CFP: 21st International AEDEI Conference
Violence: Repercussion, Resistance and Representation in Irish Society and Culture
Universitat de València. 31 May, 1-2 June 2023
Call for Papers
As a country under the colonising yoke of the United Kingdom, the island of Ireland has endured many different types of violence over the centuries. The decolonisation of part of it after the 1922 War of Independence and Partition led, first, to civil war and, from 1969 onwards, to ‘The Troubles’ in the north. In the recent centenary celebrations and commemorations, events that had been consciously or unconsciously relegated from popular memory have been re-examined. In November 2020, the Abbey Theatre celebrated the centenary of the first Bloody Sunday in Dublin, rescuing its victims from oblivion in 14 Voices from the Bloodied Field; in Derry, the 50th anniversary of the second Bloody Sunday was widely commemorated in 2022, with exhibitions, documentary theatre made with the victims’ families, and even an opera, The White Handkerchief, staged at Derry Playhouse.
The trauma of Brexit has refocused attention on the border, also celebrating its centenary recently, and brought the identity debate in Northern Ireland back to the forefront of political discourse. The ongoing conflict over the “soft” or “hard” border, the maritime “border in the Irish Sea” between Britain and Ireland, and the outbreak of violence in 2021showed the difficulties inherent in maintaining the peace process and evidenced the endurance of sectarian violence as demonstrated by the activity of paramilitary groups in peacetime. Successive works of culture have engaged with these questions relating to the legacy of violence with the success of novels such as Milkman, or the TV series Derry Girls, which premiered in 2018 on Channel 4, offering a settling of accounts with the past, and once again highlighting the difficulties of healing the wounds of the conflict.
However, it would be an inexcusable reductionism to focus solely on armed conflicts when talking about violence, and its personal, social, and political consequences. The presence of violence permeates all aspects of our socialisation: the violence of imposing a language on a population brought about by colonisation; the violence of inequality, which the crisis and collapse of the Celtic Tiger and now the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine have only aggravated; violence against women, exercised as a strategy of domination through their bodies; violence within the Catholic Church, with the exposure of pederasty cases and the Magdalene Laundries; violence against minority groups, aporophobia (to use Adela Cortina’s term), ableism, and ecocide or violence against the planet, which has mobilised the youth in movements such as Fridays For Future, are just a few examples.
The 21st International Conference of the Spanish Society of Irish Studies (AEDEI), “Violence: Repercussion, Resistance and Representation in Irish Society and Culture”, to be held in València on 31 May, 1-2 June 2023, aims to present, contrast, analyse and debate the different expressions of violence, its repercussions, forms of resistance and, especially, the representation of all of them in Irish societal and cultural expressions, extrapolating them in turn to the reality of the European Space. We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers on topics related to the themes outlined above, and on topics including, but not limited to:
- Wars in Ireland: Easter Rising, War of Independence, Civil War, the Troubles
- Paramilitary violence in the aftermath of the peace agreement
- Linguistic violence
- Brexit-induced violence
- Violence against the planet: the climate crisis
- Violence within the EU: political polarisation
- Violence against women
- Violence against children: bullying, abuse within the family
- Violence against marginalised groups: LGBTI+, migrants, people with disabilities, etc.
- Racial and xenophobic violence
- Violence at Europe’s borders
- Violence on the border between the Republic and the North of Ireland.
- Social violence: economic inequality
- Violence within the Catholic Church: paedophilia and the Magdalene Laundries
Submission requirements and important dates
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to aedei2023@gmail.com by Jan 15, 2023.Proposals for panels, roundtables and workshops are also welcome.
To present a paper at the annual AEDEI International Conference, you should become an AEDEI member, and you will be automatically a member of EFACIS as well. To become an AEDEI member, please, contact our AEDEI Treasurer: José Carregal Romero (E-mail: jose.carregal@dfing.uhu.es) or visit our website: http://aedei.es/?page_id=679
A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be published either in an edited volume or in a special issue of an international journal, bearing in mind that all those presenting must be paid-up members of AEDEI.
Scientific Committee
Asier Altuna García de Salazar (Universidad de Deusto)
Mª Amor Barros del Río (Universidad de Burgos)
Teresa Caneda Cabrera (Universidade de Vigo)
Juan F. Elices Agudo (Universidad de Alcalá)
Margarita Estévez Saa (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela)
José Francisco Fernández (Universidad de Almería)
Luz Mar González Arias (Universidad de Oviedo)
Laura P. Z. Izarra (Universidade de Sao Paulo)
Eamonn Jordan (UniversityCollege Dublin)
Marisol Morales Ladrón (Universidad de Alcalá)
Maureen O’Connor (University College Cork)
Juan Ignacio Oliva Cruz (Universidad de La Laguna)
Manuela Palacios González (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela)
María Auxiliadora Pérez Vides (Universidad de Huelva)
Virginie Roche (Universitéd’Artois)
Melania Terrazas Gallego (Universidad de la Rioja)
Pilar Villar Argáiz (Universidad de Granada)