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The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures |
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| Welcome to the 2006-2007 IASIL Newsletter |
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Welcome to the IASIL Conferences and Summer Schools Page. This page lists conferences/summer schools that deal with Irish Literature, Theatre, and Film. Conferences with broader themes that pay substantial attention to Irish writing will also be listed from time to time. If you wish to include a listing, email webmaster@iasil.org These pages are provided for information only - you should confirm dates, deadlines, and so on with conference organisers. 2007 Conferences - January - June 2006, Updated 25 April, 2007
All details should be confirmed with conference organisers 2006 Conferences are listed here This page lists conferences on Irish literature, Irish drama and theatre studies, and Irish film. If you think a conference should be listed here, please tell us. |
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Twenty-First Irish Conference Of Medievalists Papers are invited on medieval archaeology, art, history, language and literature (Latin and the vernaculars). Length of papers: 45minutes (15 minutes discussion) or 20 minutes (10 minutes discussion). As 2007 marks the existence of the Irish Conference of Medievalists for twenty years, it was decided at this year’s AGM to make a special appeal for papers which deal with the nature of Irish medieval studies as an academic field of study: the way it has changed since the inception of the conference and its potential for development and expansion into the future. To emphasize that this represents a wish to look forward, as well as looking back, the conference this year is in a new venue, Mary Immaculate College , in Limerick Fifth Galway Conference on Colonialism: Settler Colonialism Settler colonisers come to stay. They seek to replace native peoples on – or, at least, displacethem from – their land. Characteristically, the outcome is a conflictual coexistence through which indigenous and invasive societies historically transform one another. In addition to the classic sites of European settler colonialism (Ireland, the Americas, Africa, Australasia), settler colonialism structures relationships as historically and culturally diverse as those between Israelis and Palestinians, Japanese and Ainu, Chinese and Tibetans, Indonesians and Papuans, ‘Americans’ and Hawaiians, Tswana and Khoi-san. We invite conceptual, comparative, transnational, or locally focused contributions to a wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussion of settler colonialism and indigenous alternatives, past and present. Thematically, papers might address issues such as: native resistance and survival; cultural adaptation and renaissance; invasions and frontiers; sovereignties (titles, treaties, terra nullius, etc.); middle grounds, interludes, spaces of mutuality; internal colonisation; assimilation; race and place (the Pale, reservations, urban zoning, segregation, etc.); settler colonialism and the question of genocide; reparation and reconciliation; diaspora/exile; indigenous people and multiculturalism; settler and indigenous literature; gender; social class; religion; political economy, economics, and colonisation. A central part of the Conference will be devoted to Ireland which was unusually both a site and a source of settler colonialism. Issues addressed might include: Ireland as settler colony; the ‘Plantations’; Ireland as ‘mother country’; the Irish as random emigrants or systematiccolonisers; missions and Ireland’s‘spiritual empire’. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send an abstract, of not more than 300 words (electronic submissions preferred) , to: irishstudies@nuigalway.ie before 1 February 2006. Seeing Things: Irish Studies and Visual Culture Proposals are invited for Seeing Things: Irish Studies and Visual Culture, an interdisciplinary visual cultural studies conference to be hosted at the University of Limerick in June 2007. This three day international event will bring together a wide range of scholars and practitioners working with and across different media, including photography, sculpture, art history, film, digital culture, animation, popular visual art, printing, historiography, gender studies, literary studies, among others, and who address the intersection(s) of the visual register and Ireland. “Seeing Things” aims to map the state of visual cultural studies on the island of Ireland and across various borders. In so doing it will provide academics and practitioners the opportunity to showcase and engage with contemporary efforts to address key issues relating to visuality in the context of concern with notions and problematics of Ireland and Irishness. It is expected that selected conference papers will be collected in an edited volume. In addition to this, issues raised and work presented in the forum will also provide the basis for the launch of a new journal to be housed at University of Limerick, Irish Visual Cultural Studies. At present, there are an ever-increasing number of scholars and practitioners located both within and without Ireland who are concerned with visual cultural studies in a fully or partially Irish context. However, given the comparatively recent emergence of visual cultural studies as a transdisciplinary formation together with the fact that scholars and practitioners are scattered throughout the island – and beyond – there is little overall sense of the types of questions being raised and interventions being made. Hence, there is little overall knowledge of the ways in which an expanding intellectual formation is gradually being written into Irish culture and society and little sense of the ways in which formations of Irishness and material conditions existing within contemporary Ireland have inflected this formation. Therefore, the goal of Seeing Things is to provide a space in which scholars, practitioners and other interested parties can begin to address these and related issues. ROMANTIC IRELAND - From TONE To GONNE This conference aims to explore the material culture of Romantic Ireland in all its manifestations – from Tone to Gonne, and from O’Leary to Theory …Since the venue is Glasgow there will be some emphasis on Irish-Scottish relations in the period, for as well as being the Second City of Empire Glasgow was a major centre of Irish immigration in the nineteenth century. The Bloomsday celebrations in Glasgow on 16th June 2007 will begin a week of Irish cultural activities in the city, culminating in this major international conference. The conference organizers are: Katie Gough, Paddy Lyons, and Willy Maley. The organisers take a broad and long view of the nineteenth century, and welcome proposals for papers and panels in every area and across disciplines investigating nineteenth-century Irish Studies. Papers should be 20-25 minutes in length. Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to the organizers at tonetogonne@arts.gla.ac.uk no later than 15th February 2007. Papers are invited on all pertinent topics, including: absenteeism; William Allingham; archaeology; architecture; the Banim brothers; the Big House; The Bohemian Girl; Dion Boucicault; caricature and cartoon; William Carleton; Catholic Emancipation; Celtic Football Club; Celticism; chapbooks; childhood; coffin ships; James Connolly; crime and punishment; Thomas Davis; Michael Davitt; diaspora; education; Maria Edgeworth; emigration; Robert Emmett; Empire; exile; fairies; the family, private property, and the state; the Famine; Fenianism; Sir Samuel Ferguson; folklore; folksong; folkstory; the Gaelic League; Maud Gonne; Irish Gothic; The Groves of Blarney; the Green Atlantic; Lady Gregory; Gerald Griffin; Arthur Griffith; gypsies, tinkers, travellers; Home Rule; immigration; Joyce; the Kildare Place Society; Knocknagow; May Laffan; labour history; landlordism; language; law; Emily Lawless; Sheridan LeFanu; Lever and Lover; the lockout; James Clarence Mangan; Marx and Engels; Charles Robert Maturin; melodrama; migration; John Mitchel; George Moore; Thomas Moore; Lady Morgan; Mother Ireland; music and song; The Nation; Daniel O’Connell; Hubert O’Grady; John O’Leary; orality; Orangeism; orientalism; PH Pearse; paper landscapes; Parnell; periodical literature; the Phoenix Club; the Phoenix Park murders; policing and popular justice; prisoners; print culture; Queen Victoria; Ribbonmen; Romance; Romanticism; school readers; sectarianism; Shaw; Somerville and Ross, Speranza, Lady Wilde; the stage Irishman; Bram Stoker; Synge; temperance; tenantry; tourism; tract societies; translation; travel; urban development; visual culture; wakes and funereal rites; Wolfe Tone; the Volunteer Movement; Wilde; Yeats; the Young Ireland movement; the Zoological Society of Dublin. CAIS 2007 – Secrets and Lies and/or The Irish in Newfoundland The 2007 Canadian Association for Irish Studies is holding it annual conference and AGM from June 20-23rd in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Conference organizers are calling for 20-minute contributions on any aspect connected with or suggested by the titles of the conference. Topics may include but are not limited to: conspiracy and espionage; secret societies within a cultural context; exclusivity and occlusion in any disciplinary context; previously undocumented sources and/or confessional texts; hidden or recently found archives; excavations; histories under erasure; masks, hidden identities, contingent selves; and art/artifact revision and restoration. Keynote speakers: Professor Monica McWilliams (Chief Commissioner, Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission), Dr. Peter Hart (Canada Research Chair in Irish History), and Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin (Smurfit-Stone Corporation Professor of Irish Music). Please paste the abstract into the body of the e-mail and please be sure to include your full name, contact information, and academic affiliation (if any). Abstracts will be assessed by a conference committee. The Annual Conference of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society / Cumann Éire san Ochtú Céad Déag Proposals are invited for papers on any aspect of eighteenth-century Ireland, including its history, literature, language and culture. Special panels may include • The Act of Union, 1707 To mark the three hundred year anniversary of the union of England and Scotland, papers are invited on any aspect of the Irish ramifications of the act, including Swift’s The Story of the Injured Lady. • Race in eighteenth-century Ireland As 2007 is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, papers that address any aspect of slavery, abolition and race in relation to eighteenth-century Ireland are especially welcome. • The works of Thomas Moore The conference will feature a special exhibition on the works of Thomas Moore to mark the significance of the Moore collection in the Queen’s University library. Papers on any aspect of Moore’s life and works (or collections of the latter) are therefore invited. The key-note speakers at the conference will be Professor Ian Campbell Ross (TCD) and Dr Angela Bourke (UCD). Queries or requests for further details should be addressed to the conference organiser, Dr Moyra Haslett - m.haslett@qub.ac.uk Joyce in Austin “Bring a stranger within thy tower.” (Ulysses 14.365) To honor the lifetime achievement of Tom Staley, the 2007 Joyce Conference will be hosted by the English Department of The University of Texas at Austin. The event will feature plenary presentations and readings by Vicki Mahaffey, Paul Muldoon, Tom Staley, and Sean Walsh; a round-table discussion with all the plenary speakers; academic panels on Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Tom Stoppard, contemporary Irish poetry, and such other Joyce-related topics as film, the Harry Ransom Center, music, race, Shakespeare, “the wake of the Wake,” and gender; a performance of Stoppard’s Travesties by the Austin Shakespeare Festival; Joycean music and film; an exhibit of Joyce and Stoppard holdings at the Harry Ransom Center; a bat cruise on Town Lake. The conference organisers welcome proposals and abstracts for both additional panels and individual papers, and especially encourage submissions of work linked in some way to the Harry Ransom Center holdings. Ireland Across Cultures Organisers: Irish Embassy, Bulgaria and University of Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria The conference aims at exploring representations of Ireland and the Irish across varied cultures, by bringing together scholarship in history, literature, linguistics, translation studies, theology, sociology, film, media and cultural studies. A special emphasis is to be placed o n to the historically conditioned hybridity of Irish culture and inter- and cross-cultural relations involving comparison, parallels and translation. Attention is also to be paid to Ireland’s contribution to key areas of European culture from the early Middle Ages o nwards and, specifically, to Irish contacts with Eastern Europe. It is hoped that the conference will attract postgraduate students as well as established scholars. Possible subtopics:
Abstracts of 250-300 words with a provisional title and a short bio should be sent by 18 March 2007 to Prof. Ludmilla Kostova (e-mail: lkostova@mbox.digsys.bg) AND Ms. Anna Georgieva (e-mail: anna_vtu@yahoo.com). Print Culture in the Eighteenth Century: Regional, National and International Dimensions Plenary Speaker: Professor Robert Darnton ( Princeton University) ‘Slander: The Art and Politics of Slinging Mud in 18th-Century Paris’ Speakers: Johanna Archbold (TCD), Ursula Callaghan (MIC), Prof Andrew Carpenter (UCD), Eamon D’Arcy (TCD), Dr Michael Griffin (UL), Dr James Kelly (St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra), Dr Máire Kennedy (Dublin City Public Libraries), Sarah MacNamara (MIC), Jennifer Moore (UL), Dr Niall Ó Ciosáin (NUIG), Dr Síofra Pierse (UCD), Jennifer Regan (QUB), Prof Geraldine Sheridan (UL). See http://www.ul.ie/~lcs/conference-print-culture-in-the-eighteenth-century
Modernity and Postmodernity: The Franco-Irish Context Many commentators argue that Ireland became, almost overnight, a postmodern culture. Given that issues relating to Ireland and modernity are still the subject of intense debate, it is not altogether surprising that there has been comparatively little analysis done on how this situation has come about. There is much food for reflection, however, and an urgent need for debate, on the impact modernity and postmodernity have had on Irish society. The French, largely as a result of their strong philosophical tradition, are to the forefront when it comes to the analysis of these phenomena and therefore provide invaluable signposts for Ireland as it attempts to come to grips with their growing influence on Irish society and culture. Most of the main figures associated with modernity and postmodernity are French - Baudrillard, Lacan, Derrida, Lyotard – which is a good reason, if one were needed, to explore the concepts through a Franco-Irish lens. AFIS is organising a conference on the 10th and 11th of May 2007 in ITT Dublin (Tallaght) that will study modernity and postmodernity in an Irish context, looking specifically at the French influences on this development. Some of the areas that might be looked at are:
These are only suggested headings and do not seek to be prescriptive. Any other valid areas can also be examined. Confirmed Plenary Speakers include Dr. John McDonagh (MIC/UL), Dr. Brigitte Le Juez (DCU),Mr. Michael D. Higgins, TD (Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht 1993-1997)
Edmund Burke and Irish Literary Criticism, 1757 to 2007 April 2007 marks the 250 th anniversary of the first publication of Edmund Burke’s classic in aesthetics and the philosophy of literary criticism, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This academic conference would seek to acknowledge and celebrate the occasion, but it will also propose a renewal and a re-examination of the 18 th century and late Enlightenment roots of Irish literary criticism. Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry, for instance, constructs a rationalist hierarchy of the passions that strives to harmonise the concerns of Greco-Roman aesthetics and Enlightenment (Lockean and Hobbesian) psychology in Part I. Furthermore, Parts II to IV construct an aesthetics of a Gothic sublime and of a gendered beautiful in advance of the development of the Gothic novel and the Anglophone novel of sense and sensibility in the last third of the 18 th century. Part V offers an analysis of image and word relations which contemporary theorists (WJT Mitchell and others) have only recently recognised as precociously modern and insightful. Perhaps most perceptively Burke constructs in his “Introduction on Taste” for the book’s second edition a triadic model of faculty psychology which influences the shape and substance of Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy (pure reason, practical reason, judgement) but also Sigmund Freud’s tripartite construction of human psychological motivation (id, ego, superego). Oddly enough, Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry seems not to receive due attention as a classic, perhaps even foundational text, of Irish literary criticism. For instance, Burke features as the first writer anthologised in Stephen Regan’s Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Writing, 1789-1939 (Oxford UP, 2004) but it’s Burke’s controversial effusion over the figure of Marie Antionette and his defence of the right of monarchs [Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)] that students of Anglophone Irish writing get to read. A second, clear aim of this proposed conference would be to open a discussion of the connections and continuities of modern and contemporary Irish literary criticism to the constructions, issues, problems and possibilities of Edmund Burke’s 1757 Anglophone Irish classic, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. This academic conference will be a one-day event, held in the meeting rooms of the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2, on Wednesday, 25 April 2007. Dr Claire Connolly, Senior Lecturer in English Literary and Cultural Criticism at the University of Wales at Cardiff, will offer an opening keynote speech in the morning and a closing plenary response at the end of the afternoon will be provided by Luke Gibbons, Keogh Family Professor of Irish Literature and Cultural Criticism at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and Director of the Keogh Institute in Dublin. "Voicing Dissent" - New Voices in Irish Criticism - International Postgraduate Conference 2007 The theme of the conference this year will be Voicing Dissent. Papers should be 20 minutes in length. New Voices 2007 invites papers from any dissenting voice in either the English or Irish language from any era across the various disciplines of literature, history, film, media, performing and visual arts. We want to set up a dynamic between voicing dissent and dissenting voices. Is there a shift in the position of power? Is there dissent; is there conformism; is there communion; or is there commonality between old and new critical voices? Some suggested areas are:
Reading Colm Tóibín: an international symposium
The symposium is free of admission and open to all. Further details including a timetable of events will be posted in early April. Characterizing the Celt: Post/Colonial Representations of Identity and Alterity. Papers are invited that examine representations of Celtic cultures and peoples expressed as a means to self-identification and as modes of colonial, postcolonial or exilic discourse. Submissions are welcome that employ various theoretical perspectives and explore different historical moments and geographical spaces. Panelists are free to examine single literary texts, literary and artistic movements, music, cartoons and caricatures, the visual arts, or any combination of the same. Papers are also welcome which discuss hybrid representations of post/colonized Celtic identities, such as Ulster Protestants, the Breton’s relationship to France, the Galician’s relationship to Iberia, the liminal position of Wales in relationship to England’s conception of the United “Three” Kingdoms, the Celt as American immigrant or Australian convict, etc. To submit an abstract, please complete the online form at http://acla2007.complit.ucla.edu/forms/form2.html “Waste and Abundance: Critical Readings of Modern Wastelands” “Faint light on stage littered with miscellaneous rubbish”: Samuel Beckett’s representation of the human condition as regulated by waste in Breath, a playlet of 1969, now reads as a striking anticipation of our present race against ecological catastrophe. However, if there is now a pressing need for us to re-think our attitudes towards consumption, this change should also extend to certain aspects of our approaches to literature, film, and critical theory. This two-day conference entitled “Waste and Abundance: Critical Readings of Modern Wastelands” seeks to outline contexts for conceptualising abundance and waste. It invites proposals that argue for the existence of specific perspectives on abundance and waste in strands of modernist and postmodernist literature as well as film. Suggested topics might include but are not limited to:
The Inaugural Symposium of The Irish Society for Theatre Research Keynote Speaker: Professor Janelle Reinelt, University of Warwick, President of the International Federation of Theatre Research. The field of Irish Theatre Studies is being transformed by new approaches to the rich history of Irish theatre and by the remarkable diversity of contemporary theatrical practice. The Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR) is being founded in order to develop and promote new and challenging ways of thinking about Irish theatre which engage with diverse contemporary historiographical, theoretical, cultural and performance frameworks. ISTR aims to facilitate research on Irish theatre in its national and international contexts in terms of an engagement with the broad spectrum of Irish theatre from page to stage. ISTR will have a range of working groups which currently include: Performance Studies; Theatre History and Historiography; Cultural Identities; and Textual Practices. The current ISTR Steering Group will be replaced in due course by an elected Executive Committee. Call for Working Group Submissions and Panel Paper Submissions Screening Irish-America The UCD O’Kane Centre for Film Studies in conjunction with the Clinton Institute for American Studies, UCD, the Humanities Institute, UCD, the Irish Program, Boston College, the Huston School of Film and Digital Media and the School of Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia invite proposals for papers to be given at the Screening Irish-America Conference. Proposals covering all aspects of Irish-American Screen Studies, from the Early and Silent period through to New Media Technologies would be welcomed. Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to submit proposals. Screening Irish-America is a collaborative, interdisciplinary network of scholars run from the UCD O’Kane Centre for Film Studies. Further details of the project may be found on http://www.ucd.ie/film/ Members keep in touch via a listserv. To join the listserv, please email LISTSERV@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE with the message "Subscribe UCD-SCREEN-IRISHUSA" in the message body. Do not put any text in the subject line. Speakers already confirmed for the conference include:
More details of further speakers and events will be circulated on the listserv. 'C.S. Lewis: Critic, Christian and creative writer' Contributions are invited for a major international and interdisciplinary conference reassessing the critical, creative and theological work of C. S. Lewis. This conference is being hosted by the University of Manchester, UK, and is being planned in conjuction with the Centre for Literature and Belief, University of Ulster, UK. Irish Feminist Thought According to Margaret Ward, ‘For women in Ireland, the Act of Union of 1800 not only defined the constitutional relationship between Britain and Ireland, it also largely determined the nature of feminism within Ireland and ensured a differentiation of Irish from British feminism’. In the last fifteen to twenty years, Irish historians, sociologists, and literary critics have recovered figures and events previously lost to history, but central to Irish feminism and women’s history. This conference seeks to build on and extend this vital work, and invites proposals that argue for (or against!) a body of specifically Irish feminist thought which has developed over the course of the last two centuries following the Act of Union, though contributions siting Irish feminism prior to 1800 will also be welcome. While twentieth-century Irish feminist issues and debates have received detailed critical attention, some less known contributions to contemporary Irish feminism include Owenite socialist and west Cork landlord William Thompson’s 1824 treatise on feminism, the most significant to appear between Wollstonecraft and Mill; nationalist historian Alice Stopford Green’s participation in the increasingly gendered debate about the professionalization of her discipline; influential suffragist and animal advocate Frances Power Cobbe’s conservative radicalism, shaped by Ireland’s sectarian tensions; and New Woman writer George Egerton’s ecocritical fiction which drew on Irish folklore and is frequently situated in an Irish landscape. Suggested topics:
CONTESTATIONS - 33rd International Association of Art Historians (AAH) Annual Conference The relationship between Irish Studies and History of Art disciplines remains a contested one, despite an increasing amount of cross-research and publishing by academics in both disciplines. On the one hand, art has remained an area of marginal interest to Irish Studies. One might ask whether this status relates to historic associations of Irish culture as essentially non-visual or to the perceived internationalism of modern and contemporary art. On the other hand, art historians have been slow to engage with Irish Studies, which is perceived as having a literary bias, and a methodological approach in which art is subservient to theory. Beyond disciplinary differences, the relationship between Irish Studies and Irish History of Art is underscored by divergent views on the status of the ‘national’ and the ‘postcolonial’ within Irish cultural production. Within Irish art discourse, the ‘national’ is often perceived as reductive in its isolation of Irish art from international art discourse and apparent focus on a culturally essentialist ‘Irishness’. The post-colonial status of Ireland and its relevance for art historical research are widely disputed. Focus is rather on the formal influences of European and British art on individual Irish artists. In contrast, ‘national’ and ‘postcolonial’ referents are central tenets of Irish Studies discourse. This session calls for papers which reflect on the current relationship between the disciplines, elaborate on the potential for further interdisciplinary exchange and/or provide arguments against such developments. Does History of Art address areas of importance to Irish Studies? Is Irish Studies engagement with post-colonialism an opportunity to re-think traditional assumptions about Irish art? Would collaboration undermine the status of History of Art as a domain-specific discipline? How might the multiplicity of domain-specific discourses be productive in interdisciplinary dialogue? Should the theoretical engagements of Irish Studies inspire a more theoretically-engaged art historical research? Is consensus on the status of the ‘national’ necessary for dialogue? George
Moore: Across Borders A cosmopolitan Irishman, George Moore (1852-1933) is a European writer who, in his day, practised, promoted and facilitated significant intermeshing of the arts, aesthetic trends and national literary movements. Although not currently accorded the literary stardom bestowed on his compatriots Yeats and Joyce, his name is readily associated with Naturalism in the novel and in the theatre, with Impressionism in painting, with Paterian aesthetics, with the Irish literary Revival, with Wagnerism, with the suffragettes, and so much more. Eclectic, a dilettante and a self-confessed ‘chameleon’, Moore moves between countries, always exploring and promulgating a variety of artistic developments. Moore goes beyond genre boundaries, he translates the visual into prose, and he infuses the physical with the spiritual. It is
these journeys, contacts, crossings, revisions, conversions and re-conversions
that this conference proposes to explore: Conference Committee: Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier (Université Lille 3), Bernard Escarbelt (Université Lille 3), Ann Heilmann (University of Hull), Christine Huguet (Universite Lille 3), Alain Labau (Université de Caen), Mary Pierse (University College Cork). Ireland’s America - The IAAS annual conference The core theme of this conference will explore the presence of ‘ America’ in the Irish imagination. This theme is broadly conceived. Proposals on a range of topics including perspective on the US in Irish literature and culture, immigrant projections of America, political and diplomatic discourses of Irish-US relations, the history of the study of America in Ireland, representations of the US in Irish music, cinema and media, and other related concerns are welcomed from academics, scholars and postgraduates working in the various fields of American Studies. While the above theme will provide a core strand of conference presentations, the organisers also invite papers in all areas of American Studies. They welcome not only proposals for individual papers but also panel proposals, roundtable discussions and innovative ideas for sessions. Proposals with a short abstract and brief CV should be submitted on or before the 16th March 2007 to Catherine.Carey@ucd.ie Keynote speakers include:Professor Denis Donoghue ( New York University); Professor John Montague (former Ireland Professor of Poetry); Professor Peggy O’Brien ( University of Massachussetts) Transatlantic
Exchange: African Americans and the Celtic Nations In his introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Invisible Man Ralph Ellison described the gestation of his seminal novel and recalled publishing a story entitled 'In a Strange Country' 'in which a young African American seaman, ashore in Swansea, South Wales, was forced to grapple with the troublesome 'American' aspects of his identity.' This conference - taking place in Ellison's 'strange country' and in the town where he was stationed during the Second World War - aims to grapple with some of the 'troublesome' aspects of African American and Celtic identities, and to explore moments of interaction, of correspondence, of hostility and of attraction between cultural traditions. To evoke the idea of a 'Celtic' or 'African American' identity is already to invite controversy. The conference seeks, however, to encourage transatlantic approaches that move out of self-enclosed, exceptionalist, models in exploring specific moments of interaction that are often completely ignored when a merely 'British' or 'American' perspective is brought to bear. The Keynote Speakers are Professor John F. Callahan, Lewis and Clark College, Oregon, USA; Dr. Glenn Jordan, University of Glamorgan, Wales; Professor Werner Sollors, Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA (provisional); Professor Jeffrey C. Stewart, George Mason University, Virginia, USA. Possible topics for paper or panel proposals might include, but are no means limited to The role of the Celts in the slave trade; African American abolitionists in Ireland, Wales and Scotland; Pan-Africanism and Pan-Celticism; The use of 'Celtic' identities in the American South; The Harlem and Celtic Renaissances; Responses by Ida B. Wells, Paul Robeson, Ralph Ellison and others to their visits to Ireland, Scotland and Wales; The idea of the 'folk' in Black and Celtic cultural and political thought; Gender, Ethnicity and Nationalism; Boxing and Sport; African Americans and the making of Black Celtic, or Afro-Celtic, identities; Black and Celtic Marxisms / Nationalisms / Feminisms / Religious Traditions; Influences and correspondences between literary and political traditions; African American texts in Welsh and Gaelic translations; The case for comparative and transatlantic models in relation to Celtic and African American studies The main language of the conference will be English, but proposals for papers/panels in Welsh are also welcome. Irish
Caucus, American Conference for Eighteenth Century
Studies (ASECS) Panel Proposals are solicited for the March 22-25, 2007 annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies' Irish Caucus in Atlanta, GA, USA. ASECS Montreal featured many panels on Irish themes, including a general discussion of Irish culture in the 18th century, Daniel Corkery's twentieth century concept of the Gaelic/Jacobite "Hidden Ireland" of the eighteenth century, and the role of gender in representations of "Irishness" in the period. Proposals for panels on Irish connnections with the Continent, eighteenth century Ireland and the new world, gender and sexuality in Irish culture, economics and Irish identity, and colonial discourse analysis will receive special consideration, though any and all ideas that link Irish Studies to the field of Eighteenth-Century Studies are welcome. Please
email proposals by April 26, 2006, to Sean Moore, President of the
ASECS Irish Caucus, at sean@unh.edu. SOFEIR 2007: “ Ireland: Going East” The Groupe de Recherche en Etudes Irlandaises de l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle- Paris 3, will host the annual conference of the SOFEIR (Société Française d’Etudes Irlandaises) on 16th and 17th March 2007. The theme of the conference will be: “ Ireland: Going East”. Throughout history, “the West” has played a rich and varied role in the development of the Irish imagination and Irish identity. This multidisciplinary conference (literature, history, politics, visual arts, translation, etc.) will look at an alternative to this obsessive focus on “The West” and explore Ireland’s less well-known, but equally rich relationship with “The East”. Rather than taking into account Ireland’s links with her immediate neighbours to the East, the island of Great Britain, or even France, the conference wants to look beyond to the continent of Europe, more particularly to the influence of the countries of central and Eastern Europe. Twentieth-century Ireland saw a particularly intense and ambiguous relationship with the region. In the early years of the century, some in Ireland looked to Central and Eastern Europe as a possible model for the resolution of constitutional and ethnic problems. Today, things are even more complex: some now see the countries of the region as a threat to Ireland’s own long-term economic success; at the same time, Ireland has been one of the few countries to open her workplace to people from the “New” Europe. Possible topics include:
Looking to countries further afield, especially in the Middle and Far East, it would be of interest to look at mutual influences in areas such as:
A Piece of the Irish Dream Winthrop University, in Rock Hill, SC, will host the Southern Regional Conference of the American Conference for Irish Studies March 8-10, 2007. The theme of the interdisciplinary conference will be A Piece of the Irish Dream, although the committee welcomes paper proposals on all aspects of Irish Studies. Please submit a one-page paper proposal by October 9, 2006 to: Marguerite Quintelli-Neary (nearym@winthrop.edu), or send a hard copy to her at: English Department, 250 Bancroft Hall, Winthrop University, Rock Hill, SC 29733. Selected conference papers will be published in forthcoming issues of Working Papers in Irish Studies, which is published by Winthrop University. Nuala NiDhomhnaill and Fintan O'Toole have agreed to present readings at the conference. The 9th Annual Grian Conference Gender in Ireland has traditionally been discussed in terms of the personification of Ireland as woman and the role of women in a conservative, Catholic country. Recent scholarship on gender and Irish subjects, however, has expanded the discourse to include issues of masculinity, sexuality, queer identities, and the role gender plays in a rapidly changing society (in both the Republic and Northern Ireland). GRIAN invites papers from scholars in all fields that address gender from contemporary and historical perspectives, including, but not limited to, the following areas:
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