College of Charleston Assistant History Professor Cara Delay, has received a Fulbright Scholarship to research and write Desolate Journeys: Reproduction and Motherhood in Ireland 1950-2000.  The project investigates women’s experiences of reproduction, contraception, abortion, and motherhood in the late twentieth-century Ireland. 

Delay’s Fulbright Scholarship will enable her to travel to and live in Dublin, Ireland hosted by the Humanities Center at the University College Dublin for the 2012-13 academic year. While there, she will conduct archival research, oral histories, and organize courses and seminars in Dublin.

Desolate Journeys interrogates how and why women’s bodies and motherhood have generated controversy in recent Irish history.  It argues that the decades from 1950 to 2000 marked key moments of change within the Irish nation. The project utilizes a variety of sources including oral histories, court records, newspapers, autobiographies, and life-writings to validate Delay’s research.

“I will demonstrate that women’s bodies were and are central to debates about Ireland’s place within Europe, as well as to definitions of Irishness,” Delay says. “I hope to illuminate the importance of women and gender to dialogues about morality, purity, and the Irish nation itself.”

Desolate Journeys will be written and submitted for publication by the summer of 2014.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” With this goal as a starting point, the Fulbright Program has provided almost 310,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

For more information, contact Cara Delay at 843.953.7597.