IRELAND AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Success and Failure in Modern Ireland

Canadian Association for Irish Studies/ l’Association canadienne d’études irlandaises Annual Conference, 2010
Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
19-22 May 2010

“Anyone who is failing at one thing,” psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has  suggested, “is always succeeding at another.” We invite proposals for papers interrogating the relationship between success and failure in modern and contemporary Ireland, as reflected in its politics, its economic policies, its literature, and its popular culture. The Celtic Tiger is one obvious recent example of a ’success’ narrative that was intimately linked to a series of failures on the part of Irish society to safeguard its more vulnerable communities. With the recent publication of the “Ryan Report,” to cite another example, it is clear that the success of the Catholic Church in exerting its power over Ireland’s educational and reformatory institutions came at the price of a failure to guarantee the safety and welfare of Ireland’s youth. By the same token, it might be argued that Fianna Fáil’s longtime political success depended on the failure to engage with the ‘National Question,’ i.e., Partition and Northern Ireland. Success and failure, as manifested in language revival policies, in gender-related issues, in the lives of prominent public figures, and the reality and perceptions of the Irish diaspora, including the Irish in Canada, are also topics worthy of consideration.

We welcome papers that address other topics and proposals for special panels.

Please send proposals including contact information (250 words) by
e-mail to:
Pádraig Ó Siadhail, D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 3C3
(padraig.osiadhail@smu.ca) by 15 January 2010.

Call for Papers
Deadline: 24 November, 2009

The 2010 national meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies will
be held on 5 – 8 May 2010 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel in
State College, PA.

There will be an opening reception on Wednesday evening, May 5th, and
concurrent panels will begin on Thursday morning, May 6th. The announced
theme is intended to encourage a broad range of paper topics.

Papers are welcome on any Irish Studies topic, including traditional
concerns of the discipline and evolving areas of interest in the visual,
literary, and interdisciplinary areas. We welcome proposals for individual
papers, which, if accepted, will be placed within a relevant panel.

Proposals for panels are especially welcome, and panels have been proposed
on Reassessing Diasporic Studies within Irish Studies and Reassessing Irish
Historiography. Additional papers are welcome on such topics as evolving
literary and visual arts movements, the culture and literature of Northern
Ireland, and other related topics!

Plenary speakers confirmed to date are Dean John Harrington (Fordham
University) and Dr. James Smith (Boston College). Moya Cannon will be
reading from her poetry at a special session. U.S carriers offer frequent
flights to State College, PA. Further details will be posted as they become
available. A conference website is also under development.

Due Date for Conference Paper Proposals: Tuesday, 24 November 2009. Please send your 250 word (or less) abstract to Dr. Tramble T. Turner at
ttt3@psu.edu. If you have questions or would like additional information,
please contact me at 215 868.5848 (mobile), 215 881.7532 (office), or via
e-mail at ttt3@psu.edu. Dr. Tramble T. Turner Associate Professor of English
Penn State Abington 1600 Woodland Rd. Abington, PA 19001

ACIS website

Ireland’s Drama in British Cities,
Manchester Metropolitan University, April 15-16, 2010.

The 2010 Irish Theatrical Diaspora Conference will consider the history and context of performing Irish plays and characters on British stages, as well as the more general performance of Irish diasporic identity in an urban British context. Some of the areas that the conference will address are:

• the role of festivals in performing Irish identity,
• the role of British theatres in performing Irish plays,
• the significance of geographical variations,
• and the impact of globalisation on the position of Irish theatre in Britain

Keynote speakers:

• Mary Hickman, Professor of Irish Studies and Sociology, London Metropolitan University
• Patrick Mason, Director, Adjunct Professor, University College Dublin, and Visiting Professor, Liverpool Hope University

Confirmed speakers:

• Claire Connolly
• Mike Cronin
• Karen Fricker
• Nicholas Grene
• Patrick Lonergan
• Holly Maples
• Victor Merriman
• Aoife Monks
• Jim Moran
• Catherine Rees
• Shaun Richards

This conference will examine performances of Irish identity in the urban
centres of Britain since the beginning of the 19th century. The idea of
performance is intended to include events staged in the theatres and on the streets, for example parades, musical performances and political
demonstrations.

By discussing such performances and their reception by various audiences, speakers and delegates will examine the ways that ‘Irishness’ has changed in meaning and association in Britain, pressurised by contexts such as colonialism and nationalism, modernisation and economic change in Ireland, the Troubles and the Peace Process, and many others.

In particular, the conference is concerned to examine the changing status of Irish, and Irish-descended, people in Britain.  Since 1995, the diaspora has arguably become more recognised in Ireland, after President Mary Robinson urged the Irish nation to the ‘moral act’ of remembering and commemorating their sacrifices.  In Britain, the Irish arguably became more visible after recognition of their ‘ethnic minority’ status in the 2001 UK census; and, more recently, interest in Britain’s oldest and largest ethnic minority has been renewed amidst a more general concern with immigration and the ways in which the case of the Irish in Britain might be seen to foreshadow and intersect with the experience of many other immigrant groups.

Delegates will be able to reflect on questions including:

• What different versions of Irishness have been suggested by theatrical and other performances in Britain, and how have these been received and understood by their audiences?
• In what ways have Irish cultural festivals affected perceptions?
• How have notions of second-generation Irishness changed?
• What significance do performances of Irishness abroad have for the Irish nation ‘at home’?
• Have visible assertions and performances of Irish identity impacted on ideas of Britishness?
• How have the Irish enacted and interacted with ideas of nation and identity in a British context, and how has this been affected by changes in Ireland and key events in Irish-British relations?
• To what extent are the Irish in Britain an ‘acceptable’ ethnic minority?
• To what extent are the Irish in Britain ‘post-nationalist’ now?

More information:

Irish Theatrical Diaspora website

This year’s theme is  ”Moving Home: the legacy of Plantation in Tyrone and Fermanagh”.

From the organisers:

The focus of the Literature of Irish Exile Autumn School, now in its Tenth year, remains on how emigrants from Ireland have given expression in words to feelings of exile. The aim is to give members of the public a friendly opportunity to meet and mix with experts on some of the less well-known aspects of ‘exile’ in Irish literature.

Speakers

Peter Archdale is a retired Royal Navy commander with a wide experience of Oceanography. He serves on many agencies and trusts overseeing many aspects of Northern Ireland’s natural environment. He has a longstanding interest in the genealogy and history of his family and its association with west Ulster since the early seventeenth century.

Professor Kay Muhr is Senior Research Fellow with the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project, Department of Celtic and Irish Studies, Queen’s University Belfast. Chairperson of the Northern Ireland Place-Name Society, Kay has published extensively on early literature and language, oral tradition, place and family names and cartography which will form the main focus of her attention today.

Dr. Brian Lambkin and Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald are respectively founding Director and Lecturer & Development Officer with the Centre for Migration Studies, Ulster American Folk Park. Brian is currently Chairman of the Association of European Migration Institutions whilst Paddy has been teaching Irish Migration Studies at Masters level with Queen’s University Belfast since 1996. In 2008 they jointly authored Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007 (Palgrave, 2008).

The Tenth Literature of Irish Exile

‘Moving Home: the legacy of Plantation in Tyrone and Fermanagh’

Saturday 17 October, 2009

PROGRAMME:

10.30  Tea & Coffee in CMS

11.00  Peter Archdale: ‘The Archdales and the Ulster Plantation’

11.45  Dr. Kay Muhr: ‘The Plantation Mapmakers of Ulster in Fermanagh and Tyrone’

12.30  UAFP: Campbell and Mellon Houses
and Lunch (UAFP Café)

1.45    Depart for Ulster History Park: Plantation Bawn

2.30    Drs. Patrick Fitzgerald & Brian Lambkin: Ulster Scots, ‘Ulster English and Ulster Welsh’

3.30    Tea & Coffee (UHP)

Fee : £20.00 stg (£15.00 concession for students, unwaged and senior citizens)

Includes: registration, morning tea/coffee, lunch, afternoon

tea/coffee and drinks reception.

Contact

Tel: 028 8225 6315; Fax: 028 8224 2241 Christine.Johnston@librariesni.org.uk

The conference is being held in the Samuel Beckett seminar room at the Samuel Beckett Centre.

This project is supported by the Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub Research Initiative Funding Scheme, and there is no attendance fee.

If you would like to be kept up to date with the project, please email your name to the project director, Dr Ruth Barton (ruth.barton@tcd.ie)

Provisional Schedule

9.15: Seminar opening

9.30‐10.50:
Dr Marcus Free, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick:
On the Edge: the Irish in Britain as a Troubled and Troubling Presence in the Work of Jimmy McGovern and Alan Bleasdale

Dr Paula Gilligan, IADT:
‘Free Agents-mobile reflexive and white’; Representation of the
‘Professional’ Irish Women in Contemporary Popular English TelevisionDrama.

Dr Pat Brereton, Dublin City University
Fictional representations of the Irish in Contemporary British TV Drama: A case study of EastEnders [1997 special set in Ireland] and Father Ted et al.

10.50‐11.15: Coffee break

11.15‐12.15
Prof Charles Barr, University College Dublin
Ealing’s View of Ireland

Daniel Fitzpatrick
Reexamining Sister Clodagh’s ‘Irishness’ in Black Narcissus (1947)

12.15‐1.15:
Dr Lance Pettitt, Leeds Metropolitan University:
Between Archive and Anecdote: Towards an Exilic History of Irish Cinema in England

1.15‐2.15 – Lunch break

2.15‐3.35
Prof John Hill, Royal Holloway, University of London
The Irish and Working-class ‘Authenticity’ in the films of Ken Loach

Prof Bronwen Walter, Anglia Ruskin University
Including the Irish: taken-for-granted representations of the Irish in England

Prof Martin McLoone, University of Ulster
Why Didn’t Kevin Keegan play for Ireland? Contrasting Narratives of the Irish in Britain

3.35‐3.55: Coffee Break

3.55 – 5.15
Zélie Asava, University College Dublin
‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’: being black and Irish in Neil Jordan’s Britain

Emmie McFadden, Sheffield Hallam University,
Hyde and Seek: English-Irish Hybridity in Stephen Frears’ Mary Reilly

Padraic Killeen, Trinity College Dublin
Stained Flesh – Ireland As Idyll / Damp Patch in Mike Leigh’s Naked

5.15‐6.45:
Deirdre Lynch, Dublin Institute of Technology:
‘ReConfiguring Elderly Male Irish Immigrants in London through
Ethnographic Film Practice’

Screening: I Only Came Over for a Couple of Years… (2003)
Dir: David Kelly, Prod: Tony Murray
This film will be introduced by Dr Tony Murray, London Metropolitan University

Visit related websites:

• Screening Irish-America
• Screening Irish America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television: book by Ruth Barton
• Screening the Irish in Britain – event notice

Organisers say:

In 2007 we started a conversation with the Irish Diaspora with an event in New York.  1000 people came along and participated in a lively, informative and entertaining debate.  Last year we brought the discussion to Dublin and this year we would like to continue that spirit of lively interaction with the Irish in Britain.  This special event takes as its premise that lasting transformations within Ireland and of Irish Society, whether political, cultural, social or economic have been shaped and informed by the Irish abroad.  This event is about exploring that proposition by looking at three significant issues in our relatively recent past and drawing on the strands arising from that exploration to inform and frame an open floor discussion on the Irish in Britain today and tomorrow.

One curious thing about the programme as it has been initially released is that there seems to be a lack of involvement of the Irish in Britain as speakers, but perhaps that will be rectified by the time the final lineup is announced.

Outline Programme
08:30 a.m. Registration

09:00 a.m. Welcome: Hugh Brady, President of UCD

09:15 a.m.
Session One: Towards 2016

This session takes as its theme the notion of the Irish abroad as the significant engine of political change. Contributions will look at the influence of the “Irish” cities of Britain and America on the formation of key figures involved in 1916 and the years that followed, the role of the Irish abroad in the formation and sustaining of a republican movement, the relationships between the new state and the Irish abroad and the consequences of the legacies of historic events and their commemoration for the present and future generations.

Participants will include Mary Daly, Diarmaid Ferriter, Michael Kennedy and Bob Schmuhl

10:30 a.m. Coffee

11:00 a.m.
Session Two: Joyc(e)ity

The theme of this session will be the Diaspora as creative impulse. In particular contributions will explore aspects of the Aesthetic of Exile, Joyce and the contribution of the Irish to “Modernism” and the phenomenon of a diaspora of cultural artefacts.

Participants will include Luca Crispi, Anne Fogarty, Declan Kiberd, and Frank McGuinness

12:30 a.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m.
Session Three: Ties That Bind

The session will explore cultural branding, identity and social cohesion in Britain and Ireland.  It will take as a starting point two iconic identifiers of “Irishness”, the GAA and Guinness, both of whom celebrate milestone anniversaries in 2009

Participants will include Cormac O’Grada and Paul Rouse

3:00 p.m. Coffee

3:30 p.m.
Session Four: What does the future hold for Ireland and its Diaspora?

An open floor discussion will be led by a special guest panel.

5.00 p.m. Closing remarks: Hugh Brady

7:30 for 8:00 The Forum will be followed by a dinner and the presentation of The John Hume Medal

Related webpages:

• The Irish in Britain on UCD John Hume Institute website
• Irish Diaspora Forum on Global Irish Institute website
• Ean: US-Ireland Forum focuses on relations

Organisers have issued a call for papers for an upcoming conference:

We invite interested academics to participate in a symposium/workshop to be held at Trinity College Dublin on Saturday 26 September 2009. Speakers
confirmed to date include:

• Professor John Hill (Royal Holloway, University of London)
• Dr Lance Pettitt (Leeds Metropolitan University)

We welcome interdisciplinary and subject-specific approaches and hope to
develop a dialogue between this topic and other topics associated with Irish
diaspora studies.

Proposals should be limited to around 200 words and be accompanied by brief biographical details.

If you would like to be kept up to date with the project, please email your
name to the project director, Dr Ruth Barton (ruth.barton@tcd.ie)

All proposals should be sent to ruth.barton@tcd.ie.

This project is supported by the Trinity College Dublin Long Room Hub
Research Initiative Funding Scheme.

Visit related website:

• Screening Irish-America
• Screening Irish America: Representing Irish-America in Film and Television: book by Ruth Barton

The Migration and Remittances team of the Development Economics Prospects Group and the Migration Working Group of the World Bank are organizing an International Conference on Diaspora and Development on July 13-14, 2009.

The diaspora of developing countries can be a potent force for development for their countries of origin, through remittances, but more importantly, through the promotion of trade, investments, knowledge and technology transfers. The conference aims to consolidate research and evidence on these issues with a view to formulating policies in both sending and receiving countries.

The Keynote session will focus on the “Impact of the Crisis on Migration and Remittances”, while there will be other sessions on

• Diaspora as a strategy for the global mobility of skills
• Contributions of unskilled diaspora to development
• Mobilising diaspora investments
• Deepening diaspora ties
• Mobilising highly-skilled diaspora
• Working with diaspora and diaspora associations
• Diaspora actions
• Collective remittances: country experiences
• Circular migration and returns

The agenda notes there will be an (unnamed) representative from Ireland speaking as part of the panel discussion on diaspora ties.

Visit Conference website.

The Irish Studies Associaton of Australian and New Zealand will host its conference from the 9th to 12th of July at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand.

Organisers say:

Australia and New Zealand were essentially secondary destinations for the post-1800 waves of Irish leaving to make new lives overseas, accounting for no more than 10 per cent in most decades. Yet the two countries have regularly been identified by scholars as appropriate ‘laboratories’ for studying the nature and impacts of Irish migration over time. This conference seeks to review research undertaken both at the points of origin and destination and to pose new questions. Were the Irish communities that took root in the Antipodes essentially transplanted fragments of the homeland? How did they evolve, and to what extent was their evolution influenced by developments at home? Were there noticeable differences between the Australian and New Zealand Irish experiences, and if so how may these best be explained? What is the relationship today between Ireland and its most far-flung diasporic communities?

With seven keynote speakers providing contextual signposts, the topics to be addressed over three days will be diverse. Historical themes range from aspects of early convict transportation to Australia, through Irish-Maori relations in New Zealand, to late twentieth century economic interactions. Cultural life will also be a focus, Irish literature, theatre and music – both traditional and contemporary – being scheduled for discussion. A particular consideration will be how the Antipodean Irish are being depicted in historical reconstructions and displays. Necessarily, many of the contributions will reflect collective experiences, but provision has also been made for papers on those of individuals and families. The utility of oral history for recording the experiences of more recent arrivals will also be assessed.

See the conference website.

• Tuesday 26 May, Prof Bronwen Walter, Anglia Ruskin University
  Fictional Irish Presences in English Diaspora Space: a Social Science Exploration
• Tuesday 2 June, Dr Ann Rossiter
• “Hidden Histories: The Irish ‘Abortion Trail’ and the Undercover Support Network within the London-Irish Community
• Wednesday 10 June, Dr Nicole McLennan, London Metropolitan University
  Irish Connections: London’s County Associations
• Tuesday 16 June, Dr Reg Hall
  Researching the Irish in Britain: Methodological Approaches

For more information:

Irish in Britain Seminar Series 2009