The IASIL Newsletter, Vol. 4., Nos. 1 & 2 (March 1998).
Hiberno-English ... that Dictionary Again!
We hesitate to open this question again - but needs must. The number of responses to our announcement of the "IASIL Dictionary Project" in the last issue but one has been limited, to say the least - notwithstanding the immediate interest that it sparked from Gill & Macmillan, the leading Irish literary-academic publisher, in 1996. Since then, only five queries have addressed to the Dictionary Sub-Committee Chairman, Dr. Richard Wall (Calgary Univ.), three of these originated outside the Association of which we are the constituent members. ... A feature article on the HE Dictionary Project [Click here for Full Text.]
Conferences Past ...
On 30th January 1997 Seamus Deane chaired a symposium on ‘Secrets
and Lies: 25 Years On’, during commemorations of Bloody Sunday, the massacre
of unarmed civilians by British paratroopers in Derry (30th Jan. 1972). Seamus
Heaney marked the day by sending to the Derry Journal stanzas of a ballad
he had written on that terrible occasion. Introducing them in the commemorative
issue (1 Feb. 1997), Heaney recorded that the news of the atrocity reached him
while driving from Belfast to Derry. he added, ‘Ahyah, I think it is in order
to reprint this abbreviated version’, as follows ...
Also: 1st Limerick Conference in Irish-German Studies; Ionad na hImirce/Irish
Centre for Migration Studies; Central New York Conference on Language and Literature;
University of San Diego; Ohio State University; 1998 Southern Regional ACIS
Conference; 'Irish Studies/Lesbian & Gay Studies'. [Click
here for Full Text...]
The Conference Year/ A Fullish Listing of Future Venues
The Committee for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature, which
mounted a memorial two-day conference on Maria Edgeworth last year, is to the
fore in 1998 with a commemorative conference on the 1798 Rebellion. ...
Also: North American Society for the Study of Romanticism; Actors Theatre of
Louisville/Abbey Theatre, Dublin; 10th Irish-Australian Conference; Letterkenny
Regional Technical College; Société Française des Études Irlandaises; Princess
Grace Irish Library;Université de Bretagne in Brest; Centre de Récherche sur
les Écritures de Langue Anglaise; European Federation of Associations and Centres
for Irish Studies; New York University Summer School; Centre for Irish Literature
and Bibliography; Central NY Conference on Language and Literature; Modern Languages
Association; North-Eastern Modern Languages Association of America; American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; University of Sydney Celtic Studies
Foundation/Centre for Celtic Studies (Sydney); 1998 International James Joyce
Symposium; Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland; South Caroline
Central MLA; Goldsmith College (Univ. of London); 39th Annual International
Yeats Summer School; University College Summer School; American Historical Association;
Canadian Association for Irish Studies; Voronezh State University; Irish-Britain
Exchange Agreement; Annual J. M. Synge Summer School; New Dictionary of National
Biography; Barry University in Miami Shores; 10th Graduate Irish Studies
Conference (Connecticut) [Click here for Full Text.]
ACIS 1998 Conference/Ft. Lauderdale
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’. ... Also: ACIS Guide to Irish Studies [Click here for Full Text.]
IASIL Canada
This autumn past, Chairman Michael Kenneally kindly released Ron Marken from his well-worn IASIL harness and roped Carol Tattersall in with the rest of the Executive to drag the Association sleigh through northern regions. Henceforth, therefore, communications with the IASIL Secretary-Treasurer (Canada) should be addressed to her at 970 Oxford St. W., London, Ontario, Canada N6H IV4; or e-mail <mtattersal@aol.com>. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
An Irish-American Bullán
Has Bullán died the death? On 17 March 1997 we received a letter from the editors of the highly stimulating and well-subscribed journal enterprisingly launched by Rónan McDonald and Ray Ryan from their fastness in Hertford College, Oxford. The letter announced that Bullán would henceforth be published and distributed through the University of Notre Dame Press, presumably as part of its Irish Studies programme. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Mirror Up to Murray
Christopher Murray’s immensely well-received history of Twentieth Century Irish Drama (Manchester UP 1997), appearing with the sub-title ‘Mirror Up to Nature’, departs from reasoned post-colonial premises to give a succinct account of its subject, supplied at every turn by apt facts, illuminating commentary, and apposite quotations from the secondary literature - including an extraordinary range of sources that take twenty pages to list, but which the author plays upon like piano keys with the touch of a critical master. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Friel in a Pool of Light
Anyone who had seen Dancing at Lughnasa as produced by the Abbey in Dublin might have been astonished by the effect it created in the comparatively small-scale Teatrino di Palazzo at Mantus, where it was produced in Italian as Lúnasa. Danza d’agosto in May 1997, before proceeding to longer run in the 1997-98 season. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Diaspora Rules OK!
Congratulations to Paddy O’Sullivan on the successful launch of his Diaspora Electronic List based at Bradford, where he has previously compiled his superlative Irish World Wide Series (6 vols., published by Leicester Univ. Press, 1992-97). ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Editorially speaking ...
Apologies to IASIL members for the long delay in bringing out the Newsletter promised for Autumn 1997 - and now offered as Vol. 3, Nos. 1 & 2. Your editor found himself pretending to the functions of a literary critic during September when the compiling ought to have been going on, and then took off for conferences in Monaco and Sydney as the winter nights drew in. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Journals
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. ...
Also: The Comparatist (Vol. XX, May 1996); Nua: Studies in Contemporary
Irish Writing; BAIS Newsletter, Issue No.13 (January 1998); European
English Messenger (Vol VI, 2 Autumn 1997); The Hungarian Journal of English
and American Studies (2. 2, 1996); The Harp, IASIL Japan's Bulletin (Vol.
XII, 1997); Études irlandaises: 'L'Irlande: Identité et Modernité' (1997);
Working Papers in Irish Studies [Click here for
Full Text.]
Under the Greenwood Tree
At the close of last year Greenwood Press of Connecticut produced A Modern Irish Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook, edited by Alexander G. Gonzalez, covering the 70 authors of the Irish Literary Revival and the decades after to our own time. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
Saoi v. tSaoi
26th November at Dublin Castle was the occasion of a ‘State
Trial’ conducted by the membership of Aosdána with Francis Stuart, the
nonogenarian novelist so recently elected Saoi, being called to book for supposedly
anti-Semitic remarks on a Channel 4 TV programme made by Simon Sebag Montefiore,
who set out to illustrate the smart idea that Irish republicanism is ever and
always racist. ...
Also: Saoi v. tSaoi - The Francis Stuart Affair; Festschrift for Fritz Senn;
Honours for Inez Praga and Colin Smythe; Gus Martin Award Initiative; Keough
Institute for Irish Studies; Claire Connolly edits Edgeworth; Márton Mesterházi
does it in Hungary; CRC Awards in Jeopardy; Publication for IASIL 1995; 12th
James Joyce 'Images of Joyce' Symposium (Monaco); "Bad Writing Contest": Irish
Runner-upper; Helping Beijing. [Click here for Full Text.]
Sweden Humanity
Long will the memory linger of the beautiful summer days passed
as guests of Britta Olinder at IASIL 1997 at Göteborg University. The Humanisten
Building, with its well-lit, spacious rooms and friendly atmosphere provided
an ideal conference setting, while its sweeping lawn, strewn with Nordic sunworshippers
and made melodious by flowing water, imparted an unexpectedly Mediterranean
feeling to the venue. Alas, many a Celtic eye was out on stalks, and many a
neck was cricked while strolling like accomplished flâneurs down
the boulevards. But Sweden is a forgiving place and we were all forgiven. ...
Also: IASIL Pacific Rim 1998 (Sydney) [Click here for
Full Text.]
Pluto Perfect
Here we pay our dues to Pluto Press which for some time has
been bombarding IASIL Newsletter with specimens of its productions -
including them a reprint of the classic account of War in an Irish Town by
Eamonn McCann, an indispensable source for anyone who wants to understand the
Troubles and their context in the town of Derry. ...
Includes Gerry Smyth's The Novel and the Nation: Studies in New Irish Fiction
(1997) [Click here for Full Text.]
IASIL CONFERENCE 1998 UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK: JULY 20-24 1998 SCHOLARSHIP SCHEME
... [Click here for Full Text.]
Chairs!
IASIL offers warm congratulations to Declan Kiberd on his appointment to the Chair of Anglo-Irish at University College Dublin, in succession to Professor Augustine Martin. Professor Kiberd had previously been successful in competition for the chair of English at Galway but had been unable to take up this post due to family illness.
... [Click here for Full Text.]
Book Browser
Brian Graham, In Search of Ireland: A Cultural Geography
(London: Routledge 1997), provides a bracing immersion in cultural politics
- doubtless good for the health of critics and politicians but stiff medicine
for the nationalist or the unionist alike. Take a couple of samples from the
introductory essay on ‘Ireland and Irishness: Place, Culture and Identity’.
‘Nationalist identity in Ireland ... has been profoundly shaped by presuppositions
of malignant Britishness, constructed and presented as a "collective social
fact" that wilfully denies the complexity of that culture. Equally the very
essence of unionism is vested in the assumption of Irish Catholic republicanism
as Other, a supposition of timeless uniformity of purpose, people, and place
that negates the complex diversity of Irish society, geography and history.’
(p.5). ...
Also Sophia Hillan-King and Sean McMahon, eds., Hope and History: Eyewitness
accounts of Life in Twentieth-Century Ulster (Dublin: Friar's Bush Press
1996); Andrew Carpenter, ed., Verse in English from the Eighteenth-Century
Ireland (Cork UP 1998). [Click here for Full Text.]
Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), the best-selling account of childhood poverty in Limerick, won him Pulitzer Prize and went on to hold its place at the top of the New York Times best-seller list for 17 consecutive weeks. An extract of the novel first appeared in an issue of the New York magazine, Here’s Me Bus the year before. Molly Friedrich, McCourt’s agent, traded the paperback rights for $1,000,000 before selling the film rights to producers Scot Rudin and David Brown. ... [Click here for Full Text.]
It's Micro-fichal!
Chadwyck-Healey Ltd. in association with the British Library have published a microfiche archive of Nineteenth Century Books on Ireland consisting of some 300 monographs. This extraordinary departure is the outcome of a collaboration between between Professor Robin Alston, creator of the History of the Book MA in University College, London (Editorial Director) and Professor Cormac Ó Grada, the distinguished economic history from University College, Dublin (Editorial Advisor). Exciting as this development might be for historians, it is the prospect of compiling an equivalent tranche of Nineteenth-Century Irish Fiction that renders this an inspiring departure for IASIL members. ... [Click here for Full Text.]IASIL Newsletter Annual Listing of Books on Irish Literature and its Contexts : 1997