Books: Saluting Professor Joe Lee, a legend in Irish history circles

A new book assesses the massive contribution made by Professor Joe Lee to Cork and Irish history, says MIRIAM NYHAN GREY, editor of the book
Books: Saluting Professor Joe Lee, a legend in Irish history circles

Joe Lee, who became Professor of Modern History at UCC 50 years ago, in 1974, pictured at New York University around 2016. Picture: James Higgins.

For close to three decades, J.J. (Joe) Lee animated Cork, UCC, and Irish history on the national and international stage.

Such was his association with the place, that he, a Kerryman, is still often referred to as a Corkonian.

Lee’s magisterial monograph, Ireland 1912-1985: Politics And Society, published late in 1989 by Cambridge University Press while he was based in UCC, surely contributed to his association.

But his Leeside sojourn was just one chapter in a stellar career, which saw Joe deploy his dynamic take on Irish history in Germany, Cambridge, New York and beyond.

Now, for the next generation, a new book, A Tract For Our Times: A Retrospective on Joe Lee’s Ireland 1912-1985, assesses the lasting legacy of Joe’s landmark volume.

Published by UCD Press, and adorned with a Mick O’Dea portrait of the historian himself on the cover, this new book is required reading.

A Tract For Our Times: A Retrospective On Joe Lee’s Ireland (UCD Press) is available in bookstores and from www.ucdpress.ie - the cover is a Mick O’Dea portrait
A Tract For Our Times: A Retrospective On Joe Lee’s Ireland (UCD Press) is available in bookstores and from www.ucdpress.ie - the cover is a Mick O’Dea portrait

Born in Castlegregory in 1942, Joe was educated by the Franciscans at Gormanston and went on to UCD to take a Double First in History and Economics.

After a short stint at the Department of Finance, he resumed his academic trajectory with an NUI Travelling Scholarship which brought him to the Institute for European History in Mainz, and from there to Cambridge’s Peterhouse as Fellow, Tutor, Lecturer and Director of Studies.

Fifty years ago, in 1974, he became Professor of Modern History at UCC, and from 2002 until 2017 he was Director of New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House.

A sought-after public intellectual, a Sunday newspaper columnist, and a member of Seanad Éireann, Joe produced five monographs, five edited collections, and a stunning 101 scholarly articles.

On the occasion of his retirement, his contributions to the academy and public life were celebrated by Uachtarán na hÉireann, Michael D. Higgins.

Speaking to the domestic and international impact of Ireland 1912-1985: Politics And Society, the President observed that Joe had penned a “classic of history-writing and an incisive, sometimes unsparing, analysis of the independent Irish state and its economic travails and tribulations”.

Joe had also managed to transcend the reach of the academy to become widely popular and much-discussed by the general public. He even appeared on a long slot on The Late Late Show.

More than three decades later, the purpose of A Tract For Our Times is to honour Joe’s contribution to historical scholarship by gauging the impact of Ireland 1912-1985 as a historical analysis and commentary through the contributions of a dozen of the leading historians of modern Ireland.

It also provides some rich biographical insights on Joe, as a person and a scholar.

For a country that has undergone so much change since the late 1980s, one might wonder how Ireland 1912-1985 stands the test of time.

Not long after the publication, Ireland experienced a dramatic decade beset with revelation after revelation, marked by significant levels of secularisation and demographic change.

Also, the range of archival material that has become available since Joe was undertaking his research, has been seismic.

But the reality is that no scholar since has, as Diarmaid Ferriter observed in 2019, “matched the quality of his writing and the depth of his analytical probing of politics and policy formation in the formative decades of the Irish State”.

For me personally, this project has been a point of personal privilege. UCC’s School of History is where I had cut my teeth in the profession, but timing meant that I had to travel to New York to experience the mentorship and generosity of Joe.

As Director of Glucksman Ireland House, Joe’s energy and international stature made a massive impact on the study of the Irish diaspora, especially from a North American perspective.

His approach and openness has deeply influenced me as a scholar and teacher, and I try to pay it forward with my own students and mentees on a daily basis.

For the many thousands of readers influenced by his provocative intervention in Ireland 1912-1985, Joe succeeded in activating a lively debate which still resonates and is evident in A Tract For Our Times.

As an academic and a public intellectual, he made massive contributions to national life in Ireland and far beyond Irish shores.

There is no doubt that his monumental monograph elevated his profile, but more importantly to the man himself was how the reception of Ireland 1912-1985 demonstrated that ‘ordinary’ Irish people could appreciate and debate complex history when they read it.

If, in writing the book, he wanted to explain his country to himself, as he retrospectively observed in 1991, in the process he had also eloquently explained it to us all. And for that we must be very grateful.

A Tract For Our Times: A Retrospective On Joe Lee’s Ireland (UCD Press), edited by Miriam Nyhan Grey, is widely available in bookstores and from www.ucdpress.ie

Dr Miriam Nyhan Grey teaches at the Department of History, MIC (Limerick). Having completed her Phd at the European University Institute in Florence, she spent 15 years at New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House. She is the author of Are You Still Below?: The Ford Marina Plant, Cork, 1917-1984 (2007), the editor of Ireland’s Allies: America And The 1916 Easter Rising (2016), and the co-editor of Forged In America: How Irish-Jewish Encounters Shaped A Nation (2023). Miriam now lives in Cork and Joe is enjoying retirement in Dublin.

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