Papers by Catherine M. Burns
Maine History, 2021
* 2022 James Phinney Baxter Award for best article published in Maine History. Maine History is p... more * 2022 James Phinney Baxter Award for best article published in Maine History. Maine History is published by the Maine Historical Society and the History Department at the University of Maine.
Since January 1, 1876 printed copies of the Maine Constitution have not included Article X, Section 5, which contains Maine’s constitutional duty to guarantee and defend Wabanaki treaties made with Massachusetts. This essay offers an explanation of how and why the obscuration of Article X, Section 5 happened. It examines steps taken in 1875 to establish the redaction in relation to stages in the process to settle Joseph Granger v. Peter Avery, a Maine Supreme Judicial Court case that hinged upon a 1794 Passamaquoddy treaty. The timetable favored the financial interests of both Maine and Joseph Granger at the expense of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, which lost fifteen treaty islands as a result of the court’s decision and never received compensation from the state in defiance of Article X, Section 5. Maine officials were likely more immediately concerned about an outlay to Granger stemming from the verdict than to the tribe, as his demands would be harder to ignore. Notably, Frederick A. Pike, the constitutional commission member who proposed the redaction while a decision on Granger was still pending, pushed the Maine House to approve paying damages and other compensation to Granger soon after the redaction took effect. In violation of the now unprintable Article X, Section 5, this sum was taken from the Passamaquoddy Trust Fund. The Passamaquoddy Tribe and their allies protested, but Maine officials paid them no heed. Removing Maine’s Native treaty responsibilities from print all but formalized the government’s unofficial policy of ignoring its constitutional obligations.
New Hibernia Review, 2016
This article offers a new interpretation of the demise of Irish Home Rule support in the United S... more This article offers a new interpretation of the demise of Irish Home Rule support in the United States, making the case that the cause did not so much disappear as it morphed into the preparedness, and later, pro-war movements. The importance of prior military service to male Irish Home Rulers in New York City first surfaced in 1914 as Irish nationalists wrestled with the possibility of Irish Home Rule with Ulster exclusion. As women in the movement realized that they could no longer remain committed to home rule if it meant sacrificing Ulster, they ceded what was left of the cause to men who viewed staying steadfast to Irish Home Rule through the lens of their status as veterans. The women, led by Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly, went on to found the Irish Women's Council, American Auxiliary No. 1 (Cumann na mBan). The men held out hope than an Allied victory would result in Irish Home Rule, possibly with Ulster. As war preparedness gained momentum in the United States, Mayor John Purroy Mitchel unofficially bolstered support for Irish Home Rule in New York, an increasingly minority position in the face of the growing Irish republican cause, by lending it the defense of the New York City Police Department as it clamped down on anti-war activists, including Irish republicans. This relationship came to a head in the summer of 1917, when police force previously employed to shield Irish Home Rulers from the criticism of republicans took a very violent turn in Manhattan. On the surface, it looked as though police assaulted Irish republicans merely as radical anti-war activists, but the same city officials who just months earlier had enlisted the police to defend Irish Home Rule meetings from republican hecklers were the same individuals who orchestrated police attacks on Irish republicans in the summer of 1917 in the name of pro-war patriotism and unquestioning support for the United States and the Allies. The abilities of Irish Home Rulers to blend into the preparedness and pro-war movements obscured their continued presence as functioning Irish nationalists at the same time that Irish republicanism became the dominant form of Irish nationalism in the United States. Published in New Hibernia Review (Summer 2016): 59-79.
New Hibernia Review, 2012
The Irish in the Atlantic World, ed. David Gleeson , 2010
This paper focuses on the difficulties Kathleen O'Brennan faced as a political radical and foreig... more This paper focuses on the difficulties Kathleen O'Brennan faced as a political radical and foreigner operating as an Irish republican activist in the United States. In 1920, O'Brennan constructed for herself and the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims an American identity rooted in popular conceptions of the American Revolution. This let her work more effectively at the same time that it allowed feminists, radicals, and leftists to campaign for U.S. recognition of the Irish Republic in the face of opposition from the conservative Friends of Irish Freedom and American nativists. Yet once Irish republican politicians established the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, thus shaping their own acceptable American identity, they made it difficult for the radical O'Brennan to act as an Irish nationalist in the United States. In defiance, O'Brennan and Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly formed American auxiliaries of the Irish White Cross. Irish politicians and their American organization, however, foiled O'Brennan's efforts by branding her un-American, and, therefore, un-Irish. O'Brennan's activities show that displays of American patriotism and American character served as political tools in the transatlantic Irish republican cause, but the movement ultimately depended on who could best use American identities for their own ends.
Dissertation by Catherine M. Burns
*2009 John J. O’Connor Graduate Scholarship from New York Irish History Roundtable for distinguis... more *2009 John J. O’Connor Graduate Scholarship from New York Irish History Roundtable for distinguished graduate work on the history of the Irish in New York City,
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925"
Catherine Megan Burns
University of Wisconsin, Madison
History Department
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925" explores assertions of patriotic American identity made by Irish and American Irish nationalists. The research is unique in Irish-American history for making Irish nationalists' pronouncements of their distinct interpretation of American identity central to its analysis. In so doing, the dissertation operates at the nexus of the history of American Irish nationalism and renewed historical attention to the nature of American patriotism.
The dissertation demonstrates that advocates for both Irish Home Rule and the Irish republic deliberately cultivated patriotic American identities with the intention of achieving their distinct political goals. Various historians have cast the Friends of Irish Freedom as the sole voice of American Irish nationalism in the period, and they have taken its declaration of "100% Americanism" as a sign of Irish-Americans' Americanization. Denying that only the Friends coupled Irish politics with American patriotism, the dissertation brings to light less known American Irish organizations that also wrapped their Irish politics in the stars-and-stripes. Those groups fell across the whole spectrum of American Irish political movements but especially included republicans who opposed Irish Home Rule and who eventually fought the Irish Free State government. In addition to Irish Home Rulers, republican organizations discussed include the Irish Progressive League, the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims, the 1776 Branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Irish Republic Tea Party, the Universal Truth Forum, and the Bureau for American Ideals.
Expressions of patriotic identities and sentiments did not necessarily signal either sincere attachments to American political interests or the completion of Irish acculturation to the United States. American patriotism was, instead, a political tool and a vehicle for propaganda. American Irish nationalists and the Irish allies exploited patriotic American sentiments and identities for the sake of undermining rival Irish nationalists in the United States and Ireland, obviating opposition from local and federal officials, and undermining the Irish Free State's attempts to paint republican activists as anti-American radicals.
Dissertation Committee: Thomas J. Archdeacon (advisor), Mary Trotter, Jeremi Suri, Tony Michels, James S. Donnelly, Jr. (emeritus). See also PDF abstract.
I am usually able to accommodate most requests for copies of the entire dissertation or individual chapters.
Blogs, Online Works, Popular and Public History by Catherine M. Burns
Maine Historical Society, 2020
Text and video below from the Maine Historical Society's website:
https://www.mainehistory.org... more Text and video below from the Maine Historical Society's website:
https://www.mainehistory.org/events/event/1004/video
Recorded on November 19, 2020 - In this recording a panel of experts discuss the topics covered Maine Historical Society's exhibit REDACT: Obscuring the Maine Constitution. The panel examined the redaction of Maine's 1820 Constitution in 1875 and the ramifications that ceasing to print sections 1, 2, and 5 of Article 10 had upon Wabanaki communities and public lands.
Panel Moderator: Darren Ranco (Penobscot) - Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Native American Programs at University of Maine, exhibit co-curator
Panelists:
Dr. Catherine M. Burns – exhibit co-curator
Michael-Corey F. Hinton (Passamaquoddy)–attorney
Donna Loring (Penobscot)–tribal elder and author
Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot)–attorney, author, and educator
Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, 2016
This blog post for the Gotham Center for New York City History explores the efforts of the Irish ... more This blog post for the Gotham Center for New York City History explores the efforts of the Irish Theatre of America, the Irish Players, and the Celtic Players to establish an Irish national theater in New York City. All of the companies, active between 1915 and 1920, took their cues from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and the Ulster Literary Theatre of Belfast. The New York troupes struggled to survive, in part because Irish Americans were disinterested in seeing brutal or realistic depictions of Irish life. Nevertheless, the piece raises questions about the transnational dimensions of the rise of modern Irish drama and brings to light ties between the thespians and local Irish Republican activism. Those interested in Northern Ireland, or Ulster, and its influence on the Irish in America should find the post useful. It also highlights the efforts of individuals such as Mollie Carroll, John P. Campbell, Whitford Kane, Eileen Huban, Eileen Curran, Padraic Colum, and Deborah Bierne. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/for-an-irish-national-theater-in-new-york
Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, 2015
This blog post for the Gotham Center for New York City History examines how rival Irish nationali... more This blog post for the Gotham Center for New York City History examines how rival Irish nationalists vied for possession of the Irish Consulate in Lower Manhattan during the Irish Civil War. It highlights the activities of anti-Treaty republicans, such as Muriel MacSwiney and Robert Briscoe, as well as Timothy Smiddy and Lindsay Crawford, both representatives of the Irish Free State. https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-battle-for-the-irish-consulate-
Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 5, German Historical Institute, 2014
This biographical piece for the German Historical Institute on the publisher, diplomat, and phila... more This biographical piece for the German Historical Institute on the publisher, diplomat, and philanthropist Walter Annenberg pays careful attention to his family roots in Germany and how his German heritage shaped his life and career. https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/walter-annenberg/
The South Coast Insider, 2008
This short magazine piece addresses customs brought by immigrants from County Cork, Ireland to Fa... more This short magazine piece addresses customs brought by immigrants from County Cork, Ireland to Fall River, Massachusetts during the Irish Potato Famine. It considers the traditional Irish wake, the sport of hurling, and older women's home brewing and distilling. Published in The South Coast Insider (Fall River, MA) (March 2008): 10-11.
Book Reviews by Catherine M. Burns
Historical Journal of Massachusetts , 2017
Review of Kristen E. Gwinn, Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism (Urbana, Chicag... more Review of Kristen E. Gwinn, Emily Greene Balch: The Long Road to Internationalism (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Winter 2017): 176-179.
Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, 2016
Review of Ronald H. Bayor, Encountering Ellis Island: How European Immigrants Entered America (Ba... more Review of Ronald H. Bayor, Encountering Ellis Island: How European Immigrants Entered America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Reviewed for Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History (November 2, 2016). http://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/ronald-h-bayors-encountering-ellis-island.
The Michigan Historical Review , 2009
M.A. Thesis by Catherine M. Burns
Catherine Megan Burns, “Superfluous Women or Dutiful Daughters? Changing Conceptions of Gender, F... more Catherine Megan Burns, “Superfluous Women or Dutiful Daughters? Changing Conceptions of Gender, Family, and Labor with the Rise of the Irish Middle Class,” M.A. thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2003
B.A. Thesis by Catherine M. Burns
Catherine Megan Burns, "The Irish of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1843-1894: Variations of Irish Et... more Catherine Megan Burns, "The Irish of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1843-1894: Variations of Irish Ethnicity in an Industrial City," B.A. thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1999
Chapter Titles:
1. The Famine Irish: Reactions to Control and the Beginning of Irish Nationalism in Fall River, 1843-1868
2. Class Status, Labor, and Irish Nationalism: Fall River and the Land League, 1876-1884
3. Bridget Sullivan, John Coughlin, and Local Legend: Anti-Irish Antagonism and Political Struggle, 1883-1894
Reading copies are available at the Fall River Historical Society and at Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Including bibliography, 101 pages.
Conference Presentations by Catherine M. Burns
Uploads
Papers by Catherine M. Burns
Since January 1, 1876 printed copies of the Maine Constitution have not included Article X, Section 5, which contains Maine’s constitutional duty to guarantee and defend Wabanaki treaties made with Massachusetts. This essay offers an explanation of how and why the obscuration of Article X, Section 5 happened. It examines steps taken in 1875 to establish the redaction in relation to stages in the process to settle Joseph Granger v. Peter Avery, a Maine Supreme Judicial Court case that hinged upon a 1794 Passamaquoddy treaty. The timetable favored the financial interests of both Maine and Joseph Granger at the expense of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, which lost fifteen treaty islands as a result of the court’s decision and never received compensation from the state in defiance of Article X, Section 5. Maine officials were likely more immediately concerned about an outlay to Granger stemming from the verdict than to the tribe, as his demands would be harder to ignore. Notably, Frederick A. Pike, the constitutional commission member who proposed the redaction while a decision on Granger was still pending, pushed the Maine House to approve paying damages and other compensation to Granger soon after the redaction took effect. In violation of the now unprintable Article X, Section 5, this sum was taken from the Passamaquoddy Trust Fund. The Passamaquoddy Tribe and their allies protested, but Maine officials paid them no heed. Removing Maine’s Native treaty responsibilities from print all but formalized the government’s unofficial policy of ignoring its constitutional obligations.
Dissertation by Catherine M. Burns
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925"
Catherine Megan Burns
University of Wisconsin, Madison
History Department
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925" explores assertions of patriotic American identity made by Irish and American Irish nationalists. The research is unique in Irish-American history for making Irish nationalists' pronouncements of their distinct interpretation of American identity central to its analysis. In so doing, the dissertation operates at the nexus of the history of American Irish nationalism and renewed historical attention to the nature of American patriotism.
The dissertation demonstrates that advocates for both Irish Home Rule and the Irish republic deliberately cultivated patriotic American identities with the intention of achieving their distinct political goals. Various historians have cast the Friends of Irish Freedom as the sole voice of American Irish nationalism in the period, and they have taken its declaration of "100% Americanism" as a sign of Irish-Americans' Americanization. Denying that only the Friends coupled Irish politics with American patriotism, the dissertation brings to light less known American Irish organizations that also wrapped their Irish politics in the stars-and-stripes. Those groups fell across the whole spectrum of American Irish political movements but especially included republicans who opposed Irish Home Rule and who eventually fought the Irish Free State government. In addition to Irish Home Rulers, republican organizations discussed include the Irish Progressive League, the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims, the 1776 Branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Irish Republic Tea Party, the Universal Truth Forum, and the Bureau for American Ideals.
Expressions of patriotic identities and sentiments did not necessarily signal either sincere attachments to American political interests or the completion of Irish acculturation to the United States. American patriotism was, instead, a political tool and a vehicle for propaganda. American Irish nationalists and the Irish allies exploited patriotic American sentiments and identities for the sake of undermining rival Irish nationalists in the United States and Ireland, obviating opposition from local and federal officials, and undermining the Irish Free State's attempts to paint republican activists as anti-American radicals.
Dissertation Committee: Thomas J. Archdeacon (advisor), Mary Trotter, Jeremi Suri, Tony Michels, James S. Donnelly, Jr. (emeritus). See also PDF abstract.
I am usually able to accommodate most requests for copies of the entire dissertation or individual chapters.
Blogs, Online Works, Popular and Public History by Catherine M. Burns
https://www.mainehistory.org/events/event/1004/video
Recorded on November 19, 2020 - In this recording a panel of experts discuss the topics covered Maine Historical Society's exhibit REDACT: Obscuring the Maine Constitution. The panel examined the redaction of Maine's 1820 Constitution in 1875 and the ramifications that ceasing to print sections 1, 2, and 5 of Article 10 had upon Wabanaki communities and public lands.
Panel Moderator: Darren Ranco (Penobscot) - Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Native American Programs at University of Maine, exhibit co-curator
Panelists:
Dr. Catherine M. Burns – exhibit co-curator
Michael-Corey F. Hinton (Passamaquoddy)–attorney
Donna Loring (Penobscot)–tribal elder and author
Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot)–attorney, author, and educator
Book Reviews by Catherine M. Burns
M.A. Thesis by Catherine M. Burns
B.A. Thesis by Catherine M. Burns
Chapter Titles:
1. The Famine Irish: Reactions to Control and the Beginning of Irish Nationalism in Fall River, 1843-1868
2. Class Status, Labor, and Irish Nationalism: Fall River and the Land League, 1876-1884
3. Bridget Sullivan, John Coughlin, and Local Legend: Anti-Irish Antagonism and Political Struggle, 1883-1894
Reading copies are available at the Fall River Historical Society and at Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Including bibliography, 101 pages.
Conference Presentations by Catherine M. Burns
Since January 1, 1876 printed copies of the Maine Constitution have not included Article X, Section 5, which contains Maine’s constitutional duty to guarantee and defend Wabanaki treaties made with Massachusetts. This essay offers an explanation of how and why the obscuration of Article X, Section 5 happened. It examines steps taken in 1875 to establish the redaction in relation to stages in the process to settle Joseph Granger v. Peter Avery, a Maine Supreme Judicial Court case that hinged upon a 1794 Passamaquoddy treaty. The timetable favored the financial interests of both Maine and Joseph Granger at the expense of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, which lost fifteen treaty islands as a result of the court’s decision and never received compensation from the state in defiance of Article X, Section 5. Maine officials were likely more immediately concerned about an outlay to Granger stemming from the verdict than to the tribe, as his demands would be harder to ignore. Notably, Frederick A. Pike, the constitutional commission member who proposed the redaction while a decision on Granger was still pending, pushed the Maine House to approve paying damages and other compensation to Granger soon after the redaction took effect. In violation of the now unprintable Article X, Section 5, this sum was taken from the Passamaquoddy Trust Fund. The Passamaquoddy Tribe and their allies protested, but Maine officials paid them no heed. Removing Maine’s Native treaty responsibilities from print all but formalized the government’s unofficial policy of ignoring its constitutional obligations.
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925"
Catherine Megan Burns
University of Wisconsin, Madison
History Department
"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925" explores assertions of patriotic American identity made by Irish and American Irish nationalists. The research is unique in Irish-American history for making Irish nationalists' pronouncements of their distinct interpretation of American identity central to its analysis. In so doing, the dissertation operates at the nexus of the history of American Irish nationalism and renewed historical attention to the nature of American patriotism.
The dissertation demonstrates that advocates for both Irish Home Rule and the Irish republic deliberately cultivated patriotic American identities with the intention of achieving their distinct political goals. Various historians have cast the Friends of Irish Freedom as the sole voice of American Irish nationalism in the period, and they have taken its declaration of "100% Americanism" as a sign of Irish-Americans' Americanization. Denying that only the Friends coupled Irish politics with American patriotism, the dissertation brings to light less known American Irish organizations that also wrapped their Irish politics in the stars-and-stripes. Those groups fell across the whole spectrum of American Irish political movements but especially included republicans who opposed Irish Home Rule and who eventually fought the Irish Free State government. In addition to Irish Home Rulers, republican organizations discussed include the Irish Progressive League, the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims, the 1776 Branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Irish Republic Tea Party, the Universal Truth Forum, and the Bureau for American Ideals.
Expressions of patriotic identities and sentiments did not necessarily signal either sincere attachments to American political interests or the completion of Irish acculturation to the United States. American patriotism was, instead, a political tool and a vehicle for propaganda. American Irish nationalists and the Irish allies exploited patriotic American sentiments and identities for the sake of undermining rival Irish nationalists in the United States and Ireland, obviating opposition from local and federal officials, and undermining the Irish Free State's attempts to paint republican activists as anti-American radicals.
Dissertation Committee: Thomas J. Archdeacon (advisor), Mary Trotter, Jeremi Suri, Tony Michels, James S. Donnelly, Jr. (emeritus). See also PDF abstract.
I am usually able to accommodate most requests for copies of the entire dissertation or individual chapters.
https://www.mainehistory.org/events/event/1004/video
Recorded on November 19, 2020 - In this recording a panel of experts discuss the topics covered Maine Historical Society's exhibit REDACT: Obscuring the Maine Constitution. The panel examined the redaction of Maine's 1820 Constitution in 1875 and the ramifications that ceasing to print sections 1, 2, and 5 of Article 10 had upon Wabanaki communities and public lands.
Panel Moderator: Darren Ranco (Penobscot) - Associate Professor of Anthropology and Chair of Native American Programs at University of Maine, exhibit co-curator
Panelists:
Dr. Catherine M. Burns – exhibit co-curator
Michael-Corey F. Hinton (Passamaquoddy)–attorney
Donna Loring (Penobscot)–tribal elder and author
Sherri Mitchell (Penobscot)–attorney, author, and educator
Chapter Titles:
1. The Famine Irish: Reactions to Control and the Beginning of Irish Nationalism in Fall River, 1843-1868
2. Class Status, Labor, and Irish Nationalism: Fall River and the Land League, 1876-1884
3. Bridget Sullivan, John Coughlin, and Local Legend: Anti-Irish Antagonism and Political Struggle, 1883-1894
Reading copies are available at the Fall River Historical Society and at Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Including bibliography, 101 pages.