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Queering Ireland 2: Coming Out in Contemporary Ireland

 

An International Interdisciplinary Conference

 

July  25 /26th 2011

University College, Cork

 

Despite, or perhaps because of, the continuing growth of Queer Studies, it remains unclear whether the term contributes to or occludes the struggle for LGBT rights in an Irish context. Given the still considerable obstacles to equality in Irish society, can the Queering Ireland project justifiably focus on queerness as a hermeneutic of disturbance without unwittingly shifting the focus back on to an interrogation of normative heterosexuality? Can the two projects, LGBT rights and Queering Ireland, be conceived together? Should they be held apart? At the final roundtable discussion at Queering Ireland (2009), it was agreed that more work needed to be done on the material struggle for equality and recognition among the LGBT communities in Ireland as a counterweight to the aims of the broader project. To that end, papers are invited that discuss all aspects of that struggle, placing especial emphasis on the obstacles, institutional and otherwise, that continue to discriminate against ‘non-normative’ sexualities in Ireland. What is the significance of the passing of the recent Civil Partnerships Bill, for example, or the coming out of Donal Óg Cusack as an openly gay member of the Gaelic Athletic Association?  What are the costs, psychological, financial and otherwise, of coming out in contemporary Ireland? Or of deciding not to? How has the Celtic Tiger contributed to the LGBT  struggle, if at all?  We welcome papers on these issues as well as on Queering Ireland and the Law, Queer performance and the Irish stage, and on Contemporary popular culture and notions of queerness.

 

 Proposal of no more than 500 words (or one page) to be sent to Éibhear Walshe (e.walshe@ucc.ie) and Seán Kennedy (sean.kennedy@smu.ca) by October 31st 2010.

 

 

 

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