Dr Oona Frawley
Biography
She has supervised students working on transnational literature, trauma studies, and ecocriticism, and is currently supervising projects on trauma, identity and ethics in mid-20th century Irish writing; on contemporary Irish fiction; and on e-waste in literature. She also supervises creative writing PhDs (fiction and creative non-fiction) and would welcome proposals in her academic research fields and in creative writing.
Oona is also a creative writer. A Hennessy Award nominee, her first novel, Flight (2014), was the first publication of the acclaimed Tramp Press and was nominated for an Irish Book Award and a Literary Fiction Award. A new book of creative non-fiction, This Interim Time, will be published by The Lilliput Press in April 2025. She is represented by Brian Langan of The Storyline Agency (https://www.storylineagency.com/).
Research Interests
I work in several areas: Irish Studies, Memory Studies, ecocriticism, and 'global' fiction, with a particular interest in fiction of Australia and New Zealand.
My work in Irish Studies has examined Irish literature's representation of 'nature' and place, tracing the ways in which that representation has been linked to nostalgia for a perceived lost past; this nostalgia has regularly been linked to periods of cultural and social upheaval. Irish Pastoral considered the 'nostalgic mode' in medieval and early modern literature before turning to the literature of the Irish Revival and beyond. Authors examined include Spenser, Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Heaney, and Boland.
My work on nostalgia as a form of memory led to the Memory Ireland series, a four-volume project that brought together over 60 contributors to define the field of Memory Studies in an Irish context, looking at the relationship between history, memory and modernity (Volume 1); diaspora and memory practice (Volume 2); what I term two 'cruxes of memory', the Famine and the Troubles (Volume 3); and James Joyce's representation of the Irish past as well as his position in Irish cultural memory (Volume 4).
Recent work turned specifically to the issue of gender in relation to memory, with the volume Women and the Decade of Commemorations analysing the representation of women in the revolutionary period and their subsequent remembrance or forgetting.
My current research project looks at literature of Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States for the ways in which land has been commodified and/ or treated as 'waste' as a result of colonial practice. Drawing together my interests in ecocriticism and memory, the project seeks to provide a comparative take on 'post-colonial ecocriticism' in English-speaking countries. A monograph entitled Extractivist Narratives focusing on Australia is fully drafted.
As a creative writer, I am working on three projects. Deathbeds and Birthdays (at press) is a book of creative non-fiction on grief, loss and love. The Fabric Store and Other Shops, another work of creative non-fiction, seeks to narrate 1980s and '90s New York from the perspective of a series of commercial spaces. All the Places I Was Not Born is a fictional version of my parents' lives as immigrants in the United States prior to my birth.
Edited Book
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2021) Women and the Decade of Commemorations. Indiana, USA: Indiana University Press, | |
| 2018 | Marguerite Corporaal, Oona Frawley, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald (Ed.). (2018) The Great Irish Famine: Visual and Material Culture. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, [Link] | |
| 2014 | Oona Frawley and Katherine O'Callaghan (Ed.). (2014) Memory Ireland Volume 4: James Joyce and cultural memory. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, | |
| 2012 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2012) Memory Ireland Volume 2: Diaspora and Memory Practices. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, | |
| 2011 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2011) New Dubliners (Chinese translation ). Taipei, Taiwan: Bookman Books, Ltd, | |
| 2010 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2010) Memory Ireland Volume 1: History and Modernity. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, | |
| 2005 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2005) Selected Essays of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Dublin: New Island Books, | |
| 2005 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2005) New Dubliners. Dublin: New Island Books, | |
| 2004 | Oona Frawley (Ed.). (2004) A New & Complex Sensation: Essays on Joyce's Dubliners. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, |
Book Chapter
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Frawley (2024) 'Split Selves and Double Consciousness in Recent Irish Fiction' In: Race in Irish Literature and Culture. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071802.015 | |
| 2022 | Frawley (2022) ''Heatwave'' In: A Little Unsteadily Into the Light. Dublin : New Island Books. | |
| 2018 | Oona Frawley (2018) 'Ireland and Memory Studies' In: Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature. Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press. [Link] | |
| 2015 | Oona Frawley (2015) 'Cow Tipping' In: The Hennessy Book of Irish Fiction 2005-2015. Dublin : New Island. | |
| 2014 | Frawley O. (2014) 'Cruxes in Irish Cultural Memory: The Famine and the Troubles' In: Memory Ireland Volume 3: The Famine and the Troubles. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2014 | Oona Frawley (2014) 'The Boarding House' In: Dubliners 100. Dublin : Tramp Press. | |
| 2014 | Frawley O. (2014) 'James Joyce, Cultural Memory, and Irish Studies' In: Memory Ireland Volume 4: James Joyce and Cultural Memory. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2012 | Frawley O. (2012) 'Memory Practices' In: Memory Ireland Volume 2: Diaspora and Memory Practices. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2012 | Oona Frawley (2012) 'Diaspora' In: Memory Ireland Volume 2: Diaspora and Memory Practices. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2011 | Dr Oona Frawley (2011) '‘Irish and Australian Historical Fiction: National Narration in Global Postcolonial Contexts’' In: Katie Holmes, Stuart Ward and Mark Finnane(Eds.). Exhuming Passions: the Pressures of the Past in Ireland and Australia. Dublin : Irish Academic Press. | |
| 2010 | Frawley O. (2010) 'Toward a theory of cultural memory in an Irish postcolonial context' In: Memory Ireland Volume 1: History and Modernity. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2010 | Oona Frawley (2010) 'Introduction' In: Memory Ireland Volume 1: History and Modernity. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press. | |
| 2009 | Frawley, Oona (2009) 'The Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea' In: PJ Mathews(Eds.). The Cambridge Companion to JM Synge. Cambridge : Cambridge UP. | |
| 2008 | Dr Oona Frawley (2008) '‘Kavanagh and the Irish Pastoral Tradition’' In: Stan Smith(Eds.). Patrick Kavanagh. Dublin : Irish Academic Press. | |
| 2008 | Dr Oona Frawley (2008) 'Colm Toíbin and Cultural Memory' In: Paul Delaney(Eds.). Colm Toíbin: Reading Ambiguities. Dublin : Liffey Press. | |
| 2002 | Dr Oona Frawley (2002) '‘Yeats, Synge, and the Inheritance of Nostalgia’' In: Karen Vandevelde(Eds.). New Voices in Irish Criticism 3. Dublin : Four Courts. |
Peer Reviewed Journal
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Frawley, O (2017) 'Edmund Spenser and Transhistorical Memory in Ireland'. Irish University Review, 47 . [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2013 | Frawley, O (2013) 'Global civil war and post-9/11 discourse in The Wasted Vigil'. Textual Practice, 27 :439-457. [DOI] [Full-Text] | |
| 2013 | Dr Oona Frawley (2013) '‘Global Civil War, Colonialism and Terrorist Discourse in The Wasted Vigil’'. Textual Practice, 46 . [Full-Text] | |
| 2008 | Dr Oona Frawley (2008) 'Spensers Trace'. New Hibernia Review, 12 . [Full-Text] | |
| 2007 | Dr Oona Frawley (2007) '‘Possession: Imagining Landscapes’'. Irish Journal of Anthropology, Special Issue . |
Other Journal
Conference Contribution
Book Review
Newspaper Articles
Video recording / TV
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Frawley; Neumann (2024) Talent Development Show - Interview with Udo Neumann. [Video recording / TV] [Link] |