Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690-1830 (Oxford University Press, 2024), written by BC Assistant Professor of English and Irish Studies Colleen Taylor, is the first book to apply new materialist theory to the critical study of Ireland. Irish Materialisms provides original case studies on everyday objects in colonial Ireland (coins, flax, spinning wheels, mud, and pigs) to examine how each object’s unique materiality contributed to the colonial ideology of British paternalism and afforded creative Irish expression. Through an intimate understanding of the materiality Irish peasants handled on a daily basis, Taylor’s book presents a new portrait of Irish character that reflects greater empowerment, resistance, and expression in the oppressed Irish than has been previously recognized. Taylor specializes in eighteenth-century Irish and British literature and the environmental humanities.