Archive for July, 2008
« Previous Entries“Women Religious and the Political World”. Galway, August 2008
Thursday, July 31st, 2008
In 2008, the Historians of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland (H-WRBI) will hold their fifth annual conference: WOMEN RELIGIOUS AND THE POLITICAL WORLD.
This conference will be held on 22nd-23rd August 2008 at the National University of Ireland, Galway. It will be an exciting programme of medieval, early modern, and modern papers on such themes as:
- Literary/visual negotiations of contemporary developments
- Political activism and participation
- Internal politics of the order
- Impact of the political world on communities of women religious
- Missionary work
For the provisional programme and booking form, please visit:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Bedford-Centre/history-women-religious/events.html
Mexico: SILAS, July 2009. “Heroes, victims or villains?”
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Second Conference of the Society for Irish Latin American Studies (SILAS)
“Heroes, victims or villains? Irish Presentations and Representations in Latin America and the Caribbean”
Morelia, Mexico
15-18 July 2009
Organised by the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
Call for Papers
The time has come for SILAS to convene its first conference in the Americas. The Second SILAS Conference will be held in colonial Morelia, with the local support of the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. Researchers, students and independent scholars will share their work and experience on different aspects of Irish-Latin American relations.
Under the general title “Heroes, victims or villains? Irish Presentations and Representations in Latin America and the Caribbean”, this meeting proposes to foster international and multidisciplinary approaches to the study of connections between Ireland, Latin America, the Caribbean and Iberia.
SILAS was founded in July 2003 to promote the study of relations between Ireland and Latin America. The range of interest of the Society spans the settlement, lives and achievements of Irish migrants to Latin America and their descendants, the contemporary presence of Ireland in the life and culture of Latin America and the presence of Latin Americans in Ireland.
The Society invites papers on any aspect of Irish-Latin American links from scholars and students in disciplines such as humanities and social sciences, including for example history, literature, geography, politics, economy and the arts. The aim of the conference is to promote the exchange of views and research findings on a diverse range of issues and on an inter-disciplinary basis. For further details and updates, please see the conference pages.
Abstracts in English, Portuguese or Spanish (c.300 words) should be sent by email to the conference organisers, to arrive no later than 1 November 2008. Should you wish to attend the conference without presenting a paper, please register by sending your details to the organisers by 1 April 2009.
Organising Committee
Lourdes de Ita, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
MartÃn Pérez Acevedo, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
Miguel �ngel Sánchez de Armas, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla
Laura Izarra, Universidade de São Paulo
Edmundo Murray, University of Zurich
Send Paper Proposals to: mexico2009@irlandeses.org
Conference Pages: www.irlandeses.org/mexico2009.htm
Anecdotal report highlights emigration
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Anecdotal evidence that emigration is rising is continuing to appear in the media. There is a report in the Corkman local newspaper suggesting that builders have already started to emigrate.
The report quotes a 21-year-old local man who lost his job as an apprentice electrician that he may be forced to go abroad:
I can’t even begin to describe how frustrating it is to spend years working towards qualification and now find myself in a situation where I can not even get a labouring job. Already some of my friends have gone to England to find work. Unless I can find a job within the next few weeks I will have no option but to join them.
Figures released today by the Central Statistics Office show a sharp rise in the number of people signing onto the Live Register this month. There are now 238,000 people on the Live Register – the highest in more than a decade. The figure jumped by more than 17,000 from June, the second-largest monthly increase on record.
The unemployment rate is also rising rapidly, standing at 5.9% in July, up from 4.8% in the first quarter of this year.
“Coming home? Conflict and return migration”. Southampton, April 2009
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Call for papers: Coming home? Conflict and return migration in
twentieth-century Europe.
1-3 April 2009, University of Southampton.
The question of return has long been thought to be central to an exilic discourse and yet relatively little is known about how return migration is actually experienced and subsequently remembered by exiles and also by migrants more widely. In order to mark the 70th anniversary of the ‘official’ end of the Spanish Civil War and the start of the Second World War, events which led to the mass displacement of refugees, this conference seeks contributions for papers on the broad theme of conflict and return migration in twentieth-century Europe. We welcome individual papers or panels in English that focus on any exile, refuge or migrant return episode that has Europe as its point of arrival or departure. We are particularly interested in addressing the experiences, memories and conceptual issues of return in relation to the following questions:
- What were the motivations for returning? How did institutions, political and social networks influence return? How was return organised?
- What strategies did migrants adopt to deal with the impossibility of return?
- How were migrants received, perceived and represented by the authorities and communities upon their return?
- To what extent were attitudes and post-return daily practices (e.g. rituals, cultural practices, language etc.) influenced by the experience of migration? In what ways, if at all, did migrants re-construct questions of home and homeland upon their return?
- How does return relate to the wider migratory process? To what extent does return signify the end of exile, diaspora, and the closure of the migration cycle?
- How has return been remembered at an individual and group level? Does this vary between different categories of migrants?
- How has return been represented in literature, art and film? What are the epistemological and ontological implications of these representations? Does an adequate representation or performance of return exist?
Keynote speakers:
- Alicia Alted Vigil, Professor of History, UNED, Madrid
- Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, Historian and Director of the BDIC, Paris
- Franziska Meyer, Associate Professor of German Studies, University
- of Nottingham
Organised with The Exilio Network: Research into Refugees and other Migrations, which is supported by the AHRC, and Outcast Europe.
A selection of papers will be considered for publication after the conference. Please send abstracts (250 words) before 01/08/08 to:
- Dr Alicia Pozo Gutiérrez   apg@soton.ac.uk
- Dr Scott Soo ssoo@soton.ac.uk
Conference website:Â Â http://www.soton.ac.uk/ml/research/cominghome.html
Bronwen Walter, Inaugural lecture: 9 Sept, 2008
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008Professor Bronwen Walter, Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies at Anglia Ruskin University, will give her inaugural lecture on 9 September.
The lecture is entitled “Close to home: Irish/English entanglements�. Professor Walter says,
How Irish are the English? The English have had an ambivalent relationship with the Irish for centuries. Constructions of the Irish as the uncivilized and violent ‘other’, which defines the boundaries of Englishness, are well-recognised. But hybridities between the two – mixing, borrowing, overlaps, exchanges, incorporations – are often overlooked or misread. Novels may provide unexpected routes into these private worlds which are often beyond the reach of social research. In this inaugural lecture I explore some ways in which these identities constitute shared ‘diaspora spaces’, both in England and more distantly.
Professor Walter is internationally recognised for her research on Irish migration to Britain and the wider experiences of the Irish diaspora. She may be best known to Ean members for her work on the report, “Irish emigrants and Irish communities abroad: a study of existing sources of information and analysis for the Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants�.
The September 9 lecture will take place at 5 pm in Mumford Theatre, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.
Musical drama focuses on Scots-Irish journey
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008A musical drama spectacular focusing on the emigration of the Scots-Irish to America will be on stage this autumn. On Eagle’s Wing explores 4 centuries of the Scots-Irish journey from the Scottish Lowlands to the New World. Composed by John Anderson, the show was previously recorded for broadcast in the US. It is also available on DVD.
The show will be at the Grand Opera House in Belfast from 29 September to 4 October; in Dublin at the Helix on 11 and 12 October; and at the Millennium Forum, Derry from 14-18 of October.
Order “On Eagle’s Wing� at Amazon.com.