The Conference Table (I)

We missed the opportunity in Autumn to report on the panoply of Bicentennial events devoted to the 1798 Rebellion-including those mentioned by Elizabeth Crooke in History Ireland [see The Journals Rack, below]. One worth adding was that held in conjunction with the exhibition directed by Kevin Whelan at the Cherry Orchard in Derry, and opened by Seamus Deane with Stephen Rea. At dates during November and December, talks and screenings were given by Catherine Morris ('The Women of 1798') and Luke Gibbons ('Documentary and Film'), while Seamus Heaney and Medbh McGuckian read poetry. Nothing compares for scale, however, with the "1798 Bicentennial Perspective" inaugurated at the Ulster Museum, Belfast, on 19th-20th May 1998 before transferring to Dublin Castle on 21st-23rd May 1998. Speakers at these cross-border venues included Jim Livesey (TCD), Geraldine Sheridan (UL), David Hayton (QUB), Peter Linebaugh (Toledo University) Maurice Bric (UCD), Walter Walshe (Washington State), Luke Gibbons (DCU), Tommy Graham (History Ireland), Breandan MacSuibhne (UCD), Allan Blackstock (UUC), Jim Smyth (Notre Dame), Trevor McCarvery (Regent House), David Miller (Carnegie-Mellon), Brian MacDonald (unknown affiliation), James Wilson (ditto), Marianne Elliot (Liverpool), Elaine McFarland (Caledonian U.), Hugh Gough (UCD), Dáire Keogh (Drumcondra), Nancy Curtin (Fordham), Kevin Whelan (Notre Dame), Breandan Ó Buachalla (UCD), Nial Osborough (UCD), Tony Graynor (TCD), Daniel Gahan (Evansville), Liam Chambers (Maynooth), David Dickson (TCD), Harmon Murtagh (Athlone), N. A. M. Rodger (Greenwich), Brendan Simms (Cambridge), David Wilson (Toronto), Ruan O'Donnell (Drumcondra), James Kelly (Drumcondra), James Quinn (UCD), Kevin O' Neill (Boston College), and C. J. Woods (RIA). All of these jointly and severally addressed such topics as the intellectual ingredients of the Rebellion, the challenge in Leinster and the conservative response, the international context, gender and popular culture in the rebellion, the role of the state, the aftermath, and the memory. Indubitably a good book will follow under Dáire Keogh's guiding hand.

This year's meeting of the American Historical Association, which convened at Washington. D.C. on Friday, 8th January, devoted a panel to "Ireland in 1798", and thereby elicited a well-merited reception at the Irish Embassy. Carla De Petris (Roma) and Maria Stella (Instituto Universitario Orientale) had a leading hand in organising an international conference entitled "Ireland '98: Reality and Representation", mounted in Naples on 19th-21st November, 1998. Anna Giordano was the contact person. <annagio@tin.it>

The 40th Annual W. B.Yeats International Summer School (Sligo) will be held on 31st July-13th August 1999, with under the direction of George Watson (University of Aberdeen) and Jonathan Allison (Kentucky) and the patronage of Michael B. Yeats, as usual. Lectures and tutorials from Enoch Brater (Michigan), George Bornstein (Michigan), Angela Bourke (UCD), Rand Brandes (Lenoir-Rhyne College), Catriona Clutterbuck (UCD), Alex Davis (UCC), Roy Foster (Hertford, Oxon.), Maurice Harmon (UCD Emeritus), Lynn Innes (Kent), Feargal Keane (BBC), John Kelly (St John's College, Oxford), Declan Kiberd (UCD), Alasdair Macrae (Stirling), Maureen Murphy (Hofstra), Sam McCready (Maryland), Pat Sheeran (UCG), John Stallworthy (Wolfson, Oxon.), and - indispensably - Helen Vendler (Harvard). Readings will be given by Seamus Heaney, John Montague, Peter Fallon, and others. Contact Secretary of the Yeats Society, Yeats Memorial Building, Douglas Hyde Bridge, Sligo, Ireland. Tel. 353-71-42693.; fax 353-71-42780, or Professor Watson at Dept. of English, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 2UB, Scotland; tel. 01224-272625; fax. 01224-272624, or email <watson@abdn.ac.uk>, or Jonathan Allison at Dept. of English, Patterson Tower, University of Kentucky, Lexington KY USA 40506; tel. 606-257-6961; fax 606-323-1072; email <jalliso@pop.uky.edu>. Application forms are available at www.itsligo.ie/yeats/yeats.html

In recent years an Irish - studies venue of growing appeal has been the Annual Trieste Joyce School in the Adriatic city where Ulysses was conceived and written. Recent patrons have included Kevin Barry, Zack Bowen, Terence Killeen, Giorgio Melchiori, Ken Monaghan, Fritz Senn, Weldon Thornton and - as writers in residence - Colm Tóibin and Paula Meehan. This year's session, set for 4th-10th July 1999, will feature readings by Bernard MacLaverty and Edna O'Brien as well as a presentation by David Norris and more conventional lectures by W. F. McCormack (Goldsmith UL), Geert Lernout (Antwerp), Brandon Kershner (Florida U), Sebastian Knowles (Ohio State U), Ron Ewart (San Gallen), Francesca Romana Paci (Vercelli), Kathleen Rabl (Munich U), Piero Boitani (Roma), and Fritz Senn (Zürich). Tuition costs 250,000 lire (stg£90), but a limited number of scholarships are available. Contact Renzo Crivelli at <Crivelli@univ.trieste.it> or John Mc Court at <mccourt@uol.it>

John is the author of James Joyce: A Passionate Exile (Orion 1999), an illustrated biography following on the heels of Dubliners: A Guide to Text Analysis (1998). Together with Francesca Romana Paci (Venice Ca'Foscari), he has edited two volumes of Dubliners for schools under the venerable Italian educational imprint of Lofreddo Editore. The launch was celebrated in Trieste's Irish pub The Tender. During June, Pat Murphy's film-crew will reach Trieste to film Nora, with Ewan MacGregor opposite Susan Lynch in the key roles. Twinned with this visitation comes "Le Donne di Giacomo", an exhibition mounted by La Bottegea Joyce in conjunction with the Trieste Joyce School and designed to recreate background of Giacomo Joyce. It contains - according to report - 'fulsome illustrations' of the 'types of women' such as Amalia Popper who 'fascinated' him. (Her 'coded history' is related in Vicki Mahaffy's essay on "Fascism and Silence" in JJQ, Fall-Summer 1994/5.) The School will be opened by His Excellency Mr Joseph Small, Irish Ambassador to Italy. There is a web site at ww.univ.it/nirdange/school/index.html.

Laura Pelaschiar is a graduate of Trieste University with a doctorate from Bologna, now teaching at Udine University. In recent times she has translated Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island as well as The South and The Story of the Night by Colm Toibin's (both for Fazi Editore). Now she has published a monograph, Writing the North: The Contemporary Novel in Northern Ireland (London: Sandoe Books 1999), giving an overview of the past three decades with sections on political discourse, self and place, and the role of the city. Besides those authors whom anyone would treat in such a survey from Benedict Kiely and Michael MacLaverty to Maurice Leitch and Glenn Patterson, she also covers Briege Duffaud, Daniel Mornin and M. S. Power. A short sketch of Northern Irish history is intended for non-Irish readings. Orders can be placed with Sandoe Books, 10 Blacklands Terrace, London UK SW3 2SR; or Edizioni Parnaso, Via Caboto 19/1, 34147 Trieste, Italia, email <fondagrafiche@trieste.com>.

How often we hear IASIL members call out for 'new voices' and pronouncing on the importance of attracting younger scholars to our conferences! In mid-February the "New Voices" of Irish criticism organised a conference of their own at the Irish Film Centre in Dublin's Temple Bar. P. J. Mathews (TCD) was the moving spirit, gathering around him some twenty-five others engaged in research - in keeping with his academic theme of 'self-help' in the literary revival. Post-graduates from each of the National Universities, from TCD, from Queen's, from Oxford and Kent and York, New York and Boston, even from Barcelona, spoke on the mind and art of Ferguson and Mangan, Yeats and Wilde, George Egerton and Sam Hanna Bell, Hubert Butler and John Banville and many others - including the special qualities of Patricia Scanlan and Colin Bateman.

This conference conveyed a strong impression that the context of modern Irish writing is making sense as never before - albeit with the aid of such striking new concepts as the term 'autoexoticism' that John Kenny (NUI Galway) applied with good effect to several contemporary novelists, or the notion that the 'Undead' of Irish history troubled the imagination of those engaged in the first 1798 centenary, as Selina Guinness (Merton, Oxford) argued in a textually-resourceful paper. Géaróid Ó Flaherty (Kent U.) read Wilde's Vera against a Land War background, while Noreen O'Doody (TCD) painted a portrait of Oscar as an influence on Yeats - both bringing Wilde's ubiquitous genius to front of stage, and both striking a postcolonial note that coloured so many of the sessions. Guy Beiner (UCD) and Paul Delaney (Kent) respectively gave compassionate appraisals of the place of oral memory and that of migrancy in the living culture, past and present. Richard Mills (UUC) deftly anatomised 'Protestant Radicalism' in a case study of Sam Hanna Bell, while Frank Shovlin (St John's, Oxford) chronicled Irish literary magazines after independence with a fine alertness to their intellectual and material conditions.

If there was a single outcome of the conference it was epitomised in Declan Kiberd's review for the Irish Times where he drew the inference that 'the "revisionist versus nationalist" debate is finally over'. If so, it is because the premisses of nationalism and the practices of revisionism have so effectively converged that the only -ism left standing is intellectual criticism. The two-and-a-half day event was jointly supported by Professor Kiberd and Edna Longley (QUB) - a partnership ensuring that this promising new event will take on a cross-border character when next convened at Queen's University, Belfast. In the meantime expect "New Voices" to be heard in some profusion at IASIL conferences and Irish studies publishing venues. Your humble Secretary-Editor attended the three days of the Conference on an IASIL recruitment brief and was rocketted forward from erstwhile bourgeois complacency to a condition of postcolonial gnosis. ["Wipe yer glosses with what you gnose." - Ed.]

The Canadian Association for Irish Studies (CAIS) is holding its annual conference at Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec, on 2nd-4th June this year. A pre-Christmas call for papers, extended from January 31st to February 28th, has produced an enviably focused programme in which each speaker is allotted a clear 30 minutes with the added promise of a publishing outcome hospitable to all. Authors covered include Yeats, Synge, and Bolger (Lisa Fitzpatrick); Yeats (Rachel Billigheimer); Beckett (Craig Monk); Brian Friel (Maryna Romanets); O'Casey and Behan (Bernice Schrank); Flann O'Brien (Matthew Lamberti); Sydney Owenson (Julia Wright); Kavanagh (Michele Holmgren), Carleton (Jason King), and Padraig Ó Siadhail (Brian Ó Conchubhair). All of these along with - not so easily categorised - topics such as 1798/1995 (Cecil Houston); revolutionary & constitutional traditions (Hereward Senior); experiencing Jennifer Johnston and Ireland (Dudley Hillier); Irish proverbs (John Donahue); Donegal carpets (Elaine Cheasley); the Irish gangster-film (Jerry White); Michael Collins - the film (Danine Farquharson), and Irish Revival aesthetics (James Morris). For further information contact Ron Marken, English Department, 9 Campus Drive, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5; fax (306)-966-5951. The website at http://www.usask.ca/english/cais/ highlights a pertinent appeal for funding to carry the Irish Studies Foundation from a donated $1.2 to a targeted $2.3 million in order to meet the projected cost of an Irish studies program to be based at Montreal's Concordia University. Our Chairman Michael Kenneally is the Executive Director of the Foundation, which has a business address at 4630 Catherine Street West, Westmount, Quebec, Canada H3Z 1S3.

A subscription to the Canadian Journal for Irish Studies is included in the $40 annual membership fee though naturally issues are available to non-members also. We have not seen any issues for 1998 nor seen their contents listed on the web, but CAIS is marking its 25th anniversary with a "Special Double Issue" and has been soliciting articles on topics such as the 'Changing Place of Irish Studies in Universities', 'the Future of Irish Studies in Canada', 'the New Millenium in Irish Politics, Literature, Culture, and Economics', as well as 'Fin de Siècle Readings' and any other topics or approaches relevant to the occasion. Recent issues have been devoted to Edna O'Brien and John McGahern, extensive primary and critical bibliographies of Michael MacLavery and Brian Moore compiled by Michael Crowley featured in July and December numbers in 1997. The Editor is Bernice Schrank, based at Dept. of English Language and Literature, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland A1C 5S7, tel. (709)-737-8277; fax (709)-737-4528. There is a website at http://www.usask.ca/english/cais/cjis/ - where we have just met with the first instance of the term 'webmistress' - and business address chez Allison Muri, CAIS, Department of English, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada S7N 0W0.

The Third Galway Conference on Colonialism sets about "Defining Colonies" on 17th-20th June this summer, taking note of the varying relationships to the imperial centre designated by this term and their implications for the colonizing and decolonizing processes. As the organisers inform us in wisely, 'The modern discourse of colonialism is not equivalent to the earlier discourse of colonization and terms such as empire, charter colonies, crown colonies, dependencies, provinces, dominions, and commonwealths need careful discrimination.' [Not just a matter of zpelling? - Ed.] At the centre of concern is the question 'Was Ireland a Colony? - given that she was constitutionally part of an imperial power after the Act of Union, though in other respects a colony in all but name. Moving spirits in the matter are Fiona Bateman, Tadhg Foley, Lionel Pilkington, Sean Ryder, and Elizabeth Tilley of the English Department and Terry McDonough of the Economics Department at NUI Galway. Abstracts were due by February 1st. There is an email at <colony@bodkin.ucg.ie> and a web-site at <http://www.ueg.ie/enl/ colony/conference.htm>; tel. 353-(0)91-524411; fax (0)91-524102.

The English Department of the University of Aberdeen is holding a Conference on "Minority Identities Today" on 19th-21st June, 1999, in order to address such questions as 'Literature and dislocation', 'literature and hybridity', 'identity and the nation state', 'dialectic persistence', 'identity and migration', &c. Invited speaker include Cairns Craig, author of Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture and Norbet Dittmar, whose credits include work on German language since reunification. Peter McDonald (Oxford) will speak on "The Identity Parade: Academe, Power, and Minority Culture" - a title no less bracing than that of his recent offering, Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland (OUP 1997). George Watson, Head of Department and a graduate of QUB, is the author of Irish Identity and the Literary Revival (1979; rev. edn. 1995), a far more seminal book than its meagre reflection in Irish literary studies currently suggests. Professor Watson is also current Director of the Yeats Summer School in Sligo. He is now working on "The Ideology of Celticism 1760-1914" - which ought precipitate him into the antiquarian company of Norman Vance, Joep Leerrsen, et. al. Liam McIlvanney and Shane Murphy (<email sam@abdn.ac.uk>) are organising the literary-cultural interdisciplinary side of the conference. There's a website at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~enl155/mit.htm. Contact: English Dept., University of Aberdeen, King's College, Old Aberdeen, AB24 2UB, Scotland (UK); tel. (0)1224-273759; fax (0)1224-272624.

The 51st International Summer School at University College, Dublin, will take place 30th June-16th July 1999, addressing the theme "Culture, Literature and Tradition" and focusing on the relation between society and literature in the course of Irish history, with emphasis on the 20th century. As in the past, UCD is offering five - or is it ten? - scholarships designed to foster Irish studies in eastern European countries and the former USSR. The scholarships £735 each, targeting journalists and writers, younger academics and postgraduates, cover the course plus accommodation with breakfast for 18 days (with one before and after). Applications not later than May 1st to from UCD Summer School Office, Newman House, 86 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland; fax: 353-1-7067211; email: <summer.school@ucd.ie>; website: http://www.ucd.ie/ summerschool. The organisers are distributing free of charge a number of printed souvenir programmes marking the 50th Summer School held in July 1998. Dublin booksellers are currently selling it for £20 in view of its containing an unpublished sonnet by Seamus Heaney as well as drawings of Heaney and musician Derek Bell by Paul Funge.

American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) gathers on 12th-15th May 1999 for its 37th Annual Meeting at the Roanoke Conference Center in Virginia, where 45 panels will be staged of which the first offers a 'Nineteenth-Century Literary Reassessment' with individual papers ranging over 'Maturin, Sheridan Le Fanu and Stoker' to 'Class, Gender, and Domesticity in Maria Edgeworth' and 'Harriet Martineau's Views of Ireland' among other subjects. Further panels deal with 'Irish Identity and National Ideas', 'Fresh Insights into the Irish Landscape', 'The Irish Language in Translation', 'Ireland and the American Civil War', 'Irish Gay and Lesbian Literature', Politics, Literature, and Anglo-Irish Relations 1790-1821, 'Aspects of the Irish Landscape (Architecture & Biology', 'The Irish in Britain', 'Aspects of Irish Art', 'Irish Women in Political Discourse' and 'Women's Roles in the "New" Ireland', 'American Poets on Irish Themes', 'Sociological Problems, Past and Present', Screen Representations of Irish Identity', 'Religion in Irish Literature', 'Socialist and Colonialist Lights', 'Postcolonialism in Irish and Native-American Experience', 'The Politics of Space in Contemporary Ireland', 'The Belfast Agreement', 'The Irish Enlightenment', 'Irish History in Photographs', '19th century Historical Issues', 'Crime, Punishment and Representation', 'Nationalist Images & Icons', 'New Perspectives on the Famine', '19th and 20th Century Issues in N. Ireland, 'The Politics of Space in Contemporary Ireland', and 'Recuperative Histories: Religion, Politics and the New State' - all of these as well as panels on Joyce, Yeats, Kavanagh, Wilde and George Birmingham, 20th century fiction, current poetry, Cork poets, medieval literature, drama of the Revival, music and popular culture, a 'View from Chicago' and 'Hogan's Goat'. The Plenary Speakers are Nicholas Grene ("Black Pastoral: 1990s Images of Ireland"), Joan Vincent ("The Legendary and the Local: The Land War in the Irish North West"), and Emmet Larkin ("The Parish Mission Movement in Ireland: 1850-1880"). We estimate some 202 speakers will be present including the ubiquitous Patrick Maume, and Kevin Whelan, now well-established in America, along with the thoroughly-acclimatised Conor Johnston while Kieran Kennedy continues to fly the flag for Irish gay studies in a panel that includes Stacia Bensyl, a graduate of UCD's Anglo-Irish programme who has racked up numerous high-quality interviews with Irish women writers among whom Medbh McGuckian and Emma Donoghue.

This year, the ACIS Annual Book Awards/1998 were given to F. H. A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan and Matthew Stout for Atlas of Irish Rural Lanscape (Cork UP 1997), John Harrington for The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874-1966 (Kentucky UP 1997), and Timothy W. Guinnane for The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration and Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850-1914 (Princeton UP 1997). Submissions for the next round close on 1 May 1999. The judges include David Millar (Carnegie Mellon), Cliona Murphy (Cal. State), Joan Vincent (NY); Declan Kiberd (UCD), Majorie Howes (Rutgers), Joep Leerssen (Amsterdam); Deirdre McMahon (Limerick), Timothy Meagher (CUA), and James Pethica (Williams College) - each triad devoting its attention to one of the categories History and Social Sciences (James Donnelly Prize); Literary and Art Criticism or Cultural Studies (Michael J. Durkan Prize) and distinguished first book (Donald Murphy Prize).

The ACIS Millenial Meeting is already set for 26th June-2nd July, 2000, at the University of Limerick - a venue known to IASIL members from their happy sojourn there in 1998. Proposal should be addressed to. Nancy Curtin, Dept. of History, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458; or, Liam Ó Dochartaigh (Conference Committee Chairman), Dept. of Languages & Cultural Studies, University of Limerick, Ireland. Updates are available on the ACIS website at http://athena.english./vt.edu/~brinlee/ACIS/Frontpage.html.

The ACIS Regional Meetings Programme during 1998-99 has included Conferences at Massasoit Community College, in Brockton Massachusetts (2nd-3rd October 1998), and others at Fordham Lincoln Centre Campus, NY (30th-31st October 1998), University of St. Thomas - home of the New Hibernia Review - 15th-17th October 1998) and Clemson University, South Carolina (25th-27th February 1999), with themes ranging from "1798" and "Fin de Siècle" to "Ireland in the Arts and Humanities, 1899-1999". Two Irish studies interdisciplinary panels were drawn together by Elizabeth Cullingford for the Annual MLA Meeting, with a submission deadline of 15th March at Professor Cullingford's address in Department of English, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712. A highlight of the programme is The 4th Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering at Coole Park, Co. Galway (25th-27th September 1998), where the speakers were Declan Kiberd, Edna Longley, Lucy McDiarmid, and James Pethica.

Irish Studies on the High Seas! What do St. Brendan, Prince Madoc, Christopher Columbus, Montserrat colonists, and indentured servants in Charleston and Barbados have in common with the Men of 1798, coffin-ships, and the Titanic? [Well ... oh, never mind! - Ed.] To celebrate 1500 years of Irish voyages and the Tenth Anniversary of Southern ACIS, Professor Jim Doan and his associates at the Fort Lauderdale/Miami venues that stirred an appetite in IASIL conferencers for warmer climes last March are setting out on a cruise aboard the Carnival Ecstasy (70,000 tons) from Miami Port to Nassau and home again during 4th-7th February, 2000 - all for $425/inside cabin or $475/ocean-view, based on double occupancy. Single occupancy $755 and $805 respectively. The organisers are inviting propositions ... sorry, proposals ... on such themes as Irish diaspora, island culture(s), ethnic relations, acculturation and postcolonial conditions, preferably in the form of five-minute position papers the better to 'maximise the cruise-ship ambience'. Brian McGinn will give a plenary talk on the Irish in South America, while Cathal Ó Searchaig and Lillis Ó Laoire represent the arts. An earlier deadline of 1 February, 1999 has been extended to 15th May 1999. Prospective members of the Qwells School of Irish Studies should contact Mary Donnelly, Dept. of English, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248145, Coral Gables, FL 33124, tel. 305-284-2182, <mangansis@aol.com>, or Jim at Dept. of Liberal Arts, Nova Southeastern University, 3301 College Ave., Fort Lauderdale, FL 33314; tel. 954-262-8207, email <doan@polaris.nova. edu>. A cheque of $25 made payable to Jim Doan will secure a berth but should be posted early otherwise there may be crowding.

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