Margaret MacCurtain

Life
1929-2020 [Sr. Benvenuta; fam. ‘Sister Ben’]; b. Cork; BA in English, Irish and History at Cork University [NUI]; joined Dominican Order [OP]; after a noviate in Kildare she taught at Sion Hill, Blackrock; appt. Prioress, 1984-89; issued with Mark Tierney [OSB], The Birth of Modern Ireland (1969); co-ed. the Gill History of Ireland ser. with with James Lydon (TCD) and contrib. Tudor and Stuart Ireland (1972) to it; commenced MA at UCD on the 17th-century Dominican, Dominic O’Daly under supervision of Robert Dudley Edwards which she then completed at Madrid as a PhD (1964); taught at School of Irish Studies, 1972-89; appt. to Burns Chair of Irish Studies at Boston Coll., Mass., 1992-93, and received Eire Soc. Gold Medal for work on Irish women's history, 1993;

fnd. principal of Ballyfermot Senior College - being the first college of further education (VEC); chaired National Advisory Council, 1997-2002; and served on Academic Council of School of Ecumenics; National Archives Advisory Council from 1997 to 2002; her other writings incl. women and the vote, women and revolution, marriage in Tudor Ireland; female spirituality; moving statues (1987); d. 5 Oct. 2020; an obituary in The Irish Times (6 Oct. 2020 - online) cited eulogy by President Higgins; a collection of her writings was edited by Maryann Gialanella and Mary O’Dowd (1997).

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Works

Monographs

Tudor and Stuart Ireland ([Gill History of Ireland, 7] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1972), 212pp., ill. [maps.].
Grace Gifford and Irish Freedom: Tragic Bride of 1916 (Dublin: IAP 2000), 112pp.
Ariadne’s Thread: Writing Women into Irish History (Dublin: Arlen House 2008), 400pp.

Collaborations

with Mark Tierney, The Birth of Modern Ireland (1969), and Do. [in Irish], trans. Tomás F. Mac Anna agus Seán Mac Phaídín (1979).
with Donncha Ó’Corrain, eds., Women in Irish Society: The Historical Dimension [Contributions in Women’s Studies, 11] (Conn: Greenwood 1979), 125pp.
with Mary O’Dowd, eds., Women in Early Modern Ireland (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1991), vi, 340pp., ill. [18pp. of pls.].
with Suellen Hoy, From Dublin to New Orleans: Nora and Alice’s Journey to America 1889 (1994).

Miscellaneous (sel.)

[incl.] Preface to Missing pieces: women in Irish history, 1: Since the Famine (Dublin: Irish Feminist Information Pubs.] (Women’s Community Press/Moutn Salus Press 1983), 64pp., ill. [ports.]

See also Maryann Gialanella Valiulis & Mary O’Dowd, eds., Women and Irish History: Essays in honour of Margaret MacCurtain (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1997), 384pp., ill. [port.] CONTENTS: Maureen Murphy, "Foreword: The many voices of Margaret Mac Curtain"; Introduction:- St. Mary's University College (1963); Women, the vote and revolution (1978); Towards an appraisal of the religious image of women (1980); The historical image (1985); Marriage in Tudor Ireland (1985; Moving statues and Irish women (1987); Fullness of life: defining female spirituality in twentieth-century Ireland (1989); The “ordinary” heroine: woman into history (1991); Women, education and learning in early modern Ireland (1991); The real Molly Macree (1993); Late in the field: Catholic sisters in twentieth-century Ireland and the new religious history (1995); Reflections on Walter Osborne’s “Study from nature” (1996); Godly burden: Catholic sisterhoods in twentieth-century Ireland (1997); Women and the religious reformation in early modern Ireland (2002); Writing grief into memory: women, language and narrative (2006). Bibliographical essay (2008). Selected writings of Margaret Mac Curtain (1958-2008), [375-84].

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