IASIL Newsletter 2004 newsletter

Publishing Opportunities

The information on this page should be confirmed with journal/book editors before you make submissions.

Popular Culture and Postmodern Ireland?

Submissions are invited for a reader of cultural criticism on the theme of popular culture and postmodern Ireland. The editors welcome any new critical readings of emerging cultural practices that reflect and/or intervene in the diversity of cultural experience in contemporary Ireland. Areas for exploration include, but are not limited to, the following:

- Subcultures
- TV
- Film
- Music
- Photography
- Media studies
- Queer studies
- Diaspora studies
- New Age/alternative cultural practices and communities
- Race and ethnicity in contemporary Ireland
- Cultural geographies
- Popular culture and the academy
- Virtual communities/Cyberculture

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted by June 30th, 2004 to wanda.balzano@ucd.ie; anne.mulhall@ucd.ie; or moynagh.sullivan@ucd.ie; or mail abstracts to the address below:

Wanda Balzano/Anne Mulhall/Moynagh Sullivan
School of English
University College, Dublin
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland

Working Papers in Irish Studies
Working Papers in Irish Studies is still accepting submissions for the 2004 volume. The theme is Irish influences in America: literature, history, politics, and the arts. Papers will be accepted until June 30, 2004. Two hard copies and a diskette in MLA format (or the format appropriate to the discipline) may be sent to the editor, Marguerite Quintelli-Neary at English Dept. , 250 Bancroft Hall, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 29733. You may also send queries to nearym@winthrop.edu.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IRISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS
The editors of this two-volume work are currently seeking contributors for a wide range of entries, from William J. Bennett to Ronald Reagan, Dion Boucicault to U2, Andrew Carnegie to Michael Smurfit. To be published in 2005 by the renowned reference publisher ABC-Clio as part of their Transatlantic Relations Series, the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF IRISH-AMERICAN RELATIONS is designed to provide comprehensive and readily accessible information about the numerous historical, cultural, social and political interrelations between Ireland and the Americas.

It is explicitly intended to broaden traditional conceptualisations of the "Irish-American" axis beyond the specific interconnection between Ireland and the United States, to include all of the points of contact along the three continents of the Atlantic rim that bind Ireland and Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America together within the same trans-Atlantic sphere.

The time frame covered ranges from the conquest of the Americas and the period of first contact to the present day, while the subject matter is multi-disciplinary. Despite this expansive geographical sweep and prolonged temporal framework, however, the work's underlying focus on trans-Atlantic interconnections and relations between Ireland and the Americas will lend it a unifying sense of coherence.

Edited by James Byrne, Philip Coleman and Jason King. Authors interested in contributing to this unique and important project should contact the editors at the following email address for further information and details regarding the full list of entries: irishamericanrelations@yahoo.co.uk.

Teaching Irish Literature as Post-colonial
Editors: Bridget Matthews-Kane and Claire Schomp
Deadline for Abstracts: June 15, 2004

Contributions are sought for a collection of essays on teaching Irish texts as post-colonial literature. The editors write as follows:

We hope to hear a balance of approaches from established and emerging scholars in both Irish literature and post-colonial studies, and we welcome contributions from scholars working in a variety of disciplines or fields. While we want the collection to foreground a theoretical approach, we are very interested in how these ideas play out in the classroom; therefore, essays should strive to strike a balance between the practical and the theoretical. We are also interested in receiving abstracts that deal with a wide variety of genres (novels, plays, poetry, short stories, prose).

The collection will contain four main sections. The first will deal with broad theoretical issues (Can Irish literature be considered post-colonial? How do you frame post-colonial concerns? How do you incorporate history into a literature class? How do you balance a post-colonial approach with other approaches such as modernism, feminism, or gender studies? How do you use Irish literature with strong post-colonial themes in a history/sociology/anthropology class? How do you incorporate Irish language texts into the class? How do you align your pedagogical approach with teaching post-colonial literature?) The second section will deal with teaching individual Irish texts or authors as post-colonial. The third section will have a comparative approach, containing essays on teaching Irish texts in conjunction with post-colonial texts from other nations. The forth section will encompass practical classroom activities. We therefore seek syllabi, specific assignments, contextual guides, lists of helpful documentaries and films, and other classroom materials you have created. Please include a brief summary of how these components worked with a specific audience (for example, course department, student background, type of institution, etc.).

The editors seek one-page abstracts for finished articles of about 12-15 manuscript pages. Please attach a one to two page CV as well. We regret that we can only accept proposals in English. Send your abstracts (by June 15, 2004) to Bridget Matthews-Kane at Matthkane@earthlink.net and/or to Claire Schomp at cschomp@hotmail.com.

Visual Representation and Ireland

Call for Contributors for a collection of Essays on Visual Representation and Ireland tentatively titled: 'Ireland in Focus: Ireland and Visual Representation'

The collection is designed to cover all aspects of visual representation of, from and about Ireland, historically and contemporaneously. There is a rich and provocative history of iconography and visual imagery in Irish society and this collection is aimed at foregrounding and interrogating its differentiated manifestations and valences.

Contributors are encouraged to address:
• The historical development of Irish film
• Irish language film
• Nationalist iconography
• Portraiture
• Photography
• Political Murals
• Contemporary visual art
• Caricature
• Imperialism and visual representation.

Please submit complete essays or detailed (3-page) proposals and a CV by May 31 2004. E-mail or hard copy submissions are acceptable.

Eóin Flannery.
Department of English,
Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick.
email: eoin.flannery@mic.ul.ie

Ireland and Film
Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing seeks submissions for a special issue on Ireland and Film. Rebecca Steinberger will be the guest editor of this special issue on recent Irish films, planned for appearance in spring of 2005.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: how is the nation represented in recent cinematic interpretations? What constitutes "Irish" cinema? How does the Irish question surface in film? What is the role of history in film narrative? How does film?s function in Irish culture differ from that of written fiction or plays? In what ways do film soundtracks reflect traditional Irish music? What role does the Irish landscape assume in film?

Articles should be no longer than 5,000-6,000 words in length and should be written in MLA format. Submit three copies of the completed paper and disk (preferably in Microsoft Word), along with a cover letter and c.v., to Rebecca Steinberger, Assistant Professor of English, College Misericordia, 301 Lake Street, Dallas, PA 18612-1098.

Submission deadline is 1 September 2004

Samuel Beckett’s Endgame,
ed. Mark S. Byron, Dialogue 1 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi Press).

The following CFP was recently issued, and is pasted below in its entirety.

This book of essays is the first volume in a new series announced by Rodopi Press under the general editorship of Michael J. Meyer. This volume will offer new and experienced scholars the opportunity to present alternative readings and approaches to Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. The goal of the collection is to establish a dialogue between essays by younger scholars (MA, ABD, six years or less from the PhD, Lecturer, Assistant Professor or equivalent) and by established or expert scholars (Associate Professor, Professor or equivalent, and who have published monographs and articles in leading journals). Essays are sought that address inherently controversial topics: i.e. topics that have generated significant levels of debate in the past or that cultivate new approaches and insights into Endgame.

Potential topics might include:

Blurred generic boundaries: is Endgame more comedy than tragedy, or more farce than either? How might one’s critical or theoretical stance help determine one’s reading of the play through any particular genre?

Is Endgame an example of late modernist despair, or postmodernist celebration of the end of such master narratives as history, Man, science, art, literature, progress?-

Endgame might be said to be Beckett’s most complete play. How does it tally against, or in concert with, his other major plays, notably Waiting for Godot and Krapp’s Last Tape?

Symbolic structures in Endgame: binaries or dyads - two acts, two major characters, two parents in two dustbins, two windows; the monad (and its theological residues) - monologue, the single room of the action.

How do history and narrative interact? Hamm recounts what passes for autobiography in the conditional tense, and always makes clear he is telling a story. Is this gesture an appropriation of history or a concession to the conditional nature of the historical record?

Endgame implies a critique of several philosophical and aesthetic movements: naturalism, realism, Romanticism, classicism, Enlightenment progress, empiricism, rationalism. Are there any alternatives left in the world of the play?

Performing Endgame: in a play that finds hollow much of the fabric of the world, and the ways of knowing it, can there be a true reading of the script, or is this too an illusion? What kinds of challenges do actors, directors, lighting technicians, and set designers face in productions of this play?

Inquiries and topic proposals can be directed to the editor at msb27@u.washington.edu and will be fielded until 31 May, 2004; completed manuscripts (20-25 pages; Chicago style; 2 hard copies in Word) by 1 December, 2004.

Hungry Words - Images of Famine in the Irish Canon
Deadline extended to May 15, 2004

From the CFP...

Abstracts of 500 words or original papers of around 9,000 words are being solicited for Hungry Words, an anthology which will examine representations of hunger or famine in the works of canonical Irish authors. The terms "famine" and "canonical" are, of course, loaded ones in Irish studies, and it is my particular desire to collect essays which question the various manifestations of these terms in recent literary scholarship.

In the past few years, numerous scholars have challenged the myth that Irish literature as a whole has ignored or repressed the cultural legacy of the Great Famine. As works such as Christopher Morash¹s Writing the Irish Famine(1996) demonstrate, representations of the Famine have indeed existed in Irish literature since the 1840's and continue into the present . However, nearly all of the scholarship published in this area has emphasized the rediscovery of authors and texts largely forgotten by contemporary critics and readers. Few projects, if any, have sought to reevaluate the authors and texts generally recognized as the "canon" of Irish literature in the light of the newly identified Famine discourse.

Hungry Words will provide just such a reevaluation. Each essay will focus on the ways individual Irish authors with varying claims to canonical status affect and are affected by the literary discourse which emerged from the Great Famine. Through these essays, the anthology as a whole will further illuminate not only the cultural impact of the Famine, but the nature of the canon itself and the ideologies that have been used to determine which authors and texts represent Ireland's cultural identity.

Specific essay topics might include, but are certainly not limited to:

Edmund Burke
Dion Boucicault
Oscar Wilde
George Bernard Shaw
Maude Gonne
Sommerville and Ross
Daniel Corkery
Elizabeth Bowen
Samuel Beckett
Seamus Heaney
The Irish Gothic
Famine in Irish Film or Television
Immigrant/emigrant literature
Irish reactions to foreign depictions of the Famine

Submissions will be accepted until May 15, 2004. Complete manuscripts of essays chosen for the anthology will be due by September 15, 2004. Please include a CV or professional biography with your submission. Send submissions to:

George Cusack
Department of English
Auburn University Montgomery
P.O. Box 224023
Montgomery, AL 36124
(334) 244-3634
gcusack@mail.aum.edu

ETUDES IRLANDAISES
Etudes irlandaises invites submissions for a special issue, "Irish Space(s): zones and margins", to be issued at the end of 2004. Guest editors: Claude Fierobe, University of Reims, and Sylvie Mikowski, University of Reims.

Possible topics, very broadly defined, include (but are not limited to):

The Pale and beyond: civilisation versus the wilderness
In-between space(s), no-man's lands, marginal space(s) (e.g. : satellite towns, the center and the periphery, etc)
Border-crossings, gaps and borders
Passages and passengers (e.g. : travellers, holding centers,etc)
Space(s) : reality and fantasy
Cultural space(s) : perception/reception of another's space.

Submitted essays should be sent in four hard copies and one electronic copy (Mac compatible) by April 30 to: Sylvie Mikowski, 2, square des bouleaux, 75019 Paris, France or email sylvie.mikowski@noos.fr

Contributors should follow the style-sheet of the journal to be found on: http://etudes-irlandaises.septentrion.com

CANADIAN JOURNAL OF IRISH STUDIES: SPECIAL ISSUE: RECONSIDERING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
The interdisciplinary Canadian Journal of Irish Studies invites submissions for a special issue, "Reconsidering the Nineteenth Century" (scheduled to appear at the end of 2004).

Possible topics, very broadly defined, include (but are not limited to):

nationalist movements that challenged the division of Ireland by religious affiliation
reconsiderations of the effects, and causes, of the famines
Irish music after the Belfast Harper's Festival
religious debates within (rather than between) religious communities (e.g., the Veto Controversy) 
nineteenth-century Irish historiography
Irish influence outside of Ireland (through the circulation of Irish culture, including translations, and/or the diaspora)
Irish literature's engagement with other national literatures
the Anglo-Irish gothic from Maturin to Stoker
the Irish periodical press

Submitted essays should be approx. 5000-6500 words in length (including notes etc.) and should follow either the MLA Style Sheet (literatures and languages) or the Chicago Manual of Style (other disciplines). The author's name should appear only on the cover sheet in order to facilitate blind vetting.

Please send two hard copies and one electronic copy (MS-Word or WordPerfect), by 15 February 2004, to the guest editor:

Julia M. Wright, Canada Research Chair in English, Department of English & Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. W. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5. e-mail enquiries: jwright@wlu.ca

CALL FOR PAPERS – SPECIAL ISSUE OF IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW
Ann Fogarty, the new editor of the IUR sends an invitation for submissions on the work of John McGahern.  Send to John Brannigan, guest ed, Dept of English, University College, Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. 

Deadline is 1 December 2003, and essays should be approx. 5,000. If accepted, essays are expected in complete form on 1 August 2004.

For further information, contact John Brannigan - John.Brannigan@ucd.ie