ACIS_SpringSummer2011

American ConferenceF O R I R I S H S T U D I E S

Spring/Summer 2011 Newletter

ACIS: Mid-West 2011: Call for Papers

Call For Papers

HOSTS: North Dakota State University-Fargo & Minnesota State University-- Moorhead DATE: October 6-8 2011PROPOSALS DUE: August 1, 2011

Ireland’s recent challenges suggest a change in, but not a withdrawal from its global influence. This conference seeks to explore that global connection. We invite papers on vari-ous historic, literary, and artistic topics not limited to the conference theme for the Mid West Regional ACIS confer-ence to be held on the campuses of North Dakota State Uni-versity (Fargo) and Minnesota State University (Moorhead), October 6-8 2011. Plenary speakers will be Francis Carroll and José Lanters. Accommodations available at downtown Radisson Hotel—two blocks from the iconic Fargo Theater and Dempsey’s Irish Bar.

“Ireland & Its Global Influence: Past, Present, Future”

Contact: Dr Sandy Pearce([email protected]) Dr Miriam Mara([email protected])

Francis Carroll

José Lanters

ACIS: New England 2011: Call for Papers

HOSTS: Bridgewater State UniversityDATE: October 14-15, 2011PROPOSALS DUE: September 2, 2011

The 2011 New England ACIS regional conference will explore the topic of Irish culture, trade and economics. The death of the Celtic Tiger has risen to the forefront of many debates concern-ing twenty-first-century economics in Ireland. Various literary and historical perspectives attempt to make sense of Ireland’s modernity and nationhood by challenging, celebrating and some-times even slaying a metaphorical Celtic Tiger.

• What do we mean when we refer to the Celtic Tiger? • Is the Celtic Tiger really dead? • Will the death of economic prosperity lead to a reanimation of previous cultural and literary formations in Ireland? • Should we be afraid of the (un)dead Celtic Tiger?

Bridgewater State University is located in southeastern Massachusetts within easy reach

of major highways. The campus is approximately 40 minutes south of Boston, 30

minutes north of Cape Cod, and 50 minutes northeast of Providence, Rhode Island.

There are a number of hotels in the greater Boston area where conference attendees

may book reservations for their stay. The official conference hotel is the Fairfield Inn,

Plymouth, Middleboro. There are a number of rooms reserved at a conference rate for

the weekend. Please mention the NEACIS at Bridgewater State University when book-

ing reservations. The last day to reserve a room at the conference rate is September 14.

Hotel info:

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/pymfm-fairfield-inn-plymouth-middleboro/

all within an hour’s drive of downtown San José.

Papers in all Irish Studies disciplines are encouraged, as are all papers on Irish subjects that do not specifically address the conference theme. Graduate students are particularly encouraged to participate. Proposals for panels are welcome.Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Ellen Scheible.

“Who’s Afraid of the Celtic Tiger?” Economics, Trade and the Undead in Irish Culture

Contact: Ellen Scheible, Assistant Professor of English, Bridgewater State University [email protected]: http://www.bridgew.edu/English/NewEnglandACIS/

Call For Papers

ACIS: 2011 Mid Atlantic

HOSTS: Manhattan College, Riverdale, NYDATE: September 30th-October 1st, 2011PROPOSALS DUE: August 10th, 2011

“Ireland & Its Global Influence: Past, Present, Future”

Contact: Deirdre O’Leary, Assistant Professor of English, Manhattan CollegeEmail: [email protected]

4513 Manhattan College ParkwayRiverdale, NY 10471

Call For Papers

The Mid-Atlantic conference invites submissions that focus on how the urban site has historically engaged the complexity of Irish culture in relation to either economics, literature, religion, national-ization and globalization. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• The Queen’s recent visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland• Borders and Boundaries• Visas• Contested sites and liminal spaces• The Irish neighborhood at home and abroad• Immigration and the changing city• The city as alternative space• The rural/urban divide• Literary and visual representations of urban planning and the Irish city

Both individual papers and panel submissions (3-4 participants) are welcomed, as are proposals for presentations in non-traditional formats (posters, performances, exhibits). Please send proposals of approximately 350 words with subject line ACIS MIDATLANTIC.

The 2012 International Meeting of The American Conference for Irish Studies

“Erin at Home, Erin Abroad: Capturing the Irish Experience”

HOSTS: Tulane University, New Orleans, LouisianaDATE: March 14 ~ 17, 2012PROPOSALS DUE: September 30, 2011Contact: Laura D. Kelley, Ph.D. Tulane [email protected]: http://acisnola2012.org/index.html

We are very excited at the prospect of introducing New Orleans to such a diverse group of people. It will be a great honor to show you what a vibrant, colorful and exciting place this city is. We hope you will join us for this event and to see you soon in the

Crescent City- we promise it will be an experience you will not forget!

Le gach dea-mhéin,

Laura D. Kelley, Ph.D.

History Department, Tulane University

Terrence Fitzmorris, Ph.D.

Associate Dean,

School of Continuing Studies, Tulane University

Call for Papers

The theme for this conference is “Erin at Home, Erin Abroad: Capturing the Irish Expe-rience”. The Irish Diaspora to all corners of the globe over many centuries continues to engage scholars in diverse fields from history to literature to art and anthropology. This conference proposes to examine the varied experiences of the Irish and how they mani-fested themselves. More attention has been paid in recent years to the stories the Irish tell to themselves and to “others” and how outsiders have viewed the Irish. We would like scholars to consider how these expressions vary over time and place.

We are proud to include this year plenary speakers from diverse fields and approaches to Irish Studies. 2012 is also the 50th anniversary of Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Great Hunger, and therefore, we have invited Christine Kinealy as

well as Cormac Ó Gráda to comment on this work and how scholarship about the Famine generally has evolved during

the last fifty years.

Dan Barry from the New York Times will also be one of our speakers. His memoir, Pull Me Up, provides a natural bridge

between the subjects studied by historians and those con-templated by poets and writers: identity, family, cultural

memory and scars. His memoir speaks to the contemporary Irish American experience and is a source valuable to both

historians as well as literature professors

Welcome to New Orleans and the 50th anniversary celebrations of ACIS at the historic Hotel Monteleone.

We encourage graduate students and emerging scholars to consider submitting paper proposals to this conference. All organizations benefit from new approaches of up and coming scholars. This con-ference will provide those just entering the field with the possibility to share their ideas with more seasoned academics.

Along with papers specific to the conference theme, we are interested in using this conference to highlight the most recent work in the field. Therefore, we welcome submissions addressing any and all topics or themes relevant to Irish studies. Both individual paper and panel submissions (3-4 participants) are welcomed, as are proposals for presentations in non-traditional formats (posters, performances, exhibits). Proposals should be 250-500 words in length, and include a brief (~50 word) bio of the submitter or--in the case of panels--each participant.

Christine Kinealy

Dan Barry

Cormac Ó Gráda

The ACIS West conference organizers welcome you to join us at San José State University in Califor-nia for the twenty-seventh annual meeting of Irish studies scholars and artists. This interdisciplinary conference features a range of lectures, readings, exhibits, and performances. We recognize global-ization, as a phenomenon, is nothing new. As such, in addition to papers that explore contemporary globalization, we welcome those that explore Ireland and the global prior to the last decade. We also recognize that globalization comes in many forms. Keynote speaker is Dr. Patrick Lonergan of the Na-tional University of Ireland, Galway, author of Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era, winner of the Theatre Book Prize 2008.

Please send any questions to Matthew Spangler, Associate Professor of Performance Studies, San José State University, at the conference email address, or [email protected].

San José State University is California’s oldest institution of public higher education. The campus is located on the southern end of San Francisco Bay in downtown San José (Pop. 945,000), hub of the world-famous Silicon Valley high-technology research and development center. Many of California’s most popular national, recreational, and cultural attractions are conveniently close. San Francisco, Berkeley, Stanford, Santa Cruz, the Monterrey Peninsula, redwood forests, wineries, and the Califor-nia coastline are all within an hour’s drive of downtown San José.

Acis-West Regional Conference 2011 “Ireland and Globalization”HOSTS: San Jose, CA DATE: Oct. 21-23, 2011Proposal Date is past, but come anyway, if you are in the area!Contact: Matthew Spangler - [email protected] Website: http://aciswest.wordpress.com/

Announcements

Submissions for new collection of EssaysThe Country of the Young: Edited Collection

SUBMISSIONS DUE: September 2, 2011CONTACT: Kelly Matthews Framingham State University, 100 State Street Framingham, MA 01701 [email protected]

Building upon the success of the 2010 New England ACIS conference, contributors are sought for a col-lection of essays examining Irish youth and childhood within literary, historical, artistic, and cultural contexts. Papers are welcome on such topics as literary and his-torical depictions of childhood, contemporary youth culture, schooling in Ireland, children’s literature, defini-tions of Irish boyhood and girlhood, and memoirs of childhood and adolescence.

DETAILS: Essays to be considered for publication should be 6,000-8,000 words in length. Footnotes are the pre-ferred method for citations. Please include a 250-word abstract of your essay for submission to prospective pub-lishers, as well as a brief author’s biography that lists your affiliations and previous publications. Email your submission as an MS Word attachment to [email protected] and to [email protected]. If you prefer, you may send two hard copies of your manuscript to Dr. Kelly Matthews, Department of English, Framing-ham State University, 100 State Street, Framingham, MA 01701, USA. Please contact the editors with any questions.

News from the 2010 Regionals Thanks to Kelly Matthews for sending in the news!

Report from the 2010 NE ACIS Conference:“The Country of the Young: Interpretations of Youth and Childhood in Irish Culture”

The 2010 NEACIS conference was held at Framingham State College, Framingham, MA on November 12-13, 2010 and was directed by Kelly Matthews, an assistant professor at Framing-ham. In addition to Maurice Fitzpatrick, the writer and co-producer of the documentary film The Boys of St. Columb’s, Kelly hosted playwright Damian Gorman, who gave a reading from his recent play on contemporary Northern Irish youth culture, Sleep Eat Party, and also hosted Irish poet Noel Monahan, who read from his most recent collection. The plenary lecture on Ireland’s adop-tion history was delivered by James Smith, Boston College. In addition, conference attendees enjoyed an opening reception and a dinner on the Friday evening and a reception sponsored by the Irish Consulate General, Boston.

2010 Books In Irish Studies WinnersCongratulations to all of this year’s winners.

The American Conference for Irish Studies sponsors five prizes an-nually for books on Irish subjects, open to books published world-wide (and a sixth prize for the year’s outstanding dissertation). On the ACIS website, you can find each prize’s page from the drop-

down menu labeled Prizes at the top of the website.

James S. Donnelly, Sr. Prize for Books on History and the Social Sciences

Robert Savage Boston College - Department of History A Loss of Innocence: Television and Irish Society 1960-1972 (Manchester University Press, 2010)

Link to online interview: http://www.bc.edu/sites/libraries/facpub/loss-of-innocence/Link to table of contents and sample pages: http://www.bc.edu/sites/libraries/facpub/loss-of-innocence/book.pdf

2010 Books In Irish Studies Winners

David Emmons

University of Montana – American History

Beyond The American Pale: The Irish in The West 1845-1910

(University of Oklahoma Press, 2010)

Honorable Mention

“the West was seen as a place where people could go to be free. In unexpected ways, it was precisely that. But this meant that wester-ing Irish were free to remain Irish–which is to say, unlikely and unwelcome Westerners. They farther west they went, the more Irish they could be, and that was exactly opposite of what was supposed to happen. Cluster-ing together in their impenetrable clans and going west did not “make them white”–they were always that. It made them “verdant,” as one of their many critics called them; more luminously and aggressively green, or in less color-coded language, more Irish and more Catholic because they were freer to be both.”

2010 Books in Irish Studies Winners

Robert Rhodes Prize for Books on Literature

Michael Rubenstein University of California, Berkeley - English

Public Works: Infrastructure, Irish Modernism, and the Postcolonial (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)

Honorable Mention for Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book

Excerpt—“It is because of Joyce’s overriding influence in shap-ing this book that I wish to frame my argument with one of his jokes, a joke that, as I will argue in what follows, holds the key to understanding the place of public works in the character of the Irish nation and in the Irish national character. The joke comes from the “Aeolus” episode of Ulysses, where Professor Mac -Hugh is cracking wise at the lowly pragmatism of the old Roman Empire: “What was their civilization? Vast, I al-low: but vile. Cloacae: sew - ers. The jews in the wil-derness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet tobe here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset.” (22)

Honorable Mention

Sarah E. McKibben

Notre Dame University – Irish Language and literature Endangered Masculinities in Irish Poetry, 1540-1780 (UCD Press, 2010).

McKibben “ examines the dynamic response of early modern Ireland’s hereditary bardic professional poets to impinging colonial change . . . Endangered masculinity, the oppositional rhetoric they crafted, drew on traditional poetic elements to evoke gender norms going dangerously awry, thereby challenging colonial authority and demanding collective defiance and communal consolidation against the threat of emasculation, penetration, and dissolution posed by political domination and cultural assimilation.”


ACIS Prize for Books in the Irish Language

Ríona Nic Congáil

St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra—Irish Department Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh agus an Fhís Útóipeach Ghaelach ( Arlen House, 2010)

“Beathaisnéis chriticiúil is ea Úna Ní Fhaircheallaigh agus an Fhís Útóipeach Ghaelach, a dhíríonn ar an mbean ba theanntásaí i saol na Gaeilge i rith na hathb-heochana agus a dhéanann scagadh ar a ról mar ghníom-haí cultúrtha, mar dhuine acadúil, agus mar fheimineach a chuir smaointeachas an útóipeachais chun cinn.”

Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book


Sean D. Moore University of New Hampshire --English

Swift, the Book and the Irish Financial Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010)

“Ireland’s history of contested language systems has always been linked to its political realities; Language, Identity and Liberation attends to a movement of contemporary Irish writing that con-siders the significance of the region’s tu-multuous cultural, social and political history in portrayals of contemporary Ireland’s everyday life and speech.”

Michael J. Durkan Prize for Books on Language and Culture

Jennifer Keating-Miller

Language, Identity and Liberation in Contemporary Irish Literature (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).

Moore “argues that Jonathan Swift helped to mobilize the Irish print media for the promotion of Ireland’s cultural, political, and economic sovereignty.”

Adele Dalsimer Prize for Distinguished Dissertation

Deirdre ni Chonghaille

‘ag teacht le cuan’: Irish Traditional Music and the Aran Islands

Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge

“Deirdre Ní Chonghaile’s research concerns the traditional music of her home, the Aran Islands. A writer, lecturer, broadcaster and fiddle-player, she is involved with the local folklore project Bailiúchán Béaloideas Árann. Her research recently resulted in the 12-part radio series Bailiúchán Bhairbre (2006-2007) for RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta: http://www.rte.ie/rnag/bailiuchanbhairbre.html “

Images from Madison, WI conference

The ice-covered lake on the first day of the conference.Mary Trotter welcomes us to a superb conference.

The podium awaits...

A Few New Faces

Cailin Copan-Kelly Washington University - Saint Louis

Jason Cash, a doctoral student at Lehigh University, presented a paper in which he examined Maria Edge-worth’s Belinda in light of Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

His primary research interests are in modern and con-temporary Irish literature, and he is currently planning an in-depth study of the development of oppositional identities through transnational and transcultural ex-change in Irish fiction specifically. He is also working on a project that traces connections between the post-war mystic poetry of W.B. Yeats and H.D. His second-ary research interests include modernism in Britain and America, the British Romantics, and a smattering of medieval narrative. Though he has presented at several other conferences, this was his first ACIS, and he found it stimulating and welcoming; in short, it was exactly the kind of experience he hoped for.

Another New Face


Great friends of ACIS-Dru and Eamonn Wall.

Thomas Dillon Redshaw admiring some of the art of the Pyle Center.

Ellen Scheible, the host of 2011’s NEACIS in October at Bridgewater State University

At the History of ACIS presentation.

A familiar conference image to us all: the final editing before presenting.

Our extraordinary outgoing President Jim Rogers doing business at breakfast.


As we know, some of the best times are spent meeting new colleagues and chatting.

A familiar trio: Jim MacKillop, Bob Lowry, and Colin Ireland

Putting her feet up.

Images from Madison, WI conferenceHeading to the Trolley for a quick ride to the Banquet.

Midway through the conference, the ice recedes.

From France!


Our new president takes the podium: Sean Farrell.

Heading home after an inspiring, stimulating conference. Thank you to everyone who worked so hard for the rest of us to come, contribute, learn, and leave renewed.

As the conference comes to an end, spring’s warmth has melted the rest of the ice.

Newsletter EditorACIS Dues

The ACIS Newsletter appears three times per year, in Fall, Winter, and Spring. Deadlines for submissions are Oct. 1 for Fall, Feb 1 for Winter, and May 1 for Spring/Summer. Please send official material, conference pictures, tidbits, and news to Jill Brady Hampton via email: [email protected]. Thanks!!

As you know, ACIS dues now run through the calendar year. Single-year memberships expire at the end of each calendar year.

Your annual membership dues in the American Conference for Irish Studies dues are essential to the organization. To re-join, go to the ACIS website at http://www.acisweb.com/index.php and click on “Join ACIS” at the bottom of the page. You may pay by credit card though a secure PayPal account, or print out a form and mail your dues to Nicholas Wolf, VCU Department of History, PO Box 842001, 811 S. Cathedral Place, Richmond, VA 23284-2001 E-mail: [email protected]

Thank you in advance for your continued membership in the American Conference for Irish Studies.

Michael de Nie Secretary

Click the Facebook logo below to check out the ACIS West page.

Newsletter editor Jill Hampton and new designer under graduate Phylesha Hiers at work.

PRESIDENTSean [email protected]

VICE PRESIDENTMary [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL TREASURERDaire [email protected]

TREASURERNicholas [email protected]

SECRETARYMichael de [email protected]

PAST PRESIDENT AND INTERNTIONAL REPRESENTATIVE

James [email protected]

GRADUATE STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE

Jennifer [email protected]

MIDWESTERN REPRESENTATIVETimothy [email protected]

SOUTHERN REPRESENTATIVE Bryan McGovern [email protected]

NEW ENGLAND REPRESENTATIVEMary [email protected]

MID-ATLANTIC REPRESENTATIVEKate [email protected]

WESTERN REPRESENTATIVEKendall [email protected]

CELTIC STUDIES REPRESENTATIVEThomas [email protected]

ARTS REPRESENTATIVEDonna [email protected]

HISTORY REPRESENTATIVECara [email protected]

SOCIAL SCIENCE REPRESENTATIVEBrigittine [email protected] IRISH LANGUAGE REPRESENTATIVE

Sarah [email protected]

LITERATURE REPRESENTATIVERichard [email protected]

ACIS Executive

Documents

ACIS_SpringSummer2011