Background Information

Paper and Panel Proposals

Registration

Join IASIL

Accommodation

Contacts

Timetable

Graduate Fellowships

Independent Panels

Accepted Speakers

Publication

Travelling to Ireland

Galway - links

About NUI Galway

2004 - literary anniversaries

Galway and Irish Writing

Irish Women's Writing and Contemporary Feminist Scholarship

Convenors: Prof. Patricia Couglan (Department of English, NUI Cork) &
Dr. Tina O’Toole (Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast)

These panels seeks to address the current state of feminist scholarship within the field of Irish literary research. Papers will discuss the various contemporary projects to recover and disseminate women’s writing (and knowledge about it) by various means including anthologies, dictionaries, collections of interviews, and websites. These papers will analyse the effect of this work on the literary canon, both academic and general, as well as on research and pedagogy. In what ways does the re-production of specific bodies of knowledge about individual women writers call into question the master narrative(s) of Irish studies and Irish literary history? What is the place of the aesthetic within these retrieval projects or within feminist literary scholarship more generally? If published literary history is a primary vehicle for current Irish studies, what is the place in such structures for groups and identities who have been invisible in the mainstream culture, or have no historically embedded voice?

PANEL 1: Locations, Canons, Anthologies
Chair: Prof. Patricia Coughlan (NUI Cork).

Dr. Heidi Hansson (Umea University, Sweden) "Selina Bunbury, the Canon and Locational Feminism".

Dr. Tina O’Toole (Queen’s University Belfast) “The Munster Women Writers Project: Locating the “Absent Presence” in Irish Literary History”.

Dr. Gerardine Meaney (UCD) “Writing the Unread: Canons, Anthologies and Feminist Editing”.

Respondent: Dr. Margaret Kelleher (NUI Maynooth).

Irish Women's Writing and Contemporary Feminist Scholarship

PANEL 2: Re/dis/coveries
Chair: Dr. Tina O’Toole (QUB).

Dr. Claire Connolly (Cardiff University) “‘Vain dreams, and fictions of distress and love’: The Poetry of Mary Tighe”.

Kalene Nix-Kenefick (NUI Cork) “Una Troy: Irish Woman Writer”.

Joanna Wydenbach (Queen’s University Belfast) “Early Twentieth Century Irish Women’s Fiction: Call on an Alternative Perspective”.

PANEL 3: Reframing the Discourse(s)
Chair: Prof. Patricia Coughlan (NUI Cork).

Claire Bracken (UCD) “Postmodern Jouissance: Sexual Difference Paradigms and Irish Feminist Scholarship”.

Dr. Moynagh Sullivan (UCD) “Why Still Oedipus?”

Borbála Faragó (UCD) “‘Even the Grass Grows at an Alien Angle’: Invisible Immigrants of Ireland”.

Original call for papers

Recent feminist research has focused critical attention on the gendered production of knowledge. Recovery projects such as Field Day Vols IV & V, and the Dictionary of Munster Women Writers Project at University College Cork, have focused critical attention, in particular, on the importance of feminist recovery work for the field of Irish studies. Yet despite this and other such work, there remains a persisting masculinism within the literary institution at all levels, and visibly within the practice of reading and writing. As Margaret Kelleher notes: “Irish studies as a discipline remains singularly ill-informed of (and by) the debates and concerns that have occupied Irish feminist criticism in the past decade”. Specifically, we believe that within Irish literary scholarship, it is important to maintain a focus on feminist aims, both to stimulate theoretical diversity and to redress the structure dividing “writing” (i.e. mainstream, men’s, work) from “women’s writing” (received as a kind of supplement).

Thus, this panel seeks to address the current state of feminist scholarship within the field of Irish literary research. Papers will discuss the various contemporary projects to recover and disseminate women’s writing (and knowledge about it) by various means including anthologies, dictionaries, collections of interviews, and websites. These papers will analyse the effect of this work on the literary canon, both academic and general, as well as on research and pedagogy.

We envisage that the panel may address questions such as:
• In what ways does the re-production of these significant bodies of knowledge about women’s writing call into question the master narrative(s) of Irish studies and Irish literary history?
• What is the place of the aesthetic within these retrieval projects or within feminist literary scholarship more generally?
• What theoretical interventions are being made by feminist scholarship and polemic in the field of Irish literary enquiry; what kinds of positions are adopted in relation to, for example, identity, essentialism, post/coloniality?
• If published literary history is a primary vehicle for current Irish studies, what is the place in such structures for groups and identities who have been invisible in the mainstream culture, or have no historically embedded voice?
• What is the place of Northern Irish women writers and scholars in this work?
• What, if any, is the relationship between the work of Irish women writers and feminist community activism?
• What connections may usefully be made between diaspora studies and literary scholarship on Irish women’s writing?

Enquiries from prospective participants should be addressed initially to Dr Tina O'Toole -t.otoole@queens-belfast.ac.uk

IASIL 2004 is hosted by The National University of Ireland, Galway