CFP: Encircling Worlds: Imagining Irish Suburbia
September 12-13, 2014
Carlow College and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art
Carlow, Ireland
In the final decades of the twentieth century and in the early years of the new millennium, the spaces of Irish suburbia have been significantly transformed. From the enlargement of commuter belts, residential areas, and the commensurate construction boom in apartment complexes, to the redevelopment of housing estates and older forms of residences, the socio-geographical configuration of the Irish suburb has undergone unprecedented change.
This conference seeks to explore how Irish writers and artists have consciously responded to the evolution of the Irish suburb and also how the changed nature of the Irish suburb has placed new demands and pressures upon Irish cultural and artistic forms. We welcome papers on themes and topics including, but not limited to, the following:
– The aesthetics of Irish suburban literature. The amenability of the short story, the novel, drama, film, television, or photography to Irish suburban experience.
– Traditions of Irish suburban literature and the sublimation of older forms of Irish suburban art into contemporary narrative forms.
– Suburban identities: sexuality, gender, class.
– Suburban cultures: heterogeneity and homogeneity.
– Irish suburbia and the Celtic Tiger and/or legacies of the Celtic Tiger.
– Irish suburbia and childhood.
– The question of the Irish suburb as a site and source of creativity.
– Migration, emigration, immigration within and to Irish suburban spaces.
– Globalization/Glocalization in Irish suburbia.
– The ecological impact of Irish suburbia.
– Suburban Gothic.
Papers should last approximately twenty minutes maximum. Please send proposals of 200-250 words and a brief biography to the following email address: risbcarlow@gmail.com
Closing date for receipt of proposals: 30th May, 2014
Conference Organizers: Dr Simon Workman, Dr Eoghan Smith, Ann Mulrooney
Webpage: http://www.visualcarlow.ie/events/info/encircling-worlds-imagining-irish-suburbia