The University of Sunderland
In Association with NEICN
Seventh Annual Irish Studies
Conference
Fantasy Ireland
Imaginings and Reimaginings
13-15 November 2009
This event, which combines an academic conference with a celebration of Irish culture,
will include a book launch, exhibition and also poetry readings performances by Irish
musicians, and conference banquet.
Keynote speakers include:
John Strachan (Leverhulme Project Director)
Hedwig Schwall (Director of EFACIS)
Céad Míle Fáilte
Conference Itinerary
Friday 13th November
18.00 - 22.00
Welcome from Professor Flavia Swann (President of NEICN)
Evening Event hosted by Professor Flavia Swann
Book Launch of Ireland: Revolution and Evolution edited by John Strachan and Alison
O’Malley-Younger, launched by Professor Ian Neal, Associate Dean, Education and Society
Poetry reading by Professor Michael O’Neill (the University of Durham)
Wine reception and buffet.
Venue: Cityspace
Saturday 14th November, 2008
9.45 – 10.10
Registration and refreshments Forster Building foyer.
10.10 – 10.20
Official Opening: Professor Gary Holmes, Dean of Education and Society, University of
Sunderland
10.20 – 10.30
Welcome from Dr Alison O’Malley-Younger and Professor John Strachan
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
10.30 – 11.30
KEYNOTE SESSION
Professor Hedwig Schwall (Director of EFACIS)
Re-Imagining the Irish (in)dividual: the laboratories of Dr Banville and Ms Enright
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
Chair: Professor John Strachan (University of Sunderland and Leverhulme Project
Director)
12.00 – 13.30
LUNCH Cityspace
13.30– 15.15
Parallel Sessions
1. ADVERTISING AND COMMODITY CULTURE
Alison O’Malley-Younger (University of Sunderland)
‘A Parliament of Monsters’: Commodity Spectacle in Nineteenth Century Irish popular
entertainment’.
Lauren Clark (University of Sunderland)
The myth of childhood development in Victorian literature and Irish advertising
Matthew Hayward (University of Durham)
Dublin Labour and the Dublin Poor
Peter Dempsey (University of Sunderland)
TBC
Chair: Professor John Strachan (University of Sunderland and Leverhulme Project
Director)
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
2. FANTASY IRELANDS
Robert Smart (Quinnipiac University)
Imagining the Perfect Colony: Ireland in Bram Stoker’s The Snake’s Pass.
Nick Serra (Upper Iowa University)
When Shee is not Maude: How Sligo became an Irish Delphi
Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull)
Dublin in Her Mind: Magic, Fantasy and Memory in Mia Gallagher’s Hellfire.
Coinin Moore, (NUI Galway)
Tír na nÓg, Memory, Tone and Lyrical Imaging
Chair: TBC
Venue: Forster 17
15.15 -15.45
Refreshments
15.45 – 16.45
LEVERHULME KEYNOTE
Professor John Strachan (University of Sunderland and Leverhulme Project Director.)
'The Sinn Féin Depot and the Selling of Irish Sport, 1900-1930'
Chair: Alison O’Malley-Younger
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
16.45 – 18.30
Parallel Sessions
1. POETIC RE-IMAGININGS
Adam Hanna, (University of Bristol)
‘I'd told how its foundation / Was mutable as sound’: Seamus Heaney’s Moving Houses
Heather Richardson (The Open University)
Our hearts starred with frost: Protestant identity in the poetry of Derek Mahon
Petar Pendar (The University of Banja Luka)
‘‘The Stone of Silence’’ - denationalizing myth or stirring violence of Heaney’s Poetry
Deidre O’Byrne (Loughbrough University)
'The Three Fs (Fantasy, Folklore, Feminism) in Eilís Ní Dhuibhne's The Dancers Dancing'
Chair: TBC
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
2. IRISH REPUBLICANISMS
Willy Maley (University of Glasgow)
Redshank Redemption: Regicide and Republicanism in Milton’s response to the Belfast
Presbytery (1649)
Matt Hunt (Queens University Belfast) ‘'Republican Doctrinaires:
The Paradox of Conservative Revolutionaries in 20th Century Ireland'
Emily Ravenscroft
Masculinity and Authentic Authority in Modern Republican Belfast
Chair:
Professor Nick Serra,
Venue: Forster 17
20.30 -Late
CONFERENCE DINNER Trattatoria The Roker Hotel
Sunday 15th November
9.15 – 9.30
Arrivals and refreshments Forster Building foyer.
9.30– 11.15
Parallel Sessions
1. LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS
Antoinette M. Larkin (University of Cincinnati)
From Canvas to the Printed Page: Éilís Ní Dhuibhne re-presents the Art of William Leech and
Edith Somerville
Guy Woodward (Trinity College Dublin)
Gerard Dillon, William Conor and representations of the Second World War
Susan E. Ray (Binghamton University/Valley Forge Military College)
"Characterizing Catholicism in Thackeray’s Irish Works."
Patrick Maume (Queens University Belfast)
"Eilis Dillon and the historical novel as family romance: reimagining Irish history in the Age
of Lemass".
Chair: Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull)
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
2. DRAMATIC FANTASY
Amanda Clark (McGill University Canada)
“Picking a dirty tramp up”: The Ironic and “Un-Irish” in The Playboy of the Western World
María José Díez García (University of Salamanca)
“But ya thought ya could woo me into motherhood. Well, it hasn’t worked out, has it?” : Reimagining the concept of motherhood in Marina Carr’s Low in the Dark, Portia Coughlan and
Woman and the Scarecrow
Ulf Dantanus – University of Sussex – The Poet as a young novelist: Brendan Kennelly’s The
Crooked Cross
Marie Arndt
TBC
Chair: TBC Brian Rock – University of Stirling
Venue: Forster 17
11.15– 11.30
Tea/coffee
11.30 – 13.15
Parallel sessions
1. FANTASTIC NARRATIVES
Ciaran Shannon (Queens University Belfast)
Alternative Histories and Fantastic Narratives
Colin Younger (University of Sunderland)
Reiving and Writing: Social Memory and the Hearts of Down
Heather Yeung, (University of Durham) Mapping a New Ireland: John Montague’s The Rough
Field.
Rebecca Williams Dinsdale
Chair:
Mark Schreiber
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
2. IMAGININGS AND RE-IMAGININGS
Sean T. Ruane. (Shannon College of Hotel Management )
Destination Image in Tourism Contexts
Brian Rock, (The University of Stirling)
Fantasy landscapes for the English traveller: Patrick McGinley’s textual indebtedness to
Flann O’Brien in The Trick of the Ga Bolga
Elizabeth Kate Switaj (Queens University Belfast)
Eiremeral & Sham Rocks – A Creative Presentation
Robert Finnigan (Independent Scholar)
Chair:
Venue: Forster 17
13.15 – 14.15
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION - IRISH FILM
Werner Huber (University of Vienna)
Mark Schreiber
Chair:
Kath Kerr-Koch (University of Sunderland)
Venue: Forster Lecture Theatre
14.15 - 14.30
Farewells and departures