Join us to celebrate our new book, Flappers and the Jazz Age, with a 1920s-themed party, a live jazz band and roaring fun!

Book celebration – Flappers and the Jazz Age

Join us for an exciting in-person event celebrating the release of our book, Flappers and the Jazz Age: Women and leisure in Ireland, 1920s-30s.

1920s dress is encouraged!

Please register as soon as possible and no later than 15th August for catering purposes.

This book foregrounds the everyday lives and leisure practices of people in 1920s-30s Ireland, an area often overlooked in existing scholarship. It examines how identity, recreation, and culture took shape both North and South of the border, with particular attention to women's lived experiences. Although leisure activities were frequently overshadowed by religious influence and post-partition nation-building projects, many alternative spaces flourished. People danced, sang, listened to music, shopped, embraced glamour, read magazines, swam, travelled, and went to the cinema, participating in trends that connected Ireland to wider international cultures. The book explores these activities through a feminist lens and an intersectional analysis of gender, class, religion, and rural-urban identities. Bringing together perspectives from cultural studies, architecture, geography, fashion, and musicology, it offers new insights and advances understanding of this under-researched dimension of Irish social and cultural history.

Table of Contents

Introduction: 'The jazz spirit': Women and leisure on the island of Ireland in the 1920-30s - Eileen Hogan and Louise Ryan

1 'Tobogganing down to Hell': Locating the flapper north and south of the border - Louise Ryan and Rachel Sayers

2 'Shaping her own style': Female fashionistas across Ireland, 1919-1935- Síle Hunt

3 'The film is primarily for the women of all countries': Cinema as international community - Veronica Johnson

4 'Enticing Spaces': The Architecture of Leisure and Glamour in 1930s Ireland - Candace White

5 'Wanted': Women and jazz music and dance on the island of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s - Eileen Hogan and Ruth Stanley

6 Cultural retrenchment: from 'jazzing' to 'old time waltzing' - Tom Spalding

7 The gendered geographies of the modern girl and the Dublin tramcar: The 'Jolly Flapper' incident - Denis Linehan

8 Culture and conviction: The Modest Dress and Deportment Crusade in an international context - Úna Ní Bhroiméil

9 The United Irishwomen/Irish Countrywomen's Association: Re-imagining opportunities for rural women's leisure in the Irish Free State, 1920-1939 - Caitriona Beaumont

10 The Life of Mary (Mamie) Murphy: An Irish Modern Woman - Alison Bohan

Afterword - Claire Langhamer

To learn more about the book and order a copy, see https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526181794/

Description supplied by the event organiser.