CFP: After the Crash: Globalism and Irish Literary and Visual Culture

Call for Papers, Events, General News, Other Conferences

After the Crash: Globalism and Irish Literary and Visual Culture

 

Dept. of Humanities, Carlow College, St. Patrick’s and VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow

November 24, 2017

 

Keynote Speaker: Professor Luke Gibbons (Maynooth University)

 

One of the defining themes of Irish cultural discourse in recent decades has been the ways in which globalism manifests itself across Ireland’s social, economic and cultural spheres. Cultural responses to globalism, as it has obtained in Ireland, have ranged from approbation – in which globalizing processes have been read as promoting greater cultural diversity, complexity of identity, social liberalization, and economic prosperity – to antagonism – in which globalizing forces have been perceived as exacerbating social and economic inequality, devastating community and ecology, diminishing national sovereignty, and dissipating selfhood and subjectivity. Attitudes to globalism have particularly intensified in the aftermath and fallout of the 2008 global economic crash, and in the last number of years have shaped political, cultural, social and economic discourses across the world.

 

In this symposium, we invite speakers to reflect on the influence and representation of globalism in Irish literary and visual culture since 2008. We are particularly interested in papers that problematize projections of globalism and its effects as either wholly destructive and alien to conventional Irish life and society, or as resoundingly progressive and dynamically enlightening within Ireland’s recent history. We invite papers that examine and discuss a wide range of literary and visual artists, art practices and art platforms. We also encourage contributions which map the changes to the various national and international systems and institutions through which Irish art is mediated and consumed. Genres of art to be considered might include, though are not limited to: fiction, poetry, drama, photography, film, online texts (weblogs, vlogs, video art etc.), television series, and visual art (painting, installation, digital art). In discussing Irish literary and visual culture in relation to this theme, topics might include, though are not limited to:

 

  • Globalism vs Localism/Nationalism/Nativism
  • The relationship between Ireland and the European Union
  • Ireland and the rise of anti-Globalist movements in America and Europe
  • Ireland, neo-liberalism and the global economy: the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger
  • Ireland, globalism and social liberalization
  • Immigration, Citizenship and Irish society: transnational/global identities
  • The effect of globalizing mechanisms (especially institutional and technological) on the creation, production and mediation of contemporary Irish literary and visual culture
  • Ireland and the environment in a globalizing economy
  • Globalist aesthetics in Irish literary and visual art practice
  • Globalism and Irish forms of selfhood and subjectivity
  • Art as activism and/or disruption in response to globalism

 

Please send proposals for papers of approximately twenty minutes in duration and a brief biographical note to the organisers at rncic@carlowcollege.ie by Friday, 13th October 2017.

 

Organisers: Dr. Eoghan Smith and Dr. Simon Workman (Dept. of Humanities, Carlow College, St. Patrick’s) in conjunction with VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art.

 

This event is part of a wider three-day symposium, Ireland-in the world, run under the auspices of the Making Ireland research theme at Trinity College Dublin, the Transnational Ireland research network and the newly-founded Research Network in Contemporary Irish Culture.