructed worldwide. Over the past decade Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald has completed the first large-scale documentation of worldwide Famine monuments, which includes examples erected in Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, the United States, Canada, and Australia. In this overview of her project, she discusses the significance of Famine commemoration -- its relationship to a visual culture of Famine representation, and the place of the Famine's memory in contemporary public space and discourse. This study addresses both community and national forms of commemoration and memorialization, investigating the business of their making, the iconography they draw from and create, and the narratives of their becoming.

Emily Mark-Fitzgerald

Originally from Los Angeles, Dr Mark-FitzGerald holds a BA in Art History and Spanish from the University of Southern California, an MA in Arts Administration from Indiana University and a PhD from University College Dublin. Since 2003 she has taught in UCD's School of Art History and Cultural Policy, where she was appointed Lecturer in 2008. She has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, African American Arts Institute of Indiana University, Art for Amnesty International, Lismore Castle Arts and Zero-G. She is the recipient of major fellowships from the US-Ireland Alliance (Mitchell Scholarship), Mellon Foundation/Social Science Research Council, Humanities Institute of Ireland, Royal Hibernian Academy and Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation. Dr Mark-FitzGerald speaks regularly and publishes on the subject of public art, memory and commemoration, museology and the visual culture of migration, and contemporary Irish and international art. Active also in the Irish arts and cultural sphere, she currently sits on the executive boards of the Irish Museums Association and Irish Theatre Magazine. Since 2002 she has lived and worked in Dublin.
 
Her monograph Commemorating the Irish Famine: Memory and the Monument is published by Liverpool University Press.