2017 International Yeats Society Conference
October 20-22, 2017
New York City
Hosted and sponsored by:
The New School University * Fordham University * New York University/Glucksman Ireland House * Williams College
The conference includes keynote addresses by Maureen Murphy (Professor Emerita, Hofstra University), and Christopher Cahill (Director, American Irish Historical Society and Director, McCabe Fellowship Exchange Program, John Jay College of Criminal Justice), as well as a reading by the Irish poet Joan McBreen.
Thmes and topics:
1917:
The Wild Swans at Coole; At The Hawk’s Well; The Cat and the Moon; Yeats’s marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees/the automatic writing; the acquisition of Thoor Ballylee; Yeats in the wake of the Rising
Yeats in America:
The U.S.A. lecture tours; Yeats’s American publications; Yeats and the Yeats family in New York
Ireland’s Writers in the 21st Century
Keynote Speakers
Professor Derek Attridge ● Professor Margaret Kelleher ● Professor Gerry Smyth
Guest Writers
Marina Carr ● Julian Gough ● Belinda McKeon ● Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Second Call for Papers (Closing: March 15, 2017)
The political, economic, cultural, and artistic histories of Ireland are deeply intertwined with its rich tradition of writing in Irish and English, with generations of writers greatly contributing to broader literary categories like the realist novel, European modernism, postmodernism, colonial, and postcolonial literature. Writers such as Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Maria Edgeworth, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Flann O’Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Edna O’Brien, Seamus Heaney, John Banville, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Anne Enright, and many more, have left indelible marks on the development of literature worldwide while, more recently, Irish musicians and film-makers have greatly influenced some of the major international movements in popular culture.
Cultural and critical analyses of many kinds, in turn, have greatly benefited, and derived distinctive focus, from engagements with Irish creative artists, and the culture(s) that they have come to represent. It is difficult to conceive of contemporary modernist studies without consideration of Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, and Bowen, while all the major critics of postmodernism place the works of Sterne, Beckett (again), and Flann O’Brien as key central figures in their critical frames. Women’s writing in the British Isles owes an immense debt to writers like Iris Murdoch, Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright, and Marina Carr, while postcolonial studies, as an international discipline in itself, frequently includes consideration of all of the above. Similarly, the history of poetry in English has been greatly enhanced by a vast number of major Irish poets. More recently, Irish writers have been constituent parts of reconfigured historically-orientated modernist studies, transnational studies, cultural studies, theatre studies, and many philosophical and ideological perspectives on transformations and continuities in Irish and European cultural formations. Similarly, digital humanities have intersected with Irish studies in very meaningful ways, as have ecocritical approaches, urban studies, queer studies, and embodiment studies.
IASIL 2017 invites papers that seek to engage with any of the following areas in an effort to offer expression to the ways that Irish writers and culture continue to inform both traditional and new debates in literary and cultural scholarship:
In keeping with IASIL’s general practice, papers are also invited in other areas of Irish literary studies.
Abstracts (250 words) for 20-minute papers to be delivered in the English or the Irish language should be emailed to IASIL2017@ntu.edu.sg by March 15, 2017
Conference Website: http://www.hss.ntu.edu.sg/programmes/english/IASIL2017/home.html
Fees for postgraduate research students presenting papers have been waived by the conference organisers.
Organising Committee: Neil Murphy, Daniel Jernigan, Richard Barlow, Michelle Wang, Guinevere Barlow (Irish Language), Derek Hand (External), Keith Hopper (External)
The tension between realism and experimentation has marked the development of modern Irish literature, being intrinsic to the work of a number of major Irish writers. Often regarded as a father-figure of all experimental writing, James Joyce was attacked by as different commentators as Lukács and Pound for the scope and radicalness of experiment, particularly in Finnegans Wake. However, Joyce himself considered his work to be firmly set in the realist tradition. At a time when he was yet to publish his first collection of lyrics, W. B. Yeats was encouraged by his father to write realist prose, which may eventually have contributed to his abhorrence of realism in favour of ever more daring experimentation in verse writing. Nonetheless, Yeats’s poetry is packed full of amazingly realist portrayals of the world about him. J. M. Synge may have worked in a realist mode but his implementation of vernacular Aran speech paved the way for the linguistic experimentation of the following generations of Irish (also English-language) playwrights.
Modern Irish literature may seem to be a field of (whether conscious or not remains to be investigated) vacillators who employ traditional genres and modes of writing, while at the same time, almost instinctively, seeking to supersede conventions. Sometimes this happens tacitly, by pushing the boundaries of expressiveness a little further, like with Synge. Occasionally the revolt engulfs conventions in flames in which new means of expression are forged, as is the case in Joyce.
In view of this peculiar tradition that weds compliance with rebellion, the conference aims to focus on a broad spectrum of literatures from across Ireland and the Irish diaspora with a view to unravelling not only the conflict but also exchanges and creative t ensions between realism and experiment.
The topics of presentations may include but are in no way limited to:
– Realist and experimental modes in high modernism and onwards
– Experimental literature today and a century ago: continuity and change
– Revisions of the realist mode in contemporary Irish literatures
– Ethics and aesthetics of realist and/or experimental literature
– The great masters’ (stifling/enabling) influences
– Contemporary realisms (including magical realism)
– Voices from the margin (social, cultural, racial, etc.) and the conventions and aesthetics they have embraced or created
– Cosmopolitanism vs. parochialism – openness and resistance to foreign trends
– Irish literature and globalization (e.g. realism and experimentation in literary responses to global traumas, literature and the new media, literature and migration, etc.)
– The aesthetics of nostalgia and futurity
The Conference will also mark the inauguration of the University of Łódź Centre for Irish Studies (ULCIS), an academic body affiliated with the Institute of English Studies, University of Łódź, whose main objective will be to organise and promote researches into Irish studies.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Nicholas Grene (Trinity College, Dublin)
Doctor Michael McAteer (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest)
SUBMISSIONS
All abstracts (ca. 250-300 words) must contain the title, the name of the author and contact information (institutional affiliation, mailing address, and email address). Abstracts and short bios should be submitted no later than 31 January 2017 (acceptance announced by 14 February 2017)
CONFERENCE FEE
The fee covers conference materials, coffee and snacks, and lunches.
Early bird fee: 350 PLN for academics holding positions at Polish Universities, 100 Euro for delegates based outside of Poland, and reduced fee of 300 PLN/75 Euro for doctoral students. Payment deadline: 15 March 2017
Regular fee (after 15 March 2017): 450 PLN for academics holding positions at Polish Universities, 120 Euro for delegates based outside of Poland, and reduced fee of 400 PLN/100 Euro for doctoral students. Payment deadline: 30 April 2017
CONFERENCE WEBSITE
http://competingtraditions.uni.lodz.pl/
CONTACT
Please send abstract and queries to:
Wit Pietrzak (witpietrzak@wp.pl) Katarzyna Ojrzyńska (k.ojrzynska@sens.net.pl)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
dr hab. Wit Pietrzak
dr Katarzyna Ojrzyńska
mgr Maciej Wieczorek