The final issue of New Hibernia Review's inaugural volume (1: 4), edited by Thomas Dillon Redshaw to a re-jigged template of the Eire-Ireland formula associated with his triumphant direction of that journal, appeared over Christmastide and the New Year 1997/98. Contributors included Desmond Fennell on the 'checkered career' of rural Ireland, Ben Howard on tragedy in Irish poetry from The Rough Field to Belfast Confetti, David Krause on Socialism and Nationalism in O'Casey, Benjamin Z. Novick on suppression and nationalist propaganda in Ireland, 1914-15, Joseph P. O'Grady on Irish Civil Aviation, 1921-35, Patricia J. Fanning on illness behaviour in the James T. Farrell's fiction, Marguerite Quintelli-Neary on Fenian Topography in Finnegans Wake, Chris Wheatley on 18th-century ascendancy drama, John Turpin on the academy in Dublin, 1730-1870, James J. Blake on an Irish language community in Belfast, and Nicole Greene on Irish Fashion Since 1950 [No, not Nicky Grene, silly! -Ed.]. Nuafilíochta/New Poetry is supplied by Theo Dorgan. Editorial enquiries to <tdredshaw@stthomas.edu> and sales requests to Jim Rogers at <rogers@stthomas.edu>.
IASIL readers might be interested to glimpse a recent copy of The Comparatist (Vol. XX, May 1996), containing essays on Irish topics such as guest editor Michael Molino's 'Charting an Uncertain Flight Path: Irish Writers and the Question of Nation, Identity, and Literature'; Anthony R. Hale's 'Framing the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston, John Millington Synge, and the Politics of Aesthetic Ethnography'; Joseph Lennon's 'James Stephens's Diminutive National Narratives: Imagining an Irish Nation Based on the "Orient"'; and 'Poetry in Modern Ireland: Where Postcolonial and Postmodern Part Ways'. The Journal is an organ of the Virginia Commonwealth University.
A valuable set of submission on the vitally important juncture between literature and education in Ireland has been published under the title of 'The Schoolroom in Modern Irish Literature and Culture' in a special issue of Studies in the Literary Imagination (Vol. XXX, No. 2, Fall 1997), emanating from the Department of English, Georgia State University, edited and introduced by Rand Brandes. Contributions include Seamus Heaney, 'Further Language'; John Rickard, 'Stephen Dedalus Among School Children: The Schoolroom and the Riddle of Authority in Ulysses'; Brandes, 'A Dialogue with Medbh McGuckian, Winter, 1996-1997'; Richard Bizot, 'Mastering the Colonizer's Tongue: Yeats, Joyce, and Their Successors in the Irish Schoolroom'; Christopher Connell, 'Desire in The Classroom: The Lessons of Parnell'; Joan Newmann, 'Those Who Can, Write, and Those Who Can Write, Teach'; Margaret Mills Harper, 'The Authoritative Image: "Among School Children" and Italian Education Reform', and Declan Kiberd, 'English in An Irish Frame'.
Kiberd's paper, which may be read as a refinement on his postcolonial thesis in Inventing Ireland (1995), draws effectively on writings on the teaching of English literature in Ireland by Francis Mulhern (The Moment of Scrutiny, 1979) and John Devitt in a striking Crane Bag essay on English in the classroom. Devitt's remark to the effect that the syllabus in 1969 was 'a monument to an essentially Edwardian sensibility' is a yardstick of the distance we have travelled and perhaps an indication of the distance still to travel in putting living Irish literature into play in the 'canonical' encounter of the classroom.
[Having shared a classroom in a very junior capacity with John Devitt in the year mentioned, I must insist he was not 'disgruntled' as Professor Kiberd implies. 'Gruntled' might be more like it, if that abortion of a word can be made to mean delighted by whatever is fine and vital and enraged by whatever is dull and tawdry, irrespective of its national provenance.-Ed.]
Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing, Carson-Newman College's new scholarly journal, is now available. [Over to you, guys! -Ed.] Nua is a refereed journal with Autumn and Spring issues that aims to provide a medium for scholarship on its title subject. Submissions may be on any aspect of Irish writing, be it fiction, short fiction, poetry, theater, film, autobiography, or biography, during the past thirty years. 8,000 is the maximum length. Nua welcome a variety of critical frameworks. Submissions should be made in MLA style, with 2 hard copies, 1 copy on disk (in Word or Word Perfect), and include an SAE. Volume I, Number 1 contains 'Teach Beag No Bungalo: The Hidden Ireland of Thomas McCarthy' by Thomas Dillon Redshaw; 'Lethal Literary Allusions in Patrick McGinley's Foggage by Thomas F. Shea; 'Things Not Meant to Heal: Irish National Allegory in Doyle, McCabe, and McCann', James S. Brown; An Interview with Paula Meehan by John Hobbs; Two translations by Seamus Deane (poems); Three poems from Sara Berkeley; Four poems from Thomas McCarthy; 'Film in Ireland /Irish Film' by Gerald C. Wood (Review essay); and book notices including Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark reviewed by Thomas F. Suggs and Mike McCormack's Getting it in the Head reviewed by William Gary. Subscriptions details: Volume I (Nos. 1 & 2) to individuals with US addresses, $15.00; to individuals with intemational addresses, $20.00; to a US Institution, $25.00 [no details about intern'l institutions]. Contact Shawn O'Hare Editor, Nua Box 71978 Carson Newman College Jefferson City, TN 37760 USA vox: 423-471-3451 fax: 423-4713502 e-mail <ohare@cncacc.cn.edu>.
Members of the British Association for Irish Studies will have received the latest issue of the BAIS Newsletter, Issue No. 13 (January 1998). Besides a study of the Irish language as a minority European language, this issue contains Madeleine Casey's interview of Dr. Mary Hickman (North London Univ.), who has completed with Bronwen Walter a study of Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain, commissioned by the Commission for Racial Equality (Central Books, 99 Wallace Road, London E9 5LN; £1). There are accounts of the inaugural conference of the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative and the Woman on Ireland Network's first study day at York (November 1997), as well as the University of Central Lancashire conference on the theme of 'Making Connections: Ireland and the Diaspora', held in June 1997. Also featured is a report on the Paddy Fahey Photograph Archive, London.
The European English Messenger (Vol VI, 2 Autumn 1997), organ of ESSE, edited by Neil Forsyth at the University of Lausanne, contains an interview with Paula Meehan conducted by Inez Praga, beginning with a question: 'Female icons are extremely frequent in Irish life and literature ...', to which Paula answers: '... if you go below the layer of the colonized citizen and go back to women as they first appeared in the literature which was written down largely in medieval times, you do not have this figure of a woman as an oppressed and submissive icon of the country', and further testifies that she has 'found the past enabling and disabling', having reach an age where I have to transform it.' The issue also includes John Joughan's report on the 'Shakespeare and Ireland' International Conference held at Trinity College, 20th-23rd March 1997 ('Ireland's particular negotiation with modernism and modernity is arguably more complex than most ...'), as well as an essay on 'Crises of Identity in Postcolonial Criticism' by Bart Moore-Gilbert which avoids obvious reference to Irish literature but provides valuable comment on the state of the postcolonial debate. Should any IASIL members wish to colonise ESSE, the contact address is <neil.forsyth@angl.unil.ch>.
Csilla Bertha has guest-edited a special 'Irish Drama Issue' of The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (2. 2, 1996), containing essays by Christopher Murray (on Colum's Land and cultural nationalism), Heinz Kosok (on perspectives on WWI in Shaw and O'Casey), Michael Parker (on narratives of politics and sexuality in Friel's The Gentle Island), José Lanters (on Tom Murphy's Too Late for Logic and Schopenhauer), Patrick Burke (on Marina Carr's The Mai and Eilís Ní Dhuibhne's Dún na mBan Trí Thine), and Donald Morse (also on Carr's play, while Csilla Bertha writes on Wonderful Tennessee. Paulo Eduardo Carvalho reads Friel and Field Day as a 'healthy intersection' and Károly Pintér discusses Beckett's dramatic structure.
The Harp, IASIL Japan's Bulletin (Vol. XII, 1997), features guest-writer Jennifer Johnston and contains papers by Rajeev S. Patke (Yeats and Heaney), Hoon-Sung Hwang (Beckett), Youngmin Kim and Hiroko Ikeda (both on Yeats), Toshio Akai (AE and the Theosophical Lodge), Joseph O'Leary (Moore and Zola), Eishiro Ito (Ulysses), George Hughes (O'Faolain and Bowen), Akiko Manabe (O'Faolain), Leslie Persall (Mahon), Michael Hinds (Carson), and George R. Martin, Jr. (John Ford).
L'Irlande: Identité et Modernité (1997) is the title of a special issue of Études irlandaises containing papers presented at the SOFEIR Conference of 20th-21st Jan., 1995 at the Université de Caen. Among them are Kevin Barry's analytic reflections on post-colonial aesthetics and Marguerite Corish's thoughts on Catholicism and national identity as well as essays by Maurice Goldring on Catholic Emancipation, by Richard Deutsch on British cultural politics in the peace process, and by Chris Curtin with Tony Varley on community groups and area-based partnerships in rural Ireland. Études irlandaises, which manages to be venerable and sprightly at the same time, is produced under the direction of SOFEIR President Paul Brennan with-we believe-much assistance from Danielle Jacquin. The Irish Dept. of Foreign Affairs remains a significant source of funds for this important organ whose 21-year history enfolds much of the record of modern Irish studies.
Working Papers in Irish Studies was established in 1983 with the aim of disseminating empirical research and theoretical analyses as well as publishing critical essays and creative writing. Its concerns encompass the entire field of Irish and Irish-American studies. Subscriptions are fixed $20 a year (four issues) for both U.S. and international addresses. Previous issues include contributions by Charles Fanning, Victor Power, John Cullinane, Michael Hicks, James Simmons, Ruth-Anne Harris, Mary O'Connor, and others, dealing with cultural and identitarian issues as well as contemporary poetry and drama, film, bibliography, and colonial history. Currently available in this energetic imprint are James Doan, Jack W. Weaver, and Michael Mongomery's gathered papers on Scotch Irish and Hiberno-English (1993), Adriene L. Friedlander's Edna O'Brien: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography, 1980-1995 (1997), and John D. Shout and Richard Bizot's New Approaches to "Irish" Film (1997).
The Editors of Working Papers are now inviting submissions
for the 1998 volume which will focus on issues dealing with the Irish
diaspora, Irish and post-colonial studies, and contemporary Irish
literature. Manuscripts should conform to the 'MLA Style Manual',
and should be sent in triplicate to the Editor: James E. Doan,
Dept. of Liberal Arts, Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College
Ave., Ft Lauderdale, FL 33314 (954-262-8207, fax: 954-262-3881;
emial: