If Margaret Kelleher's energy and enthusiasm endure, the "first comprehensive history of Irish literature in both Irish and English" will be published in 2004.
Cambridge University Press has commissioned Kelleher, an English lecturer in NUI Maynooth, as the English-language editor of the proposed two-volume book, while Professor Philip O'Leary, of Boston College, will be the Irish-language editor. It seems somewhat ironic that the English-language editor is an Irish woman while the Irish-language editor is an American, albeit the possessor of a PhD in Celtic studies and a fluent modern, Irish speaker.
This type of Irish-American juxtaposition runs through Kelleher's career. She researched her PhD thesis, which grew into the book The Feminisation of Famine, in Boston College, rather than at home. The distance lent her perspective, she says. The book includes a comparison of Irish Famine literature with the literature of the Bengal famine. "This was something I couldn't have done in Ireland in terms of resources. There was also an openness to comparison studies there."
The four-year fellowship to Boston College provided her with "decent financial resources, more library resources, more information regarding publication routes and more access to conferences. Postgraduate education in the US is professionalised, including teaching skills. Part of the education is a preparation for the job market. There is a sense in the Irish system that job prospects are incidental. There is almost a tendency to brush it aside."
Private US colleges, such as Boston College and Notre Dame, have become powerful players in the Irish education scene, with exchange programmes, fellowships, scholarships and summer schools, she says. While Irish colleges can benefit from the US perspective (and learn from their openness to inter-disciplinary studies), these are private colleges, with a different ethos to the public education system here, says Kelleher.
"We should be aware of this. The funding sometimes comes from a very specific quarter of Irish-America and the constituency they represent is occasionally narrow." These colleges are playing a welcome role at present in the Irish education sector, but it's worth thinking about future directions, she warns.
Back in Ireland in 1990, after her fellowship, Kelleher became one of two full-time staff in the English department of Mater Dei College, Dublin. "I was teaching everything from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison. That experience was invaluable and led to my interest in the Leaving Cert syllabus."
She recently edited a book of essays dealing with the new English syllabus, Making It New. "The third-level sector tends to neglect the teaching profession. We forget very quickly that these are our graduates. It's short-sighted, as they are also forming our next intake. I got a lot of positive feedback to the book, much of it from teachers who were pleased that third-level had noticed their existence." She commends the efforts made by committed English teachers: "Introducing the new syllabus has involved a huge amount of work by teachers. But this hasn't been widely recognised."
The advent of this syllabus presents challenges at third as well as second level. "Students will have been exposed to a much wider range of material - autobiography, travel narrative . . . The new syllabus is also more open to comparative studies. We in third level may find well find ourselves a tad old-fashioned when it comes to student's expectations. Third-level departments have introduced a wider range of texts, but there is an impetus to do even more."
She does have some reservations about the new syllabus: "Students are encouraged to develop their own opinions, and articulate their own responses. But my concern is that this may be done at the expense of fact. Opinions should not be at the expense of information."
Teaching in NUI Maynooth since 1996, Kelleher says the English department is flexible in its approach to staff, allowing them opportunities to spend time on research.
"The department head, Professor Brian Cogrove, brings an openness and encouragement towards research. There are two things that are distinctive about working in NUI Maynooth: the number of students returning to education after long periods away and the fact that many students are the first in the family to go on to third level.
"The mature students are almost all women who have raised their families. From the point of view of teaching, it's wonderful. The learning environment is very exciting. However, many (mature students) will encounter difficulties in first year. They tend to be very unconfident, but the progress they make is startling."
By the end of third year, mature students are hugely represented among those getting first-class honours, she says.
She is defensive about the college's high dropout rates, which have received much adverse media attention recently. "Figures are a very blunt instrument. We have students for whom coming to education was a very brave decision, sometimes, a very difficult decision." These students may decide to leave before graduation but that may be a positive decision for them, she says. "Often, they are making a healthy choice based on life issues or economic needs. It is incumbent on us to have flexible entry and exit points."
The system should allow these students to leave, with, for instance, two year's third-level education, and be seen as successes rather than failures, she argues. A system should be created that would credit them with that experience and allowed them to "bank it" for future use. Ireland is lagging behind many other countries in this regard, she says.
Kelleher and her sister, now an accident-and-emergency consultant in University Hospital, Cork, are aware of the problems faced by students who are the first in the family to head for college - as they were the pioneers in their family. She is by no means unique in NUI Maynooth, where a substantial proportion of staff are also the first generation to attend college.
Sitting in the comfortable common room in NUI Maynooth's arts block, Kelleher is relentlessly, engagingly enthusiastic about her subject, her job (teaching women's writing, Irish literature, principally 19th century, and some American literature) the college, but, when it comes to her latest project, she practically sparkles.
The planned two-volume history of Irish literature, to be published by Cambridge University Press, will involve 30 contributors.
"It starts at the beginnings of literature in Ireland so it is chapter four before English-language literature begins. For the first time, an American student interested in Irish studies will be able to read about Seamus Heaney's use of early Irish literature and find out about this work in the same two volumes. Irish- and English- language literature will sit next to each other, with 18th-century Aisling poetry succeeded by 18th-century poetry in English."
