Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

History

First Advisor

Thomas Lekan

Abstract

This thesis examines the often-overlooked role of sapphic women in the Easter Rising of 1916, arguing that queer intimacy and political activism were deeply intertwined within Irish revolutionary networks. While traditional historiography has privileged male, Catholic nationalist narratives of the Rising, this study foregrounds the lives of Dr. Kathleen Lynn, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, Margarett Skinnider, Elizabeth O’Farrell, and Julia Grenan to demonstrate how women’s same-sex relationships influenced their political participation, modes of survival, and visions of national belonging. Drawing on diaries, letters, witness statements, photographs, and archival silences, this thesis employs queer theory to read practices of visibility, gender performance, and domesticity as political acts. These women forged “intimate networks” that blurred the boundaries between private life and political labor. They used their identities as women and the invisibility they faced to navigate a revolutionary culture shaped by the patriarchy and traditional gender roles. By situating sapphic relationships as central rather than peripheral to revolutionary practices, this research reframes the Easter Rising as not only a struggle for national independence but also a site of queer political awakening. In doing so, it contributes to Irish history, Irish women’s history, lesbian historiography, and the broader field of gender and sexuality by reclaiming forms of intimacy and resistance that have long been erased from the historical record.

Rights

© 2026, Justine Nicole Rennekamp

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