Book Review - Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (New York: Doubleday, 2019)

Review of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

Exploring participation in co-curricular activities among undergraduate students

Co-curricular activities offer an opportunity for students to develop and demonstrate employability skills. Not all students take advantage of activities on offer, while others undertake multiple activities. In this study, second and third year students from two related undergraduate degree courses who had and had not taken up co-curricular activities identified their reasons for participating or not, and completed two questionnaires exploring their motivation (Academic Motivation Scale, AMS and Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, MSLQ). First year students identified which activities they would be interested in participating in in future years, and why. Clear differences in participation between the two degree courses were seen, with significantly higher levels of intrinsic motivation among students who participated. Among those who did participate compared with those who did not, significant differences in different types of motivation were seen. Self-efficacy was also significantly higher in those who did, compared with those who did not, participate, although whether this is a cause or a consequence of participation is unclear. First year students indicated interest in a range of co-curricular activities, for personal as well as academic reasons. Further work is needed to ensure that all students understand the relevance and importance of co-curricular activities.Key words: co-curricular, real-life learning, employability skill

Labor at home: The domestic world of workers at the Du Pont powder mills, 1802-1902

While the history of the du Pont family and Du Pont Company have been well-documented, little is known about the everyday lives of the Irish Catholic immigrants who lived and worked at the home plant near Wilmington, Delaware. to correct this oversight, Labor at Home explores every aspect of the powder workers\u27 domestic world--from religious beliefs, family structure, gender relations, and ethnic ties, to houses, furnishings, and yards--and uses this data to support new conclusions about cultural identity and class affiliation. as early as the 1820s, for example, powder mill families began to convey their increasing affiliation with bourgeois American society by amassing their savings, by selectively purchasing status-laden goods like tea sets and parlor furnishings, by acquiring property, by financing churches and schools, and by pursuing occupational and social mobility. Paradoxically, they also maintained certain beliefs and customs that proclaimed their identity as wage-earning Irish Catholics. Growing potatoes, drinking large quantities of whiskey, displaying crucifixes, and encouraging assertive female behavior perpetuated their unique ethno-religious heritage, yet these practices fueled the prejudices that confined the Irish to the lower ranks of society. Hence, this dissertation further demonstrates that status, identity, and consciousness are determined in complex and often contradictory ways