Appendices 2014
Appendix 1
IASIL Representative Reports for 2014 Meeting
Ireland—Claire Connolly, Vice-Chair
Last year was a busy and productive one for the many colleagues in Ireland who write about Irish literature. The following gives a selection of events and initiatives. These are mostly organized by institution, but IASIL colleagues may also be interested to know about the newly formed Irish Humanities Alliance. A listing of taught masters programmes and related research opportunities at Irish universities may be found on the IASIL website.
The Irish Humanities Alliance (IHA) was formed in September 2013. It is a joint initiative of Humanities researchers within eleven higher education and research institutions, including all of the universities, North and South, Dublin Institute of Technology and the Royal Irish Academy. The Alliance is working to generate public awareness of the importance of humanities teaching and research in higher education and society at large, and also to inform and shape public policy in both jurisdictions and in the EU. IASIL members may find the website, and the associated podcasts and calls for papers, a useful resource.
Queens University Belfast
– In June 2014, QUB hosted a major international symposium on Ireland and the Colonies, 1775-1947: Friendships, Alliances, Resistances; organized by Dr Daniel Roberts.
– Professor Emerita Edna Longley was awarded the Rhodes Prize by the American Conference for Irish Studies for her book Yeats and Modern Poetry (Cambridge University Press).
University College Cork
– UCC’s MA in Irish Studies enrolled its first cohort of students in 2013-14 and the programme was formally launched by Professor Roy Foster at an event in December 2013.
– Dr Maureen O’Connor organised the second interdisciplinary conference on Ireland and Ecocriticism in June 2014, including a reading by Sinead Morrissey.
– The School of English collaborated with RADAC (groupe de Recherche sur les Arts Dramatiques Anglophones Contemporains) to host Populating the Irish Stage – Questioning the Identity of Contemporary Irish Theatre, organized by Dr Anne Etienne.
– 2014 saw an exhibition of the Great Book of Ireland (a single vellum manuscript with original work by 121 artists, 143 poets, 9 composers; made in Dublin 1989-91 and acquired by UCC in 2013) in the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC with accompanying readings by such distinguished poets as Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill; Leanne O’Sullivan; Ciarán Carson; Paula Meehan; Eavan Boland and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin.
Trinity College Dublin
– Chris Morash left NUI Maynooth to become the inaugural Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing on January 1, 2014 and gave his inaugural lecture this Spring.
– In November 2013, Trinity College and New York University are held a festival of Irish crime fiction, featuring writers including Declan Burke, Jane Casey, Paul Charles, Michael Connelly, John Connolly and Gene Kerrigan.
– Dr Padraic Whyte of TCD School of English was awarded a major Irish Research Council Interdisciplinary Project Research Grant. His two-year project, organised in collaboration with the Church of Ireland College of Education, will document children’s book collections in several Irish institutions including Trinity College, the National Library of Ireland, The Church of Ireland College of Education, St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and Pearse Street Library.
University College Dublin
– UCD hosted the largest Irish Studies event on the island in 2014, when the American Conference for Irish Studies and the Canadian Association of Irish Studies in Ireland met in Belfield. The conference theme addressed Irish Studies in an international context.
– In Spring 2014, UCD announced the Maeve Binchy Travel Award, for UCD students, to commemorate the writer Maeve Binchy.
– Dr Emilie Pine of UCD launched a Memory Studies Network in September 2014, at a symposium addressing memory and trauma: ‘The Body in Pain in Irish Culture’.
– In May, the UCD Humanities Institute, the Irish Memory Studies Network, and the Ireland-Iceland Network hosted a workshop and one-day meeting to talk about Intercultural Memory and the related cultural histories of Ireland and Iceland.
NUI Galway
– Building on its relationship with the Abbey Theatre, announcedin 2012, NUIG has continued to digitize archive of the Abbey Theatre and to develop its other theatre collections (including the papers of Thomas Kilroy, Druid Theatre, the Lyric Players’ Theatre).
– The international conference Lifeworlds: Space, Place and Irish Culture, hosted by the Ómós Áite: Space/Place Research Network, took place at NUI Galway in March 2014.
University of Limerick
– Celebrated Irish writer Joseph O’Connor was announced as the inaugural Frank McCourt Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He will officially join the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences this Summer and will teach students of the new UL Masters in Creative Writing programme set to commence in September 2014. He will also present a number of public literary events in the Limerick area.
– UL’s MA in Critical Irish Studies will commence in autumn 2014.
– In May, the Eighteenth-Century Research Group at UL and Mary Immaculate College hosted an Irish Research Council-funded symposium on the topic of ‘Editing Eighteenth-Century Irish Texts in English: Process and Dissemination’. Organisers: Dr Tina Morin and Dr Michael Griffin.
– August 2014 will see the Travelling Irishness in the Long Nineteenth Century conference, hosted by Dr Tina Morin in collaboration with Dr. Marguérite Corporaal (Radboud University Nijmegen).
NUI Maynooth
– Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography by Dr Colin Graham, Department of English and curator of the Illuminations Gallery at NUI Maynooth was awarded the 2014 Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture by the American Conference for Irish Studies.
St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra
– The playwright Marina Carr has been announced as the John McGahern writer in residence at St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra and Dublin City University. Other writers-in-residence include Carlo Gebler in UCD, Declan Hughes in TCD and Leanne O’Sullivan in UCC.
Europe—Ondřej Pilný, Vice-Chair
2013/2014 has been another busy and prolific year in Irish literary studies in Europe. However, it has also been a year marked by sadness over the passing of two distinguished Irish writers, Seamus Heaney and, most recently, Dermot Healy. Tributes to and commemorations of the work of Seamus Heaney have been held across the continent, including Warsaw, Budapest, Madrid, Leuven, Vienna and Prague, in close cooperation with local Embassies of Ireland. Dermot Healy’s sudden death came at a point when a five-volume edition consisting of his first novel, collected short stories, plays and essays, and a collection of essays on his work is being edited by Neil Murphy and Keith Hopper for Dalkey Archive Press, in order to remedy the critical neglect that most of the work of this masterful prose writer has been suffering from.
In France, a conference “In memoriam Paul Brennan” was held at the University of Caen on 22-23 November 2013 (org. Bertrand Cardin). To honour the memory of Professor Paul Brennan, who passed away ten years ago, The Pôle Irlande of Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3) held a day-conference on “Ireland and the War: Between Commemoration and Oblivion” on 15 February 2014. The annual conference of the SOFEIR was hosted by Université du Capitole (Toulouse 1) on the theme “Ireland: Identity and Interculturality”; keynote speakers were Joseph Cleary, Jolena Flett, Katy Hayward, Brian Killoran, Kensika Monshengwo and Gavan Titley. To celebrate the 160th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s birth, the Irish Cultural Centre and the Oscar Wilde Society held a festival called “Wilde Days in Paris” which ran through the month of June 2014 and included theatrical performances of Wilde’s works, art exhibitions and a four-day conference.
The Spanish Association for Irish Studies (AEDEI) hosted its annual conference in Bilbao (University of Deusto) in May 2014, themed “Éire/Ireland and Dysfunction” and supported by the Irish Embassy in Madrid. The XIV International Conference will be held in Granada in May 2015. The AEDEI e-journal continues to appear each year in March (http://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/) with Rosa González (University of Barcelona) as general editor. Along the first semester of 2013, coinciding with the Presidency of Ireland in the EU, chair of AEDEI, Marisol Morales (University of Alcalá), was commissioned by the Irish Embassy to coordinate two itinerant exhibitions, “Strangers to Citizens” and “The Life and Works of W.B. Yeats”, that have moved across different cities in Spain, including Madrid, Las Palmas, Sevilla, Huelva, Valladolid, León, Salamanca, Alcalá, Santiago de Compostela and Cáceres, among others.
The Nordic Irish Studies Network held its conference at the University of Aalborg, Denmark, in May 2014, themed “Ireland and the Popular”. The next conference will be held at the University of Oulu, Finland in connection with the local Irish Festival in October 2016. The University of Agder hosted the inaugural seminar of AINE (Agder Irish Network) in March 2014, titled “The Legacy of 1998”. A remarkable volume of essays, The Crossings of Art in Ireland (edited by Charles Armstrong, Brynhildur Boyce, and Ruben Moi), was published by Peter Lang at the turn of the year.
In Hungary, Michael McAteer hosted a major conference on “Silence . . . and Irish Writing” at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest in June 2014. 2013 saw the 65th birthday of the nestor of Joyce studies in Hungary, Prof. Ferenc Takács; his colleagues and former students presented him with two edited collections on the occasion, honouring his achievement, friendship and joie de vivre: a festschrift and a volume of his selected essays.
The Leuven Centre for Irish Studies in Belgium hosted readings by Claire Kilroy and Paul Muldoon in March 2014, and an Irish music event titled “Compánach” in December 2013. A substantial part of the programme of its conference on “The Rhetorics of Food” in March 2014 included presentations on food in Irish writing and culture. The Leuven Centre will be hosting another round of its splendid biannual PhD seminar in Irish Studies in Europe in August 2014. A reading and a workshop by Sinéad Morrissey were hosted by the University of Ghent in April 2014.
Apart from a major Seamus Heaney commemoration featuring Neil Corcoran, Peter Sirr, Seán Crosson, Werner Huber, Vienna, Austria has been hosting (June/July 2014) an exhibition (12 panels) on the publication history of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray and its reconstructed (un-censored) first edition. This is a travelling exhibition: interested parties please contact Werner Huber at wern.huber@univie.ac.at. The Visiting Professor in Irish Cultural Studies in Vienna in the winter term 2013/14 was Seán Crosson (NUI Galway).
In the Czech Republic, the Centre for Irish Studies at Charles University, Prague hosted its third International Postgraduate Conference in Irish Studies in September 2013, themed “Tradition and Modernity”; a collection of essays from the conference is forthcoming this year. The Centre cooperated with the local Embassy of Ireland in the logistics of the “Strangers to Citizens” exhibition, which has successfully toured around the country, and will be co-hosting an exhibition of photographs by John Minihan later this year. The first book-length study of Czech-Irish relations, edited by Gerald Power and Ondřej Pilný, appeared in December 2013 from Peter Lang, fortuitously coinciding with the publication (also by Peter Lang) of Ireland West to East, a volume of essays focused on the interactions between Ireland and Central and Eastern Europe. The latter was edited by Aidan O’Malley and Eve Patten and is based on a successful conference held in Zagreb, Croatia in 2011. The Prague Centre for Irish Studies will be hosting the 11th Irish Theatrical Diaspora Conference in September this year, themed “Irish Theatre and Central Europe”.
There has been a remarkable resurgence in Irish literary and cultural studies both in Italy and in Germany. This has been evidenced by the University of Perugia, Italy hosting an international conference on the Irish Gothic in December 2013, and the seventh James Joyce Italian Foundation Graduate Conference in Rome in February 2014, themed “James Joyce: The Recirculation of Realism”. In Germany, there have been well-attended screenings of and lectures on Irish films (What Richard Did and Parked) at the University of Wuppertal. A number of Italian and German universities have been busily participating in the EFACIS Irish Itinerary. Coordinated by Hedwig Schwall and Sien Deltour from the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies and funded mostly by Culture Ireland, the project has been exemplary in touring Irish writers and artists across the European continent. The Itinerary has entered its second year in 2014. It consists of six regional circuits supervised by local Irish studies specialists, and has had authors such as Medbh McGuckian, Claire Kilroy, Deirdre Madden, Colm Toibín, Glenn Patterson and Hugo Hamilton perform for audiences from Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean. Details of the prolific events in Irish literature, film, music, and visual arts may be found on the EFACIS website (http://www.efacis.org/irish-itinerary/page.php?doc_id=912).
Irish literary and cultural studies in continental Europe have long been characterised by the presence of vibrant journals, particularly Études irlandaises and Nordic Irish Studies. These have been complemented more recently by the online periodicals Estudios Irlandeses (in its ninth year now), and Studi irlandesi (in its fourth year); in 2013, the third issue of the postgraduate online Journal of Franco-Irish Studies appeared under the editorship of Claudia Luppino. The editors of all these peer-reviewed periodicals deserve particular credit for maintaining these publishing platforms in a climate where it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain print journals, while online publications are still to be recognised by many national research assessment bodies.
It is difficult to overestimate the role of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and the Irish diplomatic corps in supporting Irish literary and cultural events in Europe. The funding, relentless assistance and good will have been absolutely vital, as has the support scheme for Irish language teaching abroad provided by the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht, which has facilitated the teaching of the language in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, France, and Poland.
Japan— Yoko Sato, President
IASIL JAPAN, the largest association for Irish literary studies in Japan, has two main activities: holding an annual conference and publishing an academic journal, the Journal of Irish Studies. We held our annual conference on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 October, 2013, at Kyoto Notre Dame University, under the theme: ‘Connections: Ireland in the World’. We invited Gerald Fanning and Dr. P. J. Mathews from Ireland as our guest speakers.
Gerald Fanning gave a poetry reading entitled ‘Ireland’s Unsung East Coast’. His warm-hearted reading of his own work entertained the audience. Gerald Fanning also participated as commentator in the symposium: ‘Re-Presentations: Contemporary Poetry and Ireland’. Our other guest, Dr. P. J. Mathews gave a special lecture entitled ‘Staging the Celtic Tiger’, focusing upon the work of Conor McPherson. He also gave informative overview comments on the symposium ‘Crossing the Border’. A number of papers on Irish studies were read by our members, including researchers from Taiwan. At the conference reception tributes to Seamus Heaney were paid by IASIL JAPAN members, and both guests, with memorable speeches and readings and Irish music.
Regarding our journal, the 28th issue of the Journal of Irish Studies was published in October, 2013 with a special feature on Dennis O’Driscoll and Robert Welch, a number of refereed articles, reviews, and a poem by Sinéad Morrissey, our special guest at the 2012 IASIL JAPAN conference.
We are planning to hold our 2014 conference at Waseda University, Tokyo on Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 October with guest speakers, Fintan O’Toole, and Prof. Anne Fogarty from UCD.
Another important activity in Japan which we must mention is a special event, ‘Yeats Day in Japan’. In 2013, the first ‘Yeats Day in Japan’ was organized by the Sligo Yeats Society and the Embassy of Ireland to Japan, and IASIL JAPAN members contributed to the event, lecturing and as chairperson. IASIL JAPAN has made another contribution to the 2014 Yeats Day in Japan, which consists of a lecture series throughout the year. In collaboration with the Embassy of Ireland and Theatre X (‘chi’) in Ryogoku, Tokyo, the first lecture was given by Prof. Yoko Sato, President of IASIL JAPAN on Saturday 29 March. The lecture was entitled ‘Yeats and Japanese Culture’ with special reference to ‘the Japanese Noh and Kyogen’. The second lecture was given by Noh actor Tetsunojo Kanze and Noh director Mr. Ken’ichi Kasai on Tuesday 10 June. The 2014 Yeats Day in Japan is a preparatory event for the 2015 Yeats Day in Japan, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of W. B. Yeats.
We are pleased to report that the study of Irish literature, including occasions for cultural exchange, and the promotion of public awareness of Irish culture continue to be pursued with enthusiasm in a number of ways in Japan.
North America—José Lanters, Vice-Chair
Irish Studies in North America, 2013.
Many Irish Studies-related events happen in North America every year, on a local, regional, and national level. This is only a selection.
Conferences and Association Events
The annual national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS) was held held April 10-13, 2013, in downtown Chicago. The organizing committee included Sean Farrell, James H. Murphy, James Fairhall, and Mary Donoghue McCain. Keynote presenters were James H. Murphy, Christine Cusick, and Ciaran O=Neill, with readings by Jamie O=Neill and Glenn Patterson.
Annual regional ACIS conferences were also held in 2013 in Rochester, NY (Nov. 15-16, Mid-Atlantic), Iowa City (Oct. 10-12, Midwest), Warwick, RI (Nov. 1-2, New England), San Francisco, CA (Sep. 27-29, Western), and Atlanta, GA (Feb.28-Mar. 2, South).
ACIS awarded five book prizes and a dissertation prize. For all information about past and future ACIS events, see http://www.acisweb.com.
The 2013 annual conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies was held at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, June 19-23. Keynote speakers were Liam McIlvanney, Louis de Paor, Moynagh Sullivan, Marjory Harper, and Kenneth White. For all information about past and future CAIS events, see http://www.irishstudies.ca.
The International James Joyce Conference was hosted by the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina, June 11-15, 2013.
The annual meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of North America was held at the University of Toronto, 18-21 April 2013.
At the January 2013 MLA conference in Boston, MA, sessions were sponsored by ACIS, the Anglo-Irish Discussion Group, the International James Joyce Foundation, and the Celtic Languages and Literatures Discussion Group.
Film Festivals
Irish/Celtic Film Festivals were held in many places in 2013, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, and Madison, WI.
Other Countries—Youngmin Kim, Vice-Chair
Brazil from Laura Izarra and Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos
The year 2013-2014 has been very rewarding for Irish Studies in South America.
In August 2013, the Brazilian Association of Irish Studies (ABEI) co-organized its Eighth Symposium of Irish Studies in South America with SILAS’s Fourth Conference (Society for Irish Latin American Studies). The joint-event was hosted by Universidad Nacional de La Pampa, in Argentina. The plenary speakers were Irish writer Hugo Hamilton and Irish Argentinean writer Juan José Delaney; Irish film director Thaddeus O’Sullivan and colleagues Clíona Murphy (California State University Bakersfield), Lance Pettitt (St. Mary’s University College, Twickenham), Gabriela McEvoy (Lebanon Valley College, Pennsylvania), Maureen Murphy (Hofstra University), Margaret Brehony (National University Ireland, Galway) and Ailbhe O’Corráin (University of Ulster, Magee). Both Hugo Hamilton and Thaddeus O’Sullivan also talked about their work in Buenos Aires at venues organized by the Embassy of Ireland in Argentina. The latter showed his film The Woman who married Clark Gable and launched the book edited by Lance Pettitt and Beatriz K. Bastos in both events.
In May 2014, ABEI organized its IV Jornada (Seminar) at Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso, Cuiabá. The aim of these encounters is to motivate young scholars from other Brazilian universities to develop research in Irish Studies. Moreover, this annual encounter started to be organized by USP’s postgraduate students who are also members of ABEI. Its publication ABEI Journal No. 15, 2013 (eds. M. Mutran & L. Izarra) paid tribute to Seamus Heaney.
The W.B. Yeats Chair of Irish Studies at the University of São Paulo received Hugo Hamilton who was interviewed by postgraduate Patricia de Aquino and undergraduate students. There was also a one-week film exhibition of Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s work followed by discussions chaired by Cristian Borges (USP) and Beatriz K. Bastos and a workshop with O’Sullivan and Lance Pettitt, co-organized with the School of Arts of the University of São Paulo and coordinated by Beatriz K. Bastos. In September 2013, the Ambassador of Ireland in Brazil, Mr. Frank Sheridan delivered the lecture “Perspectives on the Peace Process in Northern Ireland” following the series of lectures on the theme started in the previous term. On October 21, the Minister for Education and Skills in Ireland, Ruairí Quinn T.D., visited the University of São Paulo and delivered the keynote speech “Brazil & Ireland: an Innovation Partnership for the 21st Century”, as part of the official launch of the programme RBI (Research Brazil Ireland). He also announced a grant for film director Aurélio Michiles to go to Ireland and start the joint-project of a documentary on Roger Casement and the rubber boom in Brazil.
In March 2014, Professor Claire Connolly (University College Cork) gave the opening lecture on Irish Romanticism followed by Professor João Roberto Faria (University of São Paulo) who established a dialogue presenting the same period in Brazilian literature. In May, Professor Liam Harte (Manchester University) gave a video conference on contemporary Irish fiction and autobiography.
Two postgraduate courses were given at USP: one by Stephanie Schwerter (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France) and Munira Mutran on Seamus Heaney’s work and the other by Derek Hand (St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra) on contemporary Irish novel in the Celtic Tiger period. The postgraduate students of the Irish Studies Programme offered an extra-mural course on Irish literature in dialogue with history and other arts.
Its publications include Lectures 2013 (eds. M. Mutran & L. Izarra) and Thaddeus O’Sullivan: The Woman Who Married Clark Gable (eds. L. Pettitt & B.K. Bastos) which was co-published with Cia Ludens.
In 2013, there were two doctoral theses on Irish writers at the University of São Paulo: “Caravaggio, Spenser e Rei James I, em Innocence, Mutabilities e Speaking Like Magpies de Frank McGuinness” by Mariese Ribas Stankiewicz, supervised by M. Mutran and “Melmoth the Wanderer, um sermão gótico inglês”,by Fernando Bezerra de Brito, supervised by S. Vasconcelos.
It is important to mention that Caetano Waldrigues Galindo, from the Federal University of Paraná, won the Jabuti prize in 2013 for his translation of Joyce’s Ulisses. He is now working in the translation of Finnegans Wake. He also translated with Rogerio Galindo Samuel Beckett’s Ossos de eco (2014).
Noélia Borges and Viviane Carvalho da Annunciação from the Federal University of Bahia, edited ARIS Journal: Association for Research of Irish Studies Vol.1(1)2013 and Viviane C. Annunciação edited the electronic journal Almatroz – A revista brasileira de poesia de língua inglesa Vol.1 (1) 2013.
The Federal University of Santa Catarina hosted the Seminar Literary Translation and Intermedia Adaptation: An International Seminar in August 2013, organized by Prof. José Roberto O’Shea and Beatriz K. Bastos.
Cia Ludens with director Domingos Nunez and producers Beatriz K. Bastos and Rosalie R. Haddad staged Brian Friel’s Dançando em Lúnassa (June-September 2013 / February-April 2014.
Its 2013 publication Brian Friel Collection (Trans. Domingos Nunes & edited by Beatriz K. Bastos) includes four of Friel’s plays: “Dançando em Lúnassa”; “O Fantástico Reparador de Feridas”; “Filadélfia Lá Vou Eu!”; “Performances”.
Its ongoing researches are: “Irish Documentary Theatre – Contemporary Modes: Translations and Readings (beginning February 2014), coordinated by Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos and Domingos Nunez. Domingos Nunez’s post-doctoral project is
“ ‘Os Ossos da Alma’ ou a Amazônia de Roger Casement” (beginning Oct 2013), UNESP, São José do Rio Preto. The first workshop combining both projects was held at Viga Espaço Cênico, São Paulo, on June 4th, 2014, with Domingos Nunez, Beatriz Kopschitz Bastos, Prof. José Roberto O’Shea (UFSC), musician and composer Dr. Alberto Heller, and a cast of actors.
St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated by the Embassy of Ireland in Brazil illuminating with green light the statue of Cristo Redentor [Christ the Redeemer] in Rio de Janeiro. Bloomsday Celebrations spread in various cities: Natal, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte.
John Banville was at the International Literary Festival in Paraty in July 2014.
ARGENTINA
In Argentina there are two Chairs: the Chair of Irish History coordinated by Juan José Delaney at Universidad del Salvador and the Chair of Free Thought and Irish Culture coordinated by María Eugenia Cruset at Universidad Nacional de La Plata. The Chair of Irish History has received Professor Dermot Keogh for seminars. Juan José Delaney is a fiction writer and a lecturer and has published widely on the Irish immigration in Argentina.
There is also a collaborative project on Irish Studies at Universidad Nacional de La Pampa with the University of São Paulo coordinated by Maria Graciela Eliggi and Laura Izarra since 2000. Its publications include the translation of Angus Mitchell’s Roger Casement en Sudamérica: El caucho, la Amazonía y el Mundo Atlántico- 1884-1916 and a bilingual book of interviews with Irish Contemporary Writers, In their own words.
St. Patrick’s Day and Bloomsday were also celebrated in various cities in Argentina: Buenos Aires, La Plata, Santa Rosa and Bahia Blanca.
Egypt—Submitted by Mary Massoud, Representative
The academic year 2013 – 2014 has not been a good one for academic conferences in Egypt because of troubles on the political front. Nevertheless, despite demonstrations and student unrest, interest in Irish literature has not waned. Irish literature continues to be taught in Egyptian universities as a branch of World Literatures in English. The leading institute in Irish studies continues to be the Faculty of Arts of Ain Shams University in Cairo, whose Department of English boasts of having in its library the richest collection (in Egypt) of works on Irish literature. Graduate students show a keen interest in Irish literature, and several well-written papers have been produced. The Department also continues to host one-day seminars and events on Irish literature to which staff members and graduate students are invited. In this year’s IASIL, hosted by the University of Lille in France, one professor from Ain Shams will be presenting a paper, as well as another professor from the Azhar University, the oldest Islamic University in the Middle East.
We praise the Lord that the political unrest which has marked the last three years, preventing us from holding our much coveted one-week conferences on Irish Literature in English, has at last come to an end with the recent Presidential elections. With the highly gifted Sissi as President of Egypt, we look forward to a restful year in 2014-2015, more congenial for literary activities.
Australia (Peter Kuch) and New Zealand (Rónán Mcdonald)
20th Australasian Conference for Irish Studies, hosted by The Global Irish Studies Centre (Rónán McDonald), UNSW, together with the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, was held on December 3-6. at UNSW, Australia. The theme was ‘The Ends of Ireland.’ Based in Sydney, a city that was an ‘end’ for many generations of Irish emigrants, this conference aims to interrogate the many implications and meanings of Ireland’s ‘ends’, temporal, physical and theoretical.
Keynote Speakers were Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck, University of London, UK; ‘A “Diabolical Crime”: Sexual Violence in Irish History’), Tom Inglis (University College Dublin, Ireland; ‘The End of Irish Difference’), Elizabeth Malcolm (University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia, ‘The End(s) of Massacre in Ireland’), Mark Finnane (Griffith University, QLD, Australia, The Ends of Silence: Child Abuse, Church and Government in Ireland and Australia’).
At the University of Otago (Peter Kuch), New Zealand, Inaugural St Patrick’s Day Lecture, “Fighting for readers: Swift’s Dublin publishers in the 1750s’,” was presented by Emeritus Professor Andrew Carpenter of University College, Dublin, on March 17, 2014. Also, a Public Lecture, ‘“Sailing to an Island”: The poetry of Irish and Scottish islands’
was presented by Dr Lucy Collins of University College, Dublin on March 20, 2014.
Dunedin Celtic Arts Festival was held on 13-20 October, 2013, after Joycean Worlds, which was held on 3-6 October 2013. Joycean Worlds was a 3 day seminar that aspired to bring together dedicated and enthusiastic Joyceans from New Zealand and Australia to share their ‘worlds’ with one another: “Practicing Joyce” by VIcki Mahaffey (University of Illinois) and “Wakeing Worlding” by Tony Thwaites (University of Queensland). The Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies of the University of Otago hosted a ‘wake’ for Seamus Heaney on Monday 9 September 2013. Also, there was the lecture by Luke Gibbons, ‘Limits of the Visible: Representing the Great Irish Famine’ on 5 September 2013.
SOUTH KOREA (Youngmin Kim)
2013 International Conference on W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and Modern and Contemporary Poets and Writer was held at Hanyang University, Seoul, on Saturday, May 25, 2013.
The international conference was hosted by The Yeats Society of Korea, The T. S. Eliot Society of Korea, and The Modern British and American Poetry Society of Korea, and sponsored by National Research Foundation of Korea, Hanyang University, Dankook University, and Embassy of Ireland to Korea.
Keynote Speech
Modernism and Modernists: Hallam, Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens, and Heaney
James Pethica, Williams College, “’The man who suffers and the mind which creates’: Arthur Hallam, W. B. Yeats, and T. S. Eliot and ‘genuine inspiration’”
Rajeev Patke, Yale-National University of Singapore College, Singapore, “Yeats and Stevens: Poetry and Aging”
Kim, Chi-gyu, Korea University, “W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and Korean Poetry”
Bernard O’Donoghue, University of Oxford, “Yeats and Heaney as Examples”
Yeats and Contemporary American Poetry: Yeats and Sonia Sanchez
Lianggong Luo, Central China Normal University, China, “Yeats and Sanchez”
On W. B. Yeats’s Stellification; A. S. Byatt’s Stellification of a Modernist Artist
Ronan McDonald, University of New South Wales, Australia, “Yeats and Degeneration”
Jerry Weng, Taiwan National University, Taiwan, “Yeats’s Supernatural Songs”
Peter Mathews, Hanyang University, Korea, “The Influence of Modernism on A. S. Byatt”
Daniel Albright, Harvard University, USA, “Maeterlinck as a Precursor of the Modernist Theater”
Parallel Sessions: Topics On Modernist Writers
Yook, Eun-Jung, Kookmin University, “Natasha Trethewey and the Language of Photography“
Rim, Dohyun, University of Seoul, “Yeats’s Plays“
Rhee, Beau La, Hansung University, “Synge’s and Yeats’s Poetic Drama”
Cho, Mina, Hongik University and University of Toronto, Canada, “Reading Yeats in Tarot Symbology”
Kim, Youngmin, Dongguk University, “The Poetry and Poetics of Othering: Beyond the Modernism of Yeats, Pound, and Eliot”
Choi, Hie Sup, Jeonju University, “Yeats and Eliot and Buddhism”
Jang, Cheol-U, Hansung University, “T. S. Eliot’s Stillness“
John Cussen, Edinboro University of Pennsylvannia, “The Ghost of Roger Casement Beating on Mario Vargas Llosa’s Door and/or the Novelized Biography’s Tempting Challenges” (Abstract)
Rhee, Young Suck, Hanyang University, Seoul, “Ekphrasis: Yeats, Stevens, and Ashbery”
Lee, Hyungseob, Hanyang University, “Modernism and Brian Friel”
Kim, Sunghyun, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, “T. S. Eliot and Surrealism”
Han, Tae Ho, York University, Canada, “The Different in Yeats’s ‘Vision’ Poems” (Abstract)
Yoon, Ilhwan, Pusan University, “Deconstruction and Yeats”
Chung, Kyung-sim, Dongyang University, “Eliot’s Ladies in His Early Years”
Lee, Hongseop, Inje University, “Baudelaire, Eliot, and Times of Modernity“
The Yeats Journal of Korea has been published three times a year, and Volumes 40, 41, 42 were published in 2013. Newly renovated webpage includes the journal archive (http://www.yeatssociety.or.kr/#2).
Two issues of Volume 19 of James Joyce Journal were published.
APPENDIX 2 IASIL Membership by Country 2014
IRELAND
| Ireland | 95 | |
| Northern Ireland | 16 | Total 111 |
UNITED KINGDOM
| England, Scotland, Wales, | 52 | Total 52 |
UNITED STATES
| U.S.A. | 78 | Total 78 |
CANADA
| Canada | 20 | Total 20 |
SOUTH AMERICA
| Brazil | 11 | Total 11 |
EUROPE
| Norway | 2 | |
| Sweden | 6 | |
| Finland | 2 | |
| Belgium | 5 | |
| The Netherlands | 2 | |
| Spain | 18 | |
| Portugal | 4 | |
| France | 21 | |
| Germany | 12 | |
| Austria | 3 | |
| Italy | 8 | |
| Hungary | 5 | |
| Poland | 6 | |
| Czech Republic | 1 | |
| Cyprus | 2 | Total 97 |
ASIA/EURASIA
| Egypt | 3 | |
| Israel | 2 | |
| Russia | 1 | |
| China | 3 | |
| Korea | 2 | |
| Taiwan | 3 | |
| Singapore | 1 | Total 15 |
AUSTRALIA / NEW ZEALAND
| Australia | 5 | |
| New Zealand | 1 | Total 6 |
GRAND TOTAL : 390