By Zach Perras-Duenas

John Day Tully, associate professor of history at CCSU, gave a lecture on his book, Ireland and Irish Americans, 1932-1935: The Search for Identity, last Wednesday in the book store as part of the Central Authors program.

Tully’s lecture explored the struggles that the Irish went through to seek and maintain a strictly Irish identity both in America and in Ireland, mainly during the Great Depression and World War II, while keeping neutrality toward the war, which is the focal point of the book.

Tully’s book explores four main arguments on Irish identity, all of which tie together in “asserting an international identity apart from Great Britain.”

According to Tully, Ireland’s policy of neutrality during the war was “a quest for identity and also security, and a retreat in the face of a moral imperative.”

The book explains how the Irish were hoping to create an independent existence for themselves at home in Ireland and also in America, and that the foreign affair of neutrality played a part in the creation of the Irish American’s sense of who they were.

While the Irish were making the effort to frame an identity for themselves in America, Tully explained how “many Irish Americans felt left out of the American dream” but still forged through to create a society of acceptance.

In concluding his lecture, Tully told how his book is a story of Irish citizens leaving Ireland more than it is a story of them coming to America.

Tully teaches courses at CCSU on modern Ireland, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and Modern America. In 2009, he won the Board of Trustees Teaching Award for the four universities in the Connecticut State University System.