Archives
Double Space 2025-2026
Vol. 5 No. 1 (2026)
Now on its fifth publication, this Spring 2026, Double Space prides itself in showcasing the academic excellence of undergraduate students in the UCC English Department. The academic and creative work presented in this year’s issue has been recognised under the UCC Undergraduate Award, the Patricia Coughlan Award, the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize and the Eoin Murray Memorial Prize, showcasing a wide range of work spanning across time periods, topics, and media.
This year, our chosen theme is “Perspectives”, which includes an extensive array of topics that each essay explores in detail. We aim to showcase often-debated opinions and interpretations of texts such as American Psycho, Dawn or The Haunting. This theme allows the authors to share their findings and takes on feminism and gender, politics, and the anxieties that such topics have reflected in literature over the years. As our society changes, so do our attitudes towards certain issues, as well as our perspectives on historical events and humanity as a whole. Technological advancement and changes in social structure throughout human history have produced unique people with distinct mindsets, and sharing these perspectives with one another allows us to better our society and define each person as an individual. The order of the essays reflects their respective topics and juxtaposes differing opinions from separate authors, thus allowing the readers to gather the information provided and form their own argument.
We are incredibly grateful for the opportunity to create this year’s edition of Double Space along with an exceptional team of authors and editors who are the backbone of this journal. We would like to thank you all for your hard work and cooperation, and congratulate the contributors on their wonderful essays. We would also like to thank the lecturers who provided answers to our difficult questions about must-read books, which will hopefully help and inspire future writers to share their work and be included in Double Space. A special thanks to Dr Heather Laird and Dr Miranda Corcoran for establishing this wonderful publication and for all the help they provided our team along the way. Finally, thank you to the ever-dedicated Double Space team—copy editors, social media managers, web designers and liaisons, you have done an exceptional job, we couldn’t have done it without you!
We hope you enjoy reading Double Space as much as we enjoyed working on it!
–Your Co-Editors-in-Chief, Vilma and Michal
Double Space 2024-2025
Now on its fourth publication this Spring 2025, Double Space prides itself in showcasing the academic excellence of undergraduate students in the UCC English department. The academic and creative work presented in this year's issue have been recognised under the UCC Undergraduate Award, the Patricia Coughlan Award, the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize, and the Eoin Murray Memorial Prize, showcasing a wide range of work spanning across time periods, topics, and media.
This variety of work proved difficult to define by way of a theme, but not impossible! The common thread throughout all academic and creative work is the recognition of humanity, and we at Double Space felt this was important to highlight in this year's issue. Our theme for this issue, Literature and Humanity, allows us to understand how even in the most tumultuous and unsure times, cultural attitudes, anxieties, and desires can be reflected within contemporary literature. By ordering our essays chronologically from oldest to newest, we aim to present how literature – and the academic discussion surrounding it – interacts with different aspects of these parameters; constructions of gender, of relationships, of nature, of the self, of society at large. From Sir Gawain to Disco Elysium, we aim to aid your understanding of the true impact which fictional narratives hold over our understanding of the world we live in.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped us with this year's publication! To our contributors, thank you for your exceptional work and cooperation. We would also like to thank all the lecturers who provided us with our wonderful essay tips, and for the overall fantastic work within the department. A special thanks to Dr Heather Laird and Dr Miranda Corcoran for establishing this wonderful publication, and for all the help they provided our team along the way. Last but not least, thank you to our Double Space team. From copy editing to social media management to web design, we could not have asked for a better, more hard-working group!
We hope you enjoy reading Double Space as much as we enjoyed working on it!
–Your Co-Editors-in-Chief, Sinéad and Venus
Double Space 2023-2024
Editorial
Double Space launches its third issue this summer 2024, showcasing the academic excellence of University College Cork’s English students. The essays and creative work included in this issue have been granted recognitions such as UCC’s own English Undergraduate Awards, the Patricia Coughlan Award and the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize. The theme for the 2024 issue is “Time”. We have grouped the essays in order of the most modern, dating back to the essay with the oldest context. We received essays from all sorts of times periods, including the future. Time is the one thing we always crave more of and is a fitting theme as we, the team of this year's issue, cannot get enough of these amazing essays!
Our aim with this journal is to create a space to share and celebrate the award-winning work of our contributors with current and past students, as well as a wider audience. Moreover, we follow last year’s issue to enhance a wider recognition of the Arts with the publication of this journal, which we hope will become an integral part of the UCC Department of English.
We would like to thank all the people who have helped us in the publication of this issue. To start, the contributors for their work that they have kindly allowed us to include in the journal. We would like to thank the English Department lecturers and professors for their tips and tricks for essay writing, and Maria Butler for mentoring the Double Space team in creating this journal. Finally, we would like to thank Dr Heather Laird and Dr Miranda Corcoran for their invaluable support and advice throughout the process.
We hope you will enjoy reading Double Space as much as we have enjoyed creating it.
– The Double Space Team
Double Space 2022-2023
Editorial
Double Space launches its second issue this summer 2023, showcasing the academic excellence of UCC's English students. The essays and creative work included in this issue have been granted recognitions such as UCC’s own English Undergraduate Awards and its official Global Undergraduate counterpart, as well as the Patricia Coughlan Award, the Louise Clancy Memorial Prize, and the Eoin Murray Memorial Prize. We have grouped the articles according to the award they won or were highly recommended for. As well as academic essays, we have also included “Flying Kites,” a short story by Aoife E Osborne, winner of the Eoin Murray Memorial Prize for creative writing, in order to showcase UCC’s creative excellence as well as academic.
Our aim with this journal is to create a space to share the award-winning work of our contributors with current and past students, as well as a wider audience. Moreover, we follow last year’s hope to enhance a wider recognition of the Arts with the publication of this journal, which we hope will become an integral part of the UCC Department of English.
We would like to thank all the people who have helped us in the publication of this issue. To start, the contributors for their first-class work that they have kindly allowed us to include in the journal. We thoroughly enjoyed reading and editing each and every essay. Then, Maria Butler and Maria Manning, editors of the UCC Aigne Journal, for the skills they taught us in their fantastic editorial workshops. Finally, we would like to thank our staff editors, Dr Heather Laird and Dr Miranda Corcoran, for their invaluable support and advice throughout the process.
Double Space 2021-2022
Double Space - the Undergraduate Journal of the Department of English, UCC - was born out of a desire to showcase the academic excellence of UCC's English students. The essays and creative work that we feature are primarily from the 2020-2021 academic year, stemming from UCC’s own English Undergraduate Awards and its official Global Undergraduate counterpart. Some of the works featured have been granted the esteemed Patricia Coughlan Award and the Eoin Murray Memorial Prize.
We have chosen to group the essays according to their similar themes, and hope that this is communicated to the reader. These themes include Irish poetry, motherhood, cultural anxieties, and a general commentary on Gothic Literature. The excellent short story "Virtual Bodies" by Maeve McTaggart stands apart from the others thematically, which is symbolic of its status as the sole creative writing piece of the journal.