The American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) Annual Meeting will be held this year at Nova Southeastern University, Ft. Lauderdale, April 15-19th. The conference, hosted by Jim Doan, our own IASIL Secretary-Treasurer (US), is set to take place at the Airport Hilton Hotel, a sumptuous venue answered by the munificent array of morning and afternoon panels arranged in parallel groups of four. Participants will address a wide range of literary, cultural, and societal issues falling under the serviceable rubric 'Revolutions and Evolutions'. Two panels apiece take on 'Contemporary Irish Drama' and 'Contemporary Irish Poetry' while another negotiates 'Irish Fiction' and still others embrace 'Ascendancy Women Writers' and 'Celtic Influences in Anglo-Irish Literature' before handing over to wholesale exhibitions of revolutionary and evolutionary interdisciplinarity.
Keynote lectures will be given by James Flannery ('The Double Renaissance: Moore and Yeats'), Arthur Hughes ('The Gaelic Language and Literature in the Third Millenium'), Declan Kiberd ('Writing as Exile: The Global Irish), John McGarry ('Nationalism in Northern Ireland and the Politics of Recognition'), Kevin Whelan ('Memory in Relation to the 1798 Rising'), Robert Welch ('Redefining the Irish Literary Canon'), and Bruce Stewart ('Irish Studies in Cyberspace'-the last-named bidding fair for the most fatuous title in the conference.
A large percentage of the conference papers are allocated to the sessions dealing with 'Literature, Nationalism, and Representation', 'The Politics of Irish Popular Culture', 'Gender, Republicanism and the Atlantic Rim', 'Gender, Modernity and Social Change in Irish Culture', 'Reproductive Politics and Irish Nationalism', and-intriguing title-'1908 Masculinities'. The non-literary media are specifically focussed under headings such as 'Irish Visions of the Material World', 'Re/Dressing Cathleen: An Interdisciplinary View', 'Neil Jordan and the Evolution of Irish Film', 'Visualizing Ireland' and 'Republicanism and Film', as well as 'Contemporary Irish-American Artists'. History and politics are addressed in panels on '1798', 'The Famine', 'Nineteenth-Century Politics', 'Ireland, Irish America and Emigration', and 'The Irish on the Frontiers', as well as 'Twentieth-Century Irish Politics', 'The IRA and Sinn Féin', and 'The Northern Irish Peace'. Religion in Ireland is treated under the rubrics 'The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1780-1880' and 'Church-State Relationships in Ireland: 1774-1829' as well as 'The Devotional Revolution Revisited', a panel on 'the Larkin Thesis'. There will also be roundtable discussions on Irish Language Materials and on Issues and Perspectives in Irish studies.
Readings by Desmond Egan, Medbh McGuckian and Robert Welch, and a reading-performance of Jennifer Johnston's recent drama, together with a Living Book Review of McGuckian's Captain Lavender, bring a strong creative presence to the venue. The ACIS Book Prizes will be awarded as before, and banqueting superlatives will be attempted on board the Paddlewheel Queen under the helmsmanship of Captain Doan. A Céilí will be held to round off the conference. Contact James E. Doan, Organiser, ACIS, Dept. of Liberal Arts, Nova Southeaster University, 3301, College Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314; fax. 954 262 3931; e-mail <doan@polaris.acast.nova.ed>.
Every association in earnest about its subject needs a journal, and we have the Irish University Review by special arrangement with its editors (Maurice, Harmon, Chris Murphy and now Anthony Roche). For some years ACIS has been in the anomalous position that it is surrounded by Irish studies journals but has had no one with its own brand-name attached in the way that ours is attached each time an IASIL Annual Bibliography appears in the back pages of the IUR.
ACIS has made a new departure with the appearance of its first 'Irish Studies Annual', coming forth from University of Massachusetts Press in time for launch at a party thrown in the Royal York Hotel at Albany meeting of ACIS in December. Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, edited by Anthony Bradley and Maryanne G. Valiulis (Mass. UP 1997). ACIS dues have been hiked by $10 to include subscription to the new series as a membership entitlement. Contributors include Adrian Frazier ('Queering the Irish Renaissance: The Masculinities of Moore, Martyn, and Yeats'), Antoinette Quinn ('Cathleen ni Houlihan Writes Back: Maud Gonne and Irish National Theater'); Maureen Murphy ('The Fionnuala Factor: Irish Sibling Emigration at the Turn of the Century'); Margaret Ward ('Nationalism, Pacifism, Internationalism: Louie Bennett, Hanna Sheehy-Skefington and the Problems of Defining Feminism'); Lucy McDiarmid ('The Posthumous Life of Roger Casement'); Mary Daly ('"Oh! Kathleen ni Houlihan Your Way's a Thorny Way!": The Condition of Women in 20th Century Ireland'); Elizabeth Butler Cullingford ('Gender, Sexuality, and Englishness in Modern Irish Drama'); Guinn Batten ('"The More With Which We are Connected": The Muse of the Minus and the Negative Capabilities of McGuckian and Kinsella'); Carol Coulter ('"Hello Divorce, Goodbye Daddy"': Women, Gender, and the Divorce Debate'); Dillon Johnston ('"Our bodies' eyes and writing hands": Secrecy and Sensuality in Ni Chuilleanain's Baroque Art'); Catherine Shannon ('The Changing Face of Cathleen Ni Houlihan: Women and Politics in Ireland 1960-1996'); Margaret MacCurtain ('Godly Burden: The Catholic Sisterhoods in Ireland 1900-1967'), and Angela Bourke ('Language, Stories, Healing').
The new book strengthens a trend in Irish studies inaugurated by the Galway Womens' Studies group and its fine journal and book-form publication by Eibhear Walshe in an edited collection on Sex, Nation and Dissent in Irish Writing (Cork UP 1995)-which unfortunately met with carping attention from The Irish Times's "Bookworm" John Boland. Margaret Kelleher and James H. Murphy, eds., Gender Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Public and Private Spheres (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 1997) reflects the topic of transactions of an Nineteenth-Century Ireland conference.
Nor are the longer-standing tools of ACIS being neglected. [Spare us your sophomoric similitudes -Ed.] ACIS has now launched an updated version of the Guide to Irish Studies, comprehensively listing Irish studies courses in taught in American institutions by title, tutor, &c., but this time appearing also in an Internet edition under the impressive Web Page <http://athena.english.vt.edu/acis/frontpage>-linked to-and-from to the IASIL site. A dexterously worded message eliciting contributions from all ACIS members reached the email lists in August 1997, appearing over the name of our own Secretary-Treasurer Jim Doan, to whose energies there is apparently no limit.