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  1. Ireland's Magdalen laundries and the nation's architecture of containment

    Smith, James M., 1966-
    Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, c2007.

    The Magdalen laundries were workhouses in which many Irish women and girls were effectively imprisoned because they were perceived to be a threat to the moral fiber of society. Mandated by the Irish state beginning in the eighteenth century, they were operated by various orders of the Catholic Church until the last laundry closed in 1996. A few years earlier, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their Magdalen convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed, cremated, and buried elsewhere in a mass grave. This triggered a public scandal in Ireland and since then the Magdalen laundries have become an important issue in Irish culture, especially with the 2002 release of the film "The Magdalene Sisters." Focusing on the ten Catholic Magdalen laundries operating between 1922 and 1996, "Ireland's Magdalen Laundries and the Nation's Architecture of Containment" offers the first history of women entering these institutions in the twentieth century. Because the religious orders have not opened their archival records, Smith argues that Ireland's Magdalen institutions continue to exist in the public mind primarily at the level of story (cultural representation and survivor testimony) rather than history (archival history and documentation). Addressed to academic and general readers alike, James M. Smith's book accomplishes three primary objectives. First, it connects what history we have of the Magdalen laundries to Ireland's "architecture of containment" that made undesirable segments of the female population such as illegitimate children, single mothers, and sexually promiscuous women literally invisible. Second, it critically evaluates cultural representations in drama and visual art of the laundries that have, over the past fifteen years, brought them significant attention in Irish culture. Finally, Smith challenges the nation - church, state, and society - to acknowledge its complicity in Ireland's Magdalen scandal and to offer redress for victims and survivors alike.

  2. L'Hospice Saint-Joseph de la Maternité de Québec, 1852-1876 : prise en charge de la maternité hors-norme

    Gagnon, France
    Québec : Groupe de recherche multidisciplinaire féministe, Université Laval, [1996]

  3. Memorialising the Magdalene laundries : from story to history

    Sebbane, Nathalie, 1965-
    Oxford ; New York : Peter Lang, [2021]

    "Since the publication of James Smith's groundbreaking book on the Magdalene laundries in 2007, many developments have made the issue even more topical. Even though, the lack of access to archives and records of religious orders remains a major obstacle to writing a comprehensive history of the Magdalene laundries, the accessibility of witness testimony and the publication of the McAleese report in 2013 have opened up new avenues of research and methodology. Written from the perspective of a French academic using French theory, holocaust studies and memory studies to analyze an eminently Irish question, the present publication proposes to make an assessment of the way the issue has evolved from being a media story at the onset of the twenty-first century to becoming a subject worthy of historians' attention. If the McAleese report was a formative moment in anchoring the Magdalene laundries into the national narrative, this book will show how it also contributed to dis-remembering the laundries by offering a doctored and state-sponsored version of what really happened within the institutions and contributed to preventing proper memorialization. It will show how in the absence of official memorialization, cultural and activist memorial practices have emerged and developed to ensure that this particularly painful and infamous episode in the history of the nation state does not fall into oblivion"--

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