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The Irish Are Coming
The stories, struggles, and influence of the Irish in America
BUILDING AMERICA · WHAT PARISH ARE YOU FROM? · 1836 - 1900s·
Habits, Hearts, and the Irish Heroines of Chicago
The habit was meant to set them apart from the world. So how did a handful of young Irish nuns end up in the middle of everything in Chicago?
Their work took them out of the convent and into the cholera wards, the Civil War and the ashes of the 1871 fire, while Irish women turned classrooms, parishes and pubs into the heart of Irish Chicago.
ABOUT THE GUEST
Most histories of Irish social mobility follow the male politician and the publican. Dr. Sophie Cooper found the women who climbed first.
Sophie Cooper, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, where she leads the Liberal Arts degree, and serves as the president of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies. She studied history at the University of Exeter and modern Irish history at Trinity College Dublin, and earned her doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. Her book, Forging Identities in the Irish World: Melbourne and Chicago, c.1830 to 1922, won the American Conference for Irish Studies' Lawrence J. McCaffrey Prize in 2023. Her recent work includes a 2026 study of the 1870s Chicago pub murder she describes in this episode, an article on the letters that linked Irish nuns across the diaspora, and Taking Ship, a 2026 collection on emigration from Ulster that she co-edited. Her next project looks at how immigrant women shaped the buildings and spaces where they found a sense of belonging.
EPISODE RESOURCES
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Old St. Patrick's Church, Chicago​​
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Margaret Haley and the Chicago Teachers Federation
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Grainne sculpture, a gift from Galway, Heritage Green Park next to Old St. Pat's
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Nuns of the Battlefield memorial, Rhode Island Ave NW at M St NW, Washington, DC
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​What Parish Are You From? A Chicago Irish Community and Race Relations, Eileen McMahon
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​Catherine McAuley and the Walking Nuns
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​James A. Mulligan and Chicago's Irish Brigade
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Bishop William J. Quarter
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Civil War Sisters Healing the Wounds of the Nation​
PUBLISHED WORKS
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Forging Identities in the Irish World: Melbourne and Chicago, c.1830 to 1922, (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)
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"A woman capable of making a nation," on Mother Agatha O'Brien (The Irish Times)
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"He became Irish in death: the Rafferty and O'Meara murder trials," (Irish Historical Studies, May 2026)
"If you're only listening to the loud people, they're going to tell you that they're the ones influencing everything, because they're the ones whose voices you hear. But a lot of these people couldn't actually do what they did without women." — Dr. Sophie Cooper
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