Irish-American Identity Formation in Savannah, Georgia: Intersections of the Global and the Local

Abstract

A distinctive Irish-American community has survived in Savannah, Georgia since the early 1800s. In this paper, I discuss and analyze results of ethnographic, oral history, and archival research which revealed ongoing processes of Irish-American identity formation among members of Savannah’s historic Irish-American community. Living in Irish dominated neighborhoods, the Catholic Church, attending parochial schools, and the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade had fostered a sense of shared Irish identity anchored in daily life and interactions for many who grew up in Savannah. Beginning in the 1980s, a number of new Irish rituals and organizations were created, and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade grew to be one of the largest in the country, attracting close to half a million visitors. I propose that a complex interplay of global and local models of Irishness have shaped these processes of identity formation and change