In this edition of your Newsletter

Seamus Heaney R.I.P.

News from around Europe

Upcoming Conferences

Members’ publications
1
Letter from EFACIS president Seán Crosson
A chairde,
Happy New year to all our members! I hope you all have a wonderful 2014 with continuing success
for your various research and creative endeavours. As the reports and articles in this newsletter indicate, Irish Studies continues to thrive across the continent with a broad range of upcoming events
and initiatives, including major conferences in Lille (IASIL 2014), Aalborg (NISN 2014) and Prague
(11th Annual Irish Theatrical Diaspora Conference).This newsletter also includes a report on the recent International Irish Gothic Conference at the University of Perugia, an event that indicates the
growing prominence of Irish studies in Italy. We are also delighted to be able to bring you good
news on new publications by members in France, Romania, Hungary, and Croatia, while the latest
book project from NISN, The Crossings of Art in Ireland, has also just been published. I want to congratulate in particular our Vice-President, Ondřej Pilný, on the publication of Ireland and the Czech
Lands: Contacts and Comparisons in History and Culture, which Ondřej recently co-edited with Gerald Power. This issue includes further information on this volume (as well as the many other publications from members) and some photographs from its launch in December.
A crucial figure in the continuing development of EFACIS, and in particular our online presence and
Irish Itinerary, is our coordinator Sien Deltour. This issue includes a short piece on Sien who outlines
some of the excellent work she is doing for the federation. On behalf of the board and our members I want to welcome Sien to our organisation and thank her for all her efforts. As Sien indicates
in her report, the next circuit of the Irish Itinerary is beginning to take shape with the first circuit
taking place in March in Leuven, Nijmegen and Toulouse. We will be informing members via our
listserv and website of the activities on this circuit in the coming weeks.
While it has taken longer than we had initially hoped (due to the inevitable technical challenges involved), we are optimistic that our new website will be available online by next month. This website
will provide members with an improved facility to communicate our activities as well as offering a
forum for members to bring their research and activities to the attention of others engaged in Irish
studies.
Over the past few months, a series of memorials to the late Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney took
place across the continent, including one in Vienna to which I contributed. From Leuven, to Vienna,
Budapest, and Madrid, Heaney’s enduring legacy continues to reverberate and this issue includes
reports on each of these events.
Finally, as many members will be aware, the Leuven Institute for Ireland In Europe – where An Taoiseach Enda Kenny recently visited – has been a crucial centre for Irish studies and an important facilitator of EFACIS since its foundation. We were all shocked therefore, to hear as our newsletter
was nearing completion of the tragic events when two young Irish students based at the Institute,
Dace Zarina and Sara Gibadlo, died in a fire in their college accommodation. I want to express my
deepest condolences, on my behalf and on behalf I’m sure of all involved with EFACIS, to the family
and friends of Dace and Sara, and all at the institute in Leuven at this very difficult time.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a n-anam uasal.
Seán.
2
Introducing our new EFACIS coordinator, Sien Deltour.
Through the support of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, EFACIS now has a Coordinator, Sien Deltour, who has been providing important support with both the development
of our website and with the Irish Itinerary. Below Sien outlines some of the work she has
been doing since she began last September.
I have been working as EFACIS coordinator since September. A lot of my work involves
communication: I send round invitations and CFPs to all EFACIS members and I update the
website from time to time. We are working on the new EFACIS website which will be online
soon. Keeping that new website up to date is also part of my job.
The 2014 Irish Itinerary is slowly taking form. Right now artistes are being contacted and
invited to circuits on the Itinerary. Culture Ireland is involved again, as is the IFI who are a
great help to get all the film rights cleared. The first circuit will take place in March in Leuven, Nijmegen and Toulouse. Three more circuits will follow in the first half of 2014; in
Eastern Europe, Germany and the Netherlands and in Portugal and Spain. In autumn we
have three more circuits planned in Scandinavia, Germany and Italy.
There is a lot of enthusiasm in all the Irish centres involved in the Itinerary. It is great to see
that academics, artists and embassies are so eager to make this project work. The upcoming website will provide an opportunity for all centres to advertise their Itinerary events
and will hopefully make communication between centres even better.
3
SOFEIR activities January 2014 – September 2014.
In the previous issue of the EFACIS Newsletter, the SOFEIR outlined most of its main activities for the academic year 2013-14. The present report provides information on additional
events organised by various centres.
International Events
- The Annual Conference of the French Society for Irish Studies (SOFEIR) will be hosted by
the University of Toulouse Capitole on 21-22 March 2014.
This year’s theme is: "Ireland: Identity and Interculturality"
For more information, see the SOFEIR website: http://sofeir2014.sciencesconf.org/
The programme should be completed by the end of February 2014.
- The SAES, a French umbrella organisation composed of the main scholarly societies specialised in civilisation, literature and the arts of the English-speaking world organises an annual congress. This year’s edition will be held in Caen on 16-18 May 2014. A special workshop is dedicated to Irish Studies. Information is available at:
http://saes2014.unicaen.fr
- As mentioned in the previous Newletter, the IASIL Congress ‘Embodying/Disembodying
Ireland’ will be organised and hosted by the University of Charles De Gaulle-Lille 3 on 14-18
July 2014. Fiona McCann and Alexandra Poulain point out that the conference does not only welcome papers in literature but wish to encourage researchers in cultural studies to
participate. Information is available at: http://www.iasil.org/conference-2014/
The Irish Cultural Centre in Paris
The Irish Cultural Centre in Paris organises a series of events. The full programme can be
accessed at:
http://www.centreculturelirlandais.com/media/files/presse/Programme_JanAvr14.pdf
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Local conferences and seminars
- University Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée is organising a one-day conference on
‘Poverty’ on 31 January 2014. Hugh Frazer former director of the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust (now Community Foundation Northern Ireland) will give a
special talk as guest speaker.
Poverty as an Object of Social Inquiry and Artistic Representations
In association with the research groups IMAGER and LISAA, this seminar is directly connected to the forthcoming special volume of Arts et Savoirs, Representations of Poverty. As its plenary speaker, it will feature Hugh Frazer, a professor in applied social studies at the National University of Ireland (Maynooth)
as well as an independent expert on social inclusion and poverty. The seminar
will also include two other speakers, Donna Kesselman, a labour historian, and
Claire Colin, a specialist in contemporary and comparative literature. The seminar panel will be composed of three contributors to the Arts et Savoirs special
volume: Philippa Wookcock, Hélène Alfaro-Hamayon, and William Dow, who
will give brief talks and serve as respondents.
Speakers:
Hugh Frazer, National University of Ireland (Maynooth)
Claire Colin, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
Donna Kesselman, Université Paris-Est Créteil
Philippa Woodcock, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
Hélène Alfaro-Hamayon, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
William Dow, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée
For further information, contact
Hélène
Alfaro-Hamayon
(William.Dow@wanadoo.fr)
(hamalfa@orange.fr)
5
or
William
Dow
As part of its seminar, the research group ‘Politique, organisations, conflits’
within the research centre PLEIADE in University Paris 13 is organising a workshop on ‘Mediation and exclusion: the role of third parties in developing social
links’. Professor Marie Breen Smyth, who set up the Cost of The Trouble Studies
in Northern Ireland and worked extensively on victims / survivors issues there,
will be their special guest, together with Adele Stanislaus.
The workshop is organised by Fabrice Mourlon and Quentin Deluermoz and will
be held at University Paris 13 on 11 March. For further information, contact
Fabrice Mourlon (fabricemourlon@me.com)
Publications
Claude Armand, Vanessa Boullet et David Ten Eyck, eds. Enjeux et Positionnements de l’Interdisciplinarité / Positioning Interdisciplinarity. Collection
“Regards croisés sur le monde anglophone”, Nancy: Presses Universitaires de
Nancy – Éditions Universitaires de Lorraine, 2014. ISBN: 978-2-8143-0179-5.
254 pp.
This book contains an article by Valérie Peyronel (Université Paris 3) on
"L’enseignement de civilisation au cœur de l’approche interdisciplinaire : le cas
de l’Irlande du Nord".
Derek MAHON, La Mer hivernale & autres poèmes, traduit et préfacé par
Jacques Chuto (édition bilingue), Cheyne, 2013.
Karine BiGAND & Fabrice MOURLON
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Visit of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the Leuven Institute for
Irish Studies
7
Visit of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the Leuven Institute
for Irish Studies
8
Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and Hedwig Schwall.
Seamus Heaney Commemoration (24/10/2013)
The Seamus Heaney Commemoration was a very entertaining and interesting evening that fitted right in with the many commemorations being
organised in other universities and centres. The auditorium at the Irish
college was packed with about 180 guests including students and academics as well as other Heaney fans. A large group of students came all
the way from Kortrijk to join in the commemoration.
The performances were all very good and every element flowed very naturally into the next. The Irish poet Ciarán Carson read from Heaney’s poetry and from his own. Carson’s two pupils at the Seamus Heaney centre
in Queens University, Belfast, Sophie Collins and Stephen Connolly, also
came along and gave brilliant readings of, again, their own poetry and
some of Heaney’s poems. Connolly even shared the funny anecdote of
how he had met Seamus Heaney once. It all exemplified Heaney’s humanity and his joy in life.
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Ciarán
Carson,
Deirdre
Carson
and
Dónal
O’Connor
The music played provided some variation in the programme. Ciarán Carson
and his wife Deirdre Carson brought some tunes on violin and fiddle, assisted
by Dónal O’Connor for the closing songs. Dr Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin performed songs of which the lyrics were poems by Seamus Heaney. She and
Dónal O’Connor gave a stunning performance. She sang a lot of the song that
can be found on her cd ‘Songs of the Scribe’, for example ‘Pangur Ban’ and
‘My Hand is Cramped with Penwork’. These were brought both in English and
Gaelic. The link with Belgium was made clear by poet and translator Joris
Iven, who brought some of Heaney’s poems in Dutch translation. Overall, the
evening went very well.
Sophie
Collins
and Stephen
Connolly
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«We are all in there».
International Irish Gothic Conference
University for Foreigners, Perugia
University of Perugia
Perugia, 5-6 December 2013
The unending success and appeal that the Gothic has always enjoyed is being proved by
the astonishing spread in the last decade of books and films on seductive vampires, courageous wizards and the like. It then comes as no surprise that such a world-wide and various success has been putting forward the necessity of always up-to-date research studies
and discussions on what was once considered a well-established genre. In this regard, it is
all the more necessary to further investigate the contribution to this success brought
about by Irish literature, also – but not only – because a considerable number of Gothic
writers were indeed Irish. What is then the peculiarity of the ‘Irish Gothic’? Which are the
differences between the so called ‘Protestant Magic’ and the ‘Gaelic Gothic’? How do contemporary Irish writers deal with such a literary heritage and how is its relationship with
the historical past of Ireland represented? Last but not least, what lies behind those uncanny ambiguities, those unspeakable secrets, frightening ghosts and haunted houses
that so often recur in Irish literature and that have come to be standard features of the
Gothic as a whole? These and many more are the questions which scholars from all over
the world tried to answer during the two-day International Irish Gothic Conference, held
in Perugia (Italy) on 5th and 6th December 2013 and organised by Enrico Terrinoni
(University for Foreigners, Perugia) and Annalisa Volpone (University of Perugia), in collaboration with EFACIS and under the patronage of the Irish Ambassador in Italy, H. E. Bobby
McDonagh.
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On the first day, in the refined Sala Goldoni of the University for Foreigners, after
the official welcome addressed by Giovanni Paciullo, President of the University, and Roberto Fedi, Director of the Department of Human and Social Sciences, and the formal
greeting by Fiorenzo Fantaccini, Italian member of the EFACIS committee, Enrico Terrinoni introduced the first plenary speaker, in the person of Derek Hand (Saint Patrick’s
College, Dublin). In his lecture, Hand underlined how the Gothic characterizes the whole
Irish literature and, starting from a re-reading of Seamus Deane’s novel, Reading in the
dark, he particularly focused on History as the haunting presence par excellence, and
considered as the obsession for Ireland’s unresolved historical past.
Shifting from the temporal to the spatial dimension, the “Gothic spaces” were then
the subject of the following panel, chaired by Terrinoni. Tracey Fahey (Limerick School of
Art and Design) analyzed the recurring presence of strange or inaccessible spaces from
Irish folklore in Irish contemporary art, focusing on the sense of ‘Otherness’ the latter
provokes, an element which was also taken into account by Judith Rahn (Universität
Bonn). Rahn showed how this ‘Otherness’ can be represented by ‘monstrous acts’ which,
for example in Edgeworth’s and Ownerson’s works, take place even in ‘the presumed
safety of the familiar’. These same ‘uncanny’ features of the family home are also the
subject of Hedwig Schwall (Catholic University, Leuven)’s and Francesca Scarpato (Centre
for Irish Studies, Trieste)’s papers, who particularly focused on the Irish variant of the Big
House Gothic in Banville, Edgeworth and Sommerville. According to Elisabetta D’Erme
(Independent scholar) the Big House paradigm became more complex in Iris Murdoch’s
The Unicorn, which is seen as ‘an unprecedented exploration of the origins of evil’.
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Laura Pelaschiar (University of Trieste) delivered the plenary lecture of the afternoon. She convincingly explained how the origins of Gothic literature can be traced
back to the Irish Anti-Catholicism. Her lecture particularly focused on James Joyce’s
gothicness. Starting from the analysis of the short-story The Sisters, Pelaschiar underlined how, in Joyce’s characters, the Gothic is revealed in the relation between the living and the dead, and in particular in the necessity for the living of settling the debts
with the dead. These debts actually are the result of a fault that – as Pelaschiar claimed
– before being collective, is first of all a personal one.
Later, Derek Hand chaired the following panel on Irish Gothic literary texts,
written during the “(Post-)Victorian” Age. Both Manuel Cadeddu (University of Cagliari)
and Fabio Ciambella (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”) analyzed two of the major
“Gothic” authors of this age, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde. Cadeddu carried out a comparison between Count Dracula and its predecessor Murtagh Murdock to better understand Stoker’s work as a whole. Ciambella, on the other hand, investigated the character of Salome as the prototype of the Gothic femme fatale, within the so called
‘Aesthetic Gothic’ paradigm.
The last panel of the day, chaired by Pelaschiar, dealt with the leading Gothic
writer of the 19th century, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Francesca Caraceni (University of
Tuscia) discussed the concepts of ‘faithfulness’ and of the ‘translator’s invisibility’ within the process of translation, in Le Fanu’s Green Tea, suggesting the possibility of ‘an implicit, political discourse’ in his narrative. Le Fanu’s skill ‘to translate’ the atmosphere of
oral tradition into his short stories by means of specific narrative strategies is what Fabio Luppi (University of Roma Tre) analyzed in his paper. The session was closed by Simon Young (ISI Florence), who underscored the crucial importance of the traditional
Irish lore in Le Fanu’s cultural background.
The 18th-century Sala delle Adunanze of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of
the University of Perugia was the setting of the second day of the Conference. Annalisa
Volpone and Sergio Rufini (University of Perugia) chaired the first two panels, focused
on the “Post-Gothic” and “Modernist” outcomes of the genre. As for the first panel,
Richard Haslam (Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia) employed the discipline of casuistry to shed some light on the critical debate on the Gothic, in order to identify
‘paradigm cases’ of the same. Giuliana Bendelli (Catholic University, Milan) discussed
how the old, romantic, Irish ideals found in the Emerald Gems of Ireland were manipulated by Patrick McCabe, so as to become metaphors of the degradation of modern
Irish society. Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull) argued that Eoin McNamee similarly
updates the traditional tropes of the Irish Gothic, thus demonstrating how the Gothic is
an intercultural, as well as an intertextual phenomenon. Bill Lancaster (Texas A&M University, Commerce), the first speaker of the second panel, dealt with Joyce’s exploration
of unequal pairing of individuals in Dubliners, analyzing them on the basis of George
Homans’ s social exchange theory.
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Joyce’s work was also the focus of Dieter Fuchs (Technical University of Koszalin),
who showed that his Portrait ‘constructs the enlightened tradition of the Bildungroman’
via the Gothic tradition, not by rewriting it, but by generating ‘a Gothic subtext from ancient mythology’, specifically the myth of the Minotaur. Emanuela Zirzotti (University of
Rome “La Sapienza”) focused instead on the ‘haunting presence’ of Jonathan Swift in one
of Yeats’s plays, which seems to dramatize the latter’s dilemma between the refusal of
the body and his strong physical temptations.
Francesca Romani Paci (University of Piemonte Orientale) addressed the plenary
lecture of the morning. She offered a compelling reading of James Clarence Mangan’s dedalic style and his use of gothic settings. She tackled the phenomenon of the inter/intratextuality and of some other specific narrative devices characterizing his work. By making
reference to Mangan’s “fraud” translations then, she particularly pointed out the idea of
a manuscript brought to light through a translation, which is however itself fictional – a
typically gothic element that can be traced back to Walpole’s Preface to the first edition
of The Castle of Otranto. The morning session ended with the welcome address by Franco Moriconi, President of the University of Perugia, and the speech addressed by H. E.
the Irish Ambassador Bobby McDonagh.
The afternoon sessions, chaired by Annalisa Volpone, Francesca Romana Paci and
Donatella Badin, opened with Bill McCormack (Goldsmith College, London)’s plenary lecture on the recurring, ‘haunting’, presence of the Gothic in contemporary society: while
in the past the spectre haunting Anglo-Irish society was for example that of Democracy,
nowadays - McCormack argued - it is that of fundamentalism and terrorism. It is then important to come to terms with this Gothic phenomenon, because ‘we are all in there’.
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The last two panels were devoted to ‘Gothic Crossings’. Elena Cotta Ramusino
(University of Pavia) focused on the presence of Gothic elements in Elizabeth Bowen’s
wartime short fiction. She particularly highlighted that the labyrinth-like bombed London, described by the writer, favours ‘a state of lucid abnormality’, that leads her characters to deal with the permanent feeling of the uncanny, ‘giving voice both to personal
and collective anxieties’. Giovanna Tallone (Catholic University, Milan) took into account
Clare Boylan’s fiction, analyzing how – although apparently far from the Gothic tradition
– she actually reworked and deconstructed some of the most common Gothic features.
Donatella Badin (University of Turin) focused instead on the Italianate Gothicism of some
Irish novels, carrying out an analysis of the ambiguous relation between Ireland and Italy,
‘two countries that share a national question: colonisation (in the case of Italy) and Catholicism’. Marianna Pugliese (University of Roma Tre)’s paper focused on the specific
Scottish elements of the Gothic tradition, with a particular emphasis on their being
tropes expressing Scotland’s identity crisis and revealing ‘national myths as Gothic forgeries’. Both the last two papers eventually dealt with different aspects of Charles Robert
Maturin’s work. On the one hand, Sebnem Kaya (Hacettepe University, Ankara) analyzed
and interpreted Melmoth the Wanderer in terms of the rather overlooked aspect of
ecophobia, thus stressing the ‘wide variety of ecological anxieties’ experienced by the
characters of this novel. On the other hand, Benedicte Seynhaeve (Catholic University,
Leuven) ended the session with a paper in which she argued that Maturin’s use of
‘Shakespearean horror’ might be considered as the result of the ‘author’s insecurity’
when writing for British audiences.
Cristiano Ragni (University of Perugia)
Loredana Pozzuoli (University for Foreigners, Perugia)
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Univ. of Vienna, 9 Jan 2014:
Public Lecture by Dr. Seán Crosson (NUI Galway):
"An Austrian’s (Unexpected) Contribution to the Emergence of Irish Film: George
Fleischmann, From Luftwaffe “Spy” to Pioneering Cinematographer".
During the winter term 2013/14 EFACIS President Seán Crosson held the post of Visiting
Professor of Irish Studies at the Irish Studies Centre, University of Vienna. Seán taught
four courses on Irish Cultural and Media Studies including a lecture course on “Ireland and
the Irish on Film”.
The visiting professorship is part of a scheme to promote Irish Studies in Austria and jointly funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs (through the Embassy of Ireland in Austria)
and the University of Vienna. The agreement stipulates that the incumbent give a public
lecture in which he/she explores matters of general interest and presents research in progress.
Seán's choice of topic was particularly apt, as he spoke on "An Austrian’s (Unexpected)
Contribution to the Emergence of Irish Film: George Fleischmann, From Luftwaffe “Spy” to
Pioneering Cinematographer".
EFACIS President Seán Crosson
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Austrian-born cinematographer George Fleischmann (pictured) served as a lieutenant with
the German Luftwaffe during WW II, when his plane was shot down over Ireland. Following
his internment in Ireland during the war, he decided to stay on in the country. As an accomplished cinematographer who had previously worked with UFA in Germany, Fleischmann became a crucial figure in Irish film in the post-war era through his contributions as a
cinematographer (and sometimes director or editor) to fiction films and documentary
films, including the ground-breaking documentaries W.B. Yeats - A Tribute (1950) and Fintona - A Study Of Housing Discrimination (1953) as well as the Oscar-nominated
short Return to Glennascaul (1953).
In the second half of his lecture, Seán focused on Fleischmann's pioneering work in filming
the Gaelic games of hurling and Gaelic football between 1948 and 1953, especially the
highlights of the all-Ireland finals. As films centrally concerned with representing and promoting the nation through sport, these films constituted distinctly Irish films in a manner
rarely found previously. They also provide an intriguing link, explored in Seán’s lecture,
with one of the most accomplished (and controversial) sports films ever made, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938), as Fleischmann had contributed as a camera operator to the making of Riefenstahl’s documentary.
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“In the ivy when I leave”: Remembering Seamus Heaney
...when light breaks over me
The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine
Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried
And silver lamé shivered on the Bann
Out in mid-channel between the painted poles,
That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.
(Seamus Heaney, Squarings, xlviii)
The year 2013 was another very fruitful one for Irish Studies at the University in Vienna in terms of cooperations (The Embassy of Ireland, Irish Itinerary, Culture Ireland)
and events such as readings, guest lectures and the Irish Film Festival. It was, however, also overshadowed by the passing of Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney in August. On 10 December, a number of fans and admirers of his work as well as
distinguished guest speakers gathered at a newly opened university venue, the 12floor high Sky Lounge at Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz, to pay tribute to Heaney’s impressive œuvre and the modest and “exceptionally approachable, gregarious, generous,
courteous and convivial” (as Neil Corcoran attested) man behind it.
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The event started with “Árdaí Chuain”, a track from the album The Poet and the Piper
chosen by Dr. Seán Crosson for this occasion. The Poet and the Piper marks a collaboration between Seamus Heaney and piper Liam O’Flynn. As Seán Crosson pointed out, this
unique mix of language and music at once attests to Heaney’s ever-present interest in
traditional Irish folk culture and the role of the bard, which he frequently explored in his
own work, and his life-long engagement with the highly musical Irish language. In his introductory remarks, Seán Crosson also emphasised the importance of the Irish language
as a constant source of inspiration for the poet.
H.E. The Ambassador of Ireland, James Brennan
In his opening remarks, H.E. The Ambassador of Ireland, James Brennan highlighted
Heaney's significance for Irish culture and spoke of the poet’s legacy and inspiration
for future generations of Irish poets. Prof. Werner Huber, the initiator of the event,
then shared a few reminiscences and anecdotes about Heaney’s visit to Vienna in
2009 for the EFACIS conference. He highlighted Heaney’s eloquence and eminence as
well as his wit and conviviality and showed us photographs capturing the poet “in action”: reading and talking, but also intently listening to his audience.
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Next, Peter Sirr, a poet, critic and translator based in Dublin, spoke about the intrinsic
discrepancy between Heaney’s immense popularity (here he quoted John Banville’s famous dictum that “few poets find a way into the inner ear of the multitude”) and the
poet’s self-stylisation as “Incertus”. This built-in “uncertainty principle”, Sirr argued, can
be traced back to the poet’s obligation to “somehow answer to violence, division, and
rupture” in public while at the same time obeying his artistic urge to create aesthetically pleasing poetry.
In the last talk of the evening, Neil Corcoran, PhD addressed a similar issue when he
acknowledged that Heaney’s poetry is “full of broken things in its treatment of the
Troubles”, while still constituting “a poetry of the continuities that sustain us against
mortality”. Corcoran’s talk was characterised by a mix of personal anecdotes and a meticulous textual investigation of some of Heaney’s poems relating to mortality and
death, with examples including Mid-Term Break, The Blackbird of Glanmore and finally
Squarings, xlviii.
The evening ended on a contemplative note with a recording of Heaney reading The
Given Note accompanied by Liam O'Flynn's performance of the traditional air that inspired the poem, “Port na bPúcaí”.
Heaney’s poetry can indeed be seen as a poetry of continuities in other respects as
well: its multifariousness offers plenty of material for re-readings and further explorations and his powerful last words, “Noli timere”, will certainly resound for many years
to come.
Tamara Radak
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News from Hungary:
Seamus Heaney remembered:
There were two commemoration events for Seamus Heaney in Budapest in September
2013: a night of reading Heaney’s poetry and a memorial lecture at Eötvös Lóránd University under the title “Seamus Heaney: At Home Beyond the Tribe” by academic, translator
Győző Ferenc, who has published the translation of Heaney’s work under the title, Hűlt
Hely.
The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 19.2. (2013) (published at the University of Debrecen) has also commemorated Heaney: see Donald E. Morse’s editor’s notes
and Michael Parker’s “In Memoriam Seamus Heaney (1939-2013).”
Recent events:
In November the Irish Ambassador to Hungary, Kevin Dowling paid an official visit to the
University of Debrecen, where he delivered two lectures: at the Faculty of Economics he
gave an overview of the recent economic crisis and the current recovery in Ireland, and in
the Centre of Irish Studies he talked about the Irish contribution to literature in English.
New publication:
Hartvig, Gabriella (University of Pécs). The Critical and Creative Reception of EighteenthCentury British and Anglo-Irish Authors in Hungary: Essays in Intercultural Exchange. Pécs:
U of Pécs, 2013. The volume contains several essays on the reception Swift and Sterne in
Hungary.
Forthcoming conference:
‘Silence . . . and Irish Writing’: Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest will host an
Irish Studies Conference between 25-27 June, 2014.
Closing date for receipt of proposals: January 31, 2014.
More information available at: https://sites.google.com/site/
pazmanyirishconference2014/home
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News from Romania
New publication:
Berce, Sanda, et. al., ed. Cultural Imprints in the Age of Globalisation: Writing region
and Nation. Cluj: Presa Universitara Clujeana. 2012. The volume contains three essays
on Irish literature (Joyce, Beckett and contemporary Irish fiction).
News from Croatia
A new edited volume in Peter Lang’s Reimagining Ireland series:
O’Malley, Aidan and Eve Patten, eds. Ireland West to East: Irish Cultural Connections
with Central and Eastern Europe. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main,
New York, Wien: Peter Lang, 2014.
More information available at:
http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?
event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=70948&concordeid
=430913
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Power, Gerald / Pilný, Ondřej (eds)
Ireland and the Czech Lands
Contacts and Comparisons in History and Culture
Bern: Peter Lang, 2014. 235 pp., 10 b/w ill.Reimagining Ireland. Vol. 49
Edited by Eamon Maher
In recent years Irish scholars have become increasingly interested in Ireland’s profound and ongoing relationship with continental Europe. This volume is the first
multidisciplinary collection of essays on Irish comparisons and contacts with the
Czech Lands from the early modern period to contemporary times. Written by leading specialists and emerging scholars, the essays explore Irish-Czech exchanges
and parallels in a variety of fields including history, politics, literature, theatre, journalism and physical education. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that Ireland
and the Czech Lands have much in common and that they have enjoyed deep cultural connections: both countries are small European states with imperial pasts and
a tradition of mutual migration and cultural transfer. Until now, however, Czech-Irish
commonalities and connections have largely been overshadowed by both countries’ interactions with bigger, more powerful nations. This book remedies this neglect, offering new research which not only sheds light on Irish-Czech connections
and contacts, but also offers new perspectives on the positions of both societies
within the wider European context.
Gerald Power lectures in history and Irish Studies at Metropolitan University Prague. His first
book, A European Frontier Elite: The Nobility of the English Pale in Tudor Ireland, 1496-1566,
was published in 2012. His research interests lie in early modern history, and particularly in the
interplay between monarchies and local elites in the context of the developing state.
Ondřej Pilný is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Irish Studies at
Charles University, Prague. He is the author of Irony and Identity in Modern Irish Drama (2006)
and editor of Global Ireland: Irish Literatures in the New Millennium (with Clare Wallace), Time
Refigured: Myths, Foundation Texts and Imagined Communities (with Martin Procházka), and an
annotated volume of J.M. Synge’s works in Czech. He has translated plays by J.M. Synge, Brian
Friel, Martin McDonagh and Enda Walsh, and Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman.
Contents:
Gerald Power and Ondřej Pilný, “Ireland and the Czech Lands: An Introduction”;
Gerald Power, “Monarchy, Nobility and State Formation in Bohemia and Ireland, c.
1526–1609”; Jiří Brňovják, “The Integration of Irish Aristocratic Émigré Families in
the Czech Lands, c. 1650–1945: Selected Case Studies”; Hedvika Kuchařová and
Jan Pařez, “The Last Community: Irish Franciscans after the Dissolution of the Prague College, 1786”; Martina Power, “From Indirect to Direct Comparison: Bohemian-Irish Analogies in German and British Travel Writing, c. 1750–1850”; Lili Zách,
“Irish Intellectuals and Independent Czechoslovakia in the Interwar Period: Reflections in Catholic Journals”; Daniel Samek, “The Czech Sokol Gymnastic Programme in Ireland, c. 1900–1950”; Bohuslav Mánek, “The Czech Reception of Irish
Poetry and Prose, c. 1790–2013 “; Justin Quinn, “California Dreaming: Miroslav
Holub and Seamus Heaney”; Ondřej Pilný, “Irish Drama in the Czech Lands, c.
1900–2013”
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The launch of Ireland and the Czech Lands: Contacts
and Comparisons in History and Culture, eds. Gerald
Power and Ondřej Pilný in Prague (13 December
H.E. Alison Kelly, Ambassador of Ireland to the
Czech Republic, kindly
stood godmother to the
volume.
.Music accompaniment was by Prague-based group Conamara
Chaos.
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11th Annual Irish Theatrical Diaspora Conference
“Irish Theatre and Central Europe”
Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University, Prague
12-13 September 2014
Keynote speakers: Małgorzata Semil-Jakubowicz, Michael Raab, László Upor, Tilman
Raabke
The conference aims to discuss the relations between theatre in Ireland and a broadly defined region of Central Europe. Principal themes include the reception of Irish theatre and
drama in Central Europe; theatre and drama from Central Europe on Irish stages; links between theatres, playwrights and practitioners from the respective geographical areas; the
history, practice and politics of drama translation.
The deadline for proposals (max. 250 words) along with an affiliation, email address and
a brief bio, is 30 March 2014; proposals should be sent to Dr Ondřej Pilný at
ondrej.pilny@volny.cz. The conference organizers welcome applications from scholars at
any stage of their career, and particularly encourage graduate students to submit proposals. Please note that as the two-day conference can accommodate only up to 20 papers, the organizers are unable to guarantee the acceptance of all proposals. Delegates
will be notified of the acceptance of their presentation by 1 May 2014.
Scholarship for ITD 2014
The Irish Theatrical Diaspora Network is making available a scholarship for any Irelandbased post-graduate or unwaged post-doctoral student who wishes to deliver a paper at
the 2014 conference. The scholarship will reimburse the cost of transportation to the
event, up to a maximum of 300 euro. The scholarship will be awarded on the basis of academic merit. Applicants should send a short letter of intent outlining how the candidate
would benefit from the scholarship, together with their paper proposal and a letter of reference from a supervisor to Patrick.Lonergan@nuigalway.ie on or before 1 May 2014.
Publication of Papers
The conference organizers intend to publish an edited collection of essays based on a selection of the papers presented at the conference.
Organizing Committee
Nicholas Grene (TCD), Patrick Lonergan (NUI Galway), Ondřej Pilný (Charles University),
Clare Wallace (Charles University)
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Irish Studies Events in the UK
Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
[1] Lecture: Is Transitional Justice a First-Order Priority After Conflict?, by Dr Padraig MacAuliffe (Liverpool Law School)
12 March 2014,
12-1pm
Room 2.09, 1 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool main campus.
For more information contact Dr Clare Downham at c.downham@liv.ac.uk
[2] Book reading: Eimear McBride: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
19 Mar 2014,
6-9pm
Cost: Free of charge. Pre-booking, however, is essential, so please contact Mrs Dorothy
Lynch (dorothy@liv.ac.uk) to reserve a place. Refreshments will be served after the lecture
in the foyer of the Rendall Building.
Location: Lecture Theatre 6, Rendall Building, Bedford Street South, University of Liverpool
Campus.
[3] Lecture: Heritage Culture in Ireland and Scotland, by Prof Mairead Nic Craith (Chair in
European Culture and Heritage, Heriot-Watt)
26 Mar 2014,
6-9pm
Location: Lecture Theatre 6, Rendall Building, South Bedford Street, University of Liverpool
Campus. The lecture will be followed by refreshments in the foyer of the Rendall Building.
Contact: For more information contact Mrs Dorothy Lynch at dorothy@liv.ac.uk
4] Lecture: Swift and the Church: his sermons and his theology, by Prof Marcus Walsh
(Dept. of English).
2 April 2014
12-1pm
Location: Room 2.09, 2nd Floor, 1 Abercromby Square, University of Liverpool Campus.
Contact: For more information contact Mrs Dorothy Lynch at dorothy@liv.ac.uk
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Queen’s University, Belfast
Seamus Heaney: A Conference and Commemoration
The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast is hosting a major international conference to honour Seamus Heaney from 10th-13th April 2014. ‘Seamus
Heaney: a Conference and Commemoration’ will coincide with Seamus’s 75th birthday
and the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Centre. The conference will be a celebration of Seamus’s work, and will provide an opportunity for an extended discussion both
of his contribution to literature, and of his legacy for future generations of poets, critics
and general readers.
10-13 April 2014
Conference website: http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/SeamusHeaneyConference2014/
Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast
Events to be held at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast:
[1] Poetry reading: Paula Meehan
6 March 2014
8pm
[2] Book reading: John Lynch
27 March 2014
8pm
[3] Reading by Maureen McLane and Richard Price
3 April 2014
8pm
This reading, open to the public, is part of the Expanded Lyric conference organized by
our PhD students Alice Lyons and Andy Eaton. Maureen N. McLane is a poet and critic at
New York University. Her poetry books include This Blue: poems (forthcoming), World
Enough: poems (2012) and Same Life: Poems (2010), all published by Farrar, Straus &
Giroux. Richard Price’s poetry collections include Lucky Day (2005), Greenfields (2007),
Rays (2009) and Small World (2012), all published by Carcanet. Small World won Poetry
Book of the Year in the 2013 Scottish Book Awards. Lucky Day was shortlisted both for
the Forward and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh Prizes for Best First Collection as well as the
Whitbread Award
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Nottingham Irish Studies Group
Crossroads: A Series of Talks on Irish Culture (Spring, 2014)
Nottingham Irish Studies Group is proud to present Crossroads, a series of talks
on Irish Studies, including a re-examination of the 1914-1916 period, when war at
home and abroad found Irish people at the crossroads of history.
The venue is the new and very welcome Five Leaves Bookshop at 14a Long Row,
Nottingham NG1 2DH (up alley opposite Tourist Information Centre). All talks will
be on Wednesdays 7.30 - 9pm. Adm £3 on the door, inc refreshments.
PROGRAMME
(1) 12 Feb. From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: An Academic in Long Kesh, by
Alan Bairner.
(2) 26 Feb: Pat Murphy examines the Home Rule Crisis and the First World War.
(3) 12 Mar: Marc Scully on St Patrick’s Day and the Irish in England: History, Identity and Belonging.
(4) 19 Mar: Cliff Housley on the Sherwood Foresters who were sent to Dublin in
Easter 1916, to quell the Rising.
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Irish Studies MA Seminar Day
Saturday, 22 March 2014
Location: Bewleys Hotel, Sweet Street, Leeds
Centre for Irish Studies (CIS), St Mary’s University College, London and the Irish Arts Foundation,
Leeds.
CIS runs a successful Masters Degree in Irish Studies at its campus in Twickenham, London. Building
on existing links with the Irish Arts Foundation, this seminar day is designed to contribute to the Irish
History Month programme, show-case the research of the Centre and to pilot a new MA Irish Studies degree by distance-learning/online in association with the IAF. Modelled on our existing Londonbased MA, the seminar day will give you an idea of the kinds of topic that you could study on the degree, give you the chance meet lecturers in person and to discuss how the new MA programme
works.
09.30
Registration, Welcome and Coffee - Professor Lance Pettitt, Centre for Irish Studies.
10.00-10.45 Prof. Mary Hickman ‘Aspects of Irish Diaspora’
An introduction to the field of Irish diaspora studies. Explores the possibilities of using the concept of
diaspora for understanding contemporary Irish identities and the contribution of Irish migrants and
their descendants to the formation of a variety of nation states.
10.45–11.15 Questions followed by coffee.
11.15-12.00 Dr Ivan Gibbons ‘The 1913 Dublin Lock-Out and the subsequent "Strange Death of
Labour Ireland"’
This lecture places the 1913 Dublin Lock-out in the political,social and economic context of Ireland at
the beginning of the twentieth century. It explores how the promise of 1913 was dissipated and
overtaken by the rise of nationalism and republicanism, aided by the decision of the post Connolly
and Larkin leadership of the Irish Labour Party to accept this.
1200-12.30
Questions followed by an Introduction to the new MA distance-learning/online.
12.30-1.15
Sandwich lunch
1.15-2.00
Prof. Lance Pettitt ‘O’Faolain, fiction and film: The Case of The Woman Who Married
Clark Gable’.
This presentation explores how O’Faolain’s short story (1949) was transformed into a film version by
Thaddeus O’Sullivan (1985). If O’Faolain’s story commented on the cultural mores of 1930s Ireland,
what did the BAFTA-nominated film version say about Ireland and Irish cinema culture in the 1980s?
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The NISN conference in 2014
May 7-9, 2014
“Ireland and the Popular”
Welcome to the 9th biennial Nordic Irish Studies Network conference, which will be hosted
by Aalborg University in Denmark. The theme of the conference is ‘Ireland and the Popular.’
The territory of ‘the popular’ is a contested one, not least in an Irish context. While discourses, ranging from politics to aesthetics, regularly claim to know what is popular and
why, there is no consensus as to what defines the popular: is it a function of mass and majority, or is it rather an essentialist category springing from the folk tradition of a given region or site?
This problem of definition and delimitation has etymological roots. Popular literally means
‘of the people’, but what of the Germanic alternative to the Latin root ‘populus’: the folk?
This conflict between imaginings of the popular has been thematized in the British and continental European debate about the culture industry, where mass culture was considered
evil (because of its capitalist origins and profit-making function) and a corrupting influence
on the authentic culture of ‘the folk’, whether urban working class or rural. High or elite culture on the other hand was traditionally considered as having a civilizing or didactic influence on the people (giving them the possibility of becoming ‘cultured’). We thus have a triangle of cultures battling for the domain of ‘the popular’: ‘folk culture’ claiming the territory of the authentic; ‘mass culture’ claiming pride of place for its dominance in terms of volume; and ‘high culture’ claiming dominance because of its didactic capacity and permanent
aesthetic value.
The conference seeks to explore the contested ground of ‘the popular’ in an Irish context:
The popular vs. the folk; High art vs. folk art; Mass culture vs. elite culture.
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Papers on all manifestations of the popular in Irish culture, literature, arts, society and
history are welcome. Phenomena to be explored could include, but are obviously not limited to:
Popular culture – artefacts and ways of life
Folk culture, art and music – authenticity and spokesmanship
Magic, the mystical, cunning – Irish myths and mythologies
Literature and its positionings vis-à-vis the popular and the elite
Pop and compositional music – traditions and tensions
The visual iconography of the popular (in media, the street, museums)
Stereotypes of Irishness in film, narrative and images
Attacks on popular culture, culture debates and wars
Representations of the popular in literature and film
The idea of ‘the people’ in politics and history
Populism and politics
Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr. Anne Mulhall, School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin.
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Nordic Irish Studies journal
Congratulations are due the editors Carmen Zamorano Llena and Billy Gray, who have
recently published a new issue of the journal. Volume 12, 2013, includes articles by
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, John Eastlake, Gerard McCann, Marie-Jeanne Da Col Richert and
Peter Sundkvist in politics, history, sociology and cultural studies. Essays in literary criticism are provided by David Clark, Martin Griffin, Anne Karhio, Åke Persson and Marguerite Quintelli-Neary.
NISN book project
We are happy to announce that The Crossings of Art in Ireland has now been publised by Peter Lang, as volume 53 in the ”Reimagining Ireland” series (ed. Eamon Maher). The editors – Ruben Moi, Brynhildur Boyce and Charles Armstrong – are very
grateful to their contributors and publishers for excellent cooperation. The book includes essays by Róisin Keys, Anne Karhio, Bent Sørensen, Seán Crosson, Fionna Barber, Stuart Sillars, Charles Armstrong, Britta Olinder, Erik Tonning, Joakim Wrethed,
Eugene O’Brien, Ruben Moi and Anthony W. Johnson.
This is NISN’s fourth completed, collective book project. The earlier ones
were: (1) Böss, Gilsenan Nordin and Olinder (eds.), Re-Mapping Exile; Realities and
Metaphors in Irish Literature and History (Aarhus, University Press, 2005), (2)
Friberg, Gilsenan Nordin and Pedersen (eds.), Recovering Memory; Irish Representations of Past and Present (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), and (3) FribergHarnesk, Porter and Wrethed /(eds.), Beyond Ireland: Encounters Across Cultures
(Peter Lang, 2011).
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HOMAGE TO SEAMUS HEANEY IN MADRID
The homage took place at the historical Residencia
de Estudiantes in Madrid, famous for its links with
Lorca, Dalí and Buñuel.
Particpants included Antonio de Toro, Director of
the Amergin Institute and Beatriz Villadecañas of
the Complutense University Madrid.
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SECOND AND FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS
IASIL Annual Conference
14-18 July 2014
Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3
2014 marks the centenary of the beginning of WW1 during which many young Irish men
fought and lost their lives on the battlefields of northern France. It is in this context that
the Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3 will host the 2014 IASIL conference 36 years after
the late Professor Patrick Rafroidi hosted the first ever IASIL gathering outside of Ireland in
1978 in this same university.
The theme for this conference will be Embodying/Disembodying Ireland.
Confirmed writers
Theo Dorgan
Paula Meehan
Colin Teevan
Confirmed keynote speakers
Pr Maud Ellmann
Pr Declan Kiberd
Pr Lucy McDiarmid
Dr Cliona Ni Riordain
Dr Lisa Fitzpatrick
A post-conference tour will be organised from Saturday 19th to Sunday 20th July and will
end in Paris on the Sunday evening.
Conference theme
The conference seeks to address the ways in which Irish literatures and culture represent
both the materiality of bodies at war (the various modes of figuration, whether oblique or
explicit, of wounded and dying bodies) and the absence at home of those who died in the
fields and whose spectral correspondence was all that remained of them. On a more discursive level, we encourage reflection on conflicting and ideologically divergent narratives
around Irish participation in the Great War and the manner in which it might be commemorated.
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More generally, papers relating to the representation of historical violence as an assault
upon the body would also be welcome: for instance, one might consider the recurrent
motif of hunger, which simultaneously foregrounds the body and enacts its gradual depletion - whether this hunger is experienced against one's will, as in the Famine, indeed famines, or self-inflicted as in the whole history of self-starvation in Ireland right up to the
contemporary period.
The notions of embodying and disembodying Ireland also invite reflection on allegorical
figurations of the nation, colonial personifications of Ireland and modern variations on
and complications of the theme. Thus representations challenging the integrity of the
body of the nation/island and/or exploring the political and aesthetic implications of the
border may also be addressed.
Central to the conference theme is a discussion of the gendered body in Irish culture (on
the one hand the disappearance of the materiality of the female body to the benefit of an
iconography and discourse of purity, virginity and motherhood and, on the other, the fixation on an idealised, hypermasculine male body) and challenges to these pervasive narratives.
One could equally consider Gothic tensions between, on the one hand, textual saturation
with grotesque, rotting, gory, decomposing bodies and, on the other, spectral presences and the ways in which the Gothic has infused Irish modernity and continues to exert an
influence today.
The topic is also designed to include consideration of bodies of text and their transformation over time: papers that engage with issues pertaining to intertextuality, intermediality, translation and adaptation are also welcome.
In keeping with tradition, it is also possible to submit abstracts which do not directly engage with the conference theme.
Submission of abstracts
Proposals for 20 minute papers should be sent to iasil2014@gmail.com before 17 March
2014. We especially encourage proposals for panels of 3-4 speakers. Abstracts should be
250-300 words long and should be accompanied by a short bio-bibliography.
We would like to remind you that only paid-up members of IASIL are eligible to give a paper.
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The EFACIS Newsletter will be
coming to you three times a
year. The next issue will appear in June 2014. Please
send me any information you
might have regarding Irish
Studies events around Europe.
Newsletter compiled
by David Clark, EFACIS Secretary, University of A Coruña, Galiza, Spain.
david.clark@udc.es
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