Carleigh Garcia is in the fourth year of her PhD at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick in the Language and Literature department. Her thesis, under the supervision of Dr Eoin Flannery, analyses seven Irish novels written between 1940 and 2007 through the lens of affect theory, with the aim of exploring the influence of the Catholic Church on social norms and shame in the Irish context. The novels included in the thesis include Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, Girls in Their Married Bliss, and their ‘Epilogue’, Eric Cross’ The Tailor and Antsy, Colm Toibin’s The Blackwater Lightship, John McGahern’s The Dark, and Anne Enright’s The Gathering. She works as a Departmental Assistant in her department, as well as Research Assistant to the Irish Institute for Catholic Studies.