This book is a collection of nine essays exploring the Irish-American experience in the New Jersey and New York metropolitan area, both historically and today. The essays place the local Irish-American experience in the wider context of immigration studies, assimilation, and historical theory. Using case studies, interviews, scholarly research in primary historical documents and theory, and first-hand experience, the authors delve into what it has meant, and means, to be Irish American in the New Jersey and New York area, projecting what this ethnic identity will signify in years to come. Representing a variety of scholarly and professional disciplines, from archivists; to historians; to lawyers; to scholars of literature and theology; the authors share their own unique perspectives on the significance of the contributions of Irish-Americans to American life in various arenas. Each chapter is interdisciplinary, revealing the interconnections among cultural history, biography, contemporary events, and literary appreciation. It is through these intersections of disciplines, of past and present, of individual and community, that we can best analyze and appreciate the ways that Irish-Americans have shaped life in the New Jersey/New York area over the past two centuries.

Maura Grace Harrington is an instructor in the English Department at Seton Hall University. Her articles have appeared in many journals includingYeats Eliot Review,Edgar Allan Poe Review,South Carolina Review, andEarly Modern Literary Studies.

Marta M. Deyrup is professor/librarian I at Seton Hall University and served for six years as the universitys codirector of women and gender studies. She is the editor ofDigital Scholarship and the East-Central European Collectionsof the New York Public Library Research Libraries and the author ofThe Vita Constantini as Literary and Linguistic Construct for the Early Slavs.

Foreword: Maura Grace Harrington and Marta M. Deyrup
Introduction: Dermot Quinn
Part I: Irish Americans in the Newark Area
Chapter 1: The Irish in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of NewarkAugustine J. Curley, O.S.B.
Chapter 2: "Keeping the Tradition Alive"William B. Rogers and Nicole Anderson
Chapter 3: Perspectives on the Easter RisingMaura Grace Harrington
Part II: Arriving and Thriving
Chapter 4: Irish Immigration to the United States in the 20th CenturyLinda Dowling Almeida
Chapter 5: American Irish in Service to Community& Country: A Vocational& New Jersey PerspectiveAlan Delozier
Chapter 6: An Irish-American Politician: Governor Richard HughesJohn B. Wefing
Chapter 7: The Writing IrishRay OHanlon
Part III: The Greater New York/New Jersey Region
Chapter 8: Music in the Mountains: The Irish Catskills and Traditional MusicBrendan Dolan
Chapter 9: With Pick and Shovel: Commemorating the Workers Who Died Building the Delaware and Raritan Canal, 1830-1834Paul Ferris