Introduction: the politics of sexual knowledge: the origins of Ireland's containment culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)
The Magdalen asylum and history: mining the archive
The Magdalen in nineteenth-century Ireland
The Magdalen asylum and the state in twentieth-century Ireland
The Magdalen Laundry in cultural representation: memory and storytelling in contemporary Ireland
Remembering Ireland's architecture of containment: "telling" stories on stage, Patricia Burke Brogan's Eclipsed and Stained glass at Samhain
(Ef)facing Ireland's Magdalen survivors: visual representations and documentary testimony
The Magdalene sisters: film, fact and fiction
Monuments, Magdalens, memorials: art installations and cultural memory
Conclusion: history, cultural representation, ... action?
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index.