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In this edition of your Newsletter

Seamus Heaney R.I.P.

News from around Europe

Upcoming Conferences

Members’ publications

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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 in-dicate, 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 re-cent 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 con-gratulate 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 Ger-ald Power. This issue includes further information on this volume (as well as the many other publi-cations 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 mem-bers 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 in-volved), 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 Taoi-seach Enda Kenny recently visited – has been a crucial centre for Irish studies and an important fa-cilitator 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.

Letter from EFACIS president Seán Crosson

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Introducing our new EFACIS coordinator, Sien Deltour.

Through the support of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, EFACIS now has a Coordi-

nator, 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 Leu-

ven, 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 upcom-

ing website will provide an opportunity for all centres to advertise their Itinerary events

and will hopefully make communication between centres even better.

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SOFEIR activities January 2014 – September 2014.

In the previous issue of the EFACIS Newsletter, the SOFEIR outlined most of its main activi-ties 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 spe-cialised in civilisation, literature and the arts of the English-speaking world organises an an-nual congress. This year’s edition will be held in Caen on 16-18 May 2014. A special work-shop 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 on-ly 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 Ire-

land 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 di-

rectly connected to the forthcoming special volume of Arts et Savoirs, Repre-

sentations of Poverty. As its plenary speaker, it will feature Hugh Frazer, a pro-

fessor 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 semi-

nar 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 (hamalfa@orange.fr) or William Dow

(William.Dow@wanadoo.fr)

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As part of its seminar, the research group ‘Politique, organisations, conflits’ within the research centre PLEIADE in University Paris 13 is organising a work-shop 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 Positionne-ments 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

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Visit of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to the Leuven Institute

for Irish Studies

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Seamus Heaney Commemoration (24/10/2013)

The Seamus Heaney Commemoration was a very entertaining and inter-

esting 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 aca-

demics 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 nat-

urally into the next. The Irish poet Ciarán Carson read from Heaney’s po-

etry 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 hu-

manity and his joy in life.

Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin and Hedwig Schwall.

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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 per-

formed 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 Ste-

phen

Connolly

Ciarán

Carson,

Deirdre

Carson

and

Dónal

O’Con-

nor

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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, coura-geous wizards and the like. It then comes as no surprise that such a world-wide and vari-ous 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 con-temporary 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 un-canny 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 collab-oration 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 Rob-erto Fedi, Director of the Department of Human and Social Sciences, and the formal greeting by Fiorenzo Fantaccini, Italian member of the EFACIS committee, Enrico Ter-rinoni 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 after-noon. 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 under-lined how, in Joyce’s characters, the Gothic is revealed in the relation between the liv-ing 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 com-parison between Count Dracula and its predecessor Murtagh Murdock to better under-stand Stoker’s work as a whole. Ciambella, on the other hand, investigated the charac-ter 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’ with-in the process of translation, in Le Fanu’s Green Tea, suggesting the possibility of ‘an im-plicit, 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 Fa-bio Luppi (University of Roma Tre) analyzed in his paper. The session was closed by Si-mon 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 cas-uistry 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 manipu-lated 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 Uni-versity, 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 an-cient 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 de-dalic style and his use of gothic settings. She tackled the phenomenon of the inter/intra-textuality 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 Fran-co 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 lec-ture 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 im-portant 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 Lon-don, described by the writer, favours ‘a state of lucid abnormality’, that leads her charac-ters 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 Ca-tholicism’. 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 forger-ies’. 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 joint-ly 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 pro-gress. 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 ac-complished cinematographer who had previously worked with UFA in Germany, Fleisch-mann 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 Fin-tona - 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 pro-moting 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 Riefen-stahl’s Olympia (1938), as Fleischmann had contributed as a camera operator to the mak-ing 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 Vien-

na 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, howev-

er, also overshadowed by the passing of Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Hea-

ney 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 12-

floor high Sky Lounge at Oskar-Morgenstern-Platz, to pay tribute to Heaney’s impres-

sive 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 collabora-

tion 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 in-

troductory remarks, Seán Crosson also emphasised the importance of the Irish language

as a constant source of inspiration for the poet.

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 ac-

tion”: reading and talking, but also intently listening to his audience.

H.E. The Ambassador of Ireland, James Brennan

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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 fa-

mous 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 aesthetical-

ly 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 me-

ticulous 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 in-

spired 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 explora-

tions 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 Univer-

sity 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 Uni-

versity 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 Eighteenth-

Century 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 pro-found 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 lead-ing specialists and emerging scholars, the essays explore Irish-Czech exchanges and parallels in a variety of fields including history, politics, literature, theatre, jour-nalism and physical education. Collectively, these essays demonstrate that Ireland and the Czech Lands have much in common and that they have enjoyed deep cul-tural 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 coun-tries’ interactions with bigger, more powerful nations. This book remedies this ne-glect, 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 Pra-gue College, 1786”; Martina Power, “From Indirect to Direct Comparison: Bohe-mian-Irish Analogies in German and British Travel Writing, c. 1750–1850”; Lili Zách, “Irish Intellectuals and Independent Czechoslovakia in the Interwar Period: Reflec-

tions in Catholic Journals”; Daniel Samek, “The Czech Sokol Gymnastic Pro-gramme 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”

24

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, Ambas-

sador of Ireland to the

Czech Republic, kindly

stood godmother to the

volume.

.Music accompaniment was by Prague-based group Conamara

Chaos.

25

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 de-fined 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 be-tween 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 pro-posals. Please note that as the two-day conference can accommodate only up to 20 pa-pers, 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 Ireland-based 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 aca-demic 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 ref-erence 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 se-lection of the papers presented at the conference.

Organizing Committee

Nicholas Grene (TCD), Patrick Lonergan (NUI Galway), Ondřej Pilný (Charles University), Clare Wallace (Charles University)

26

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 Ma-cAuliffe (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

27

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 in-ternational 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 celebra-tion 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

28

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, Iden-tity and Belonging.

(4) 19 Mar: Cliff Housley on the Sherwood Foresters who were sent to Dublin in Easter 1916, to quell the Rising.

29

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 Stud-ies degree by distance-learning/online in association with the IAF. Modelled on our existing London-based MA, the seminar day will give you an idea of the kinds of topic that you could study on the de-gree, 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?

30

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 dis-

courses, 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 ma-

jority, or is it rather an essentialist category springing from the folk tradition of a given re-

gion 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 con-

tinental 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 cul-

ture on the other hand was traditionally considered as having a civilizing or didactic influ-

ence on the people (giving them the possibility of becoming ‘cultured’). We thus have a tri-

angle of cultures battling for the domain of ‘the popular’: ‘folk culture’ claiming the territo-

ry of the authentic; ‘mass culture’ claiming pride of place for its dominance in terms of vol-

ume; 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.

31

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 lim-

ited 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, Uni-

versity College Dublin.

32

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 criti-

cism are provided by David Clark, Martin Griffin, Anne Karhio, Åke Persson and Margue-

rite Quintelli-Neary.

NISN book project

We are happy to announce that The Crossings of Art in Ireland has now been pub-

lised by Peter Lang, as volume 53 in the ”Reimagining Ireland” series (ed. Eamon Ma-

her). The editors – Ruben Moi, Brynhildur Boyce and Charles Armstrong – are very

grateful to their contributors and publishers for excellent cooperation. The book in-

cludes essays by Róisin Keys, Anne Karhio, Bent Sørensen, Seán Crosson, Fionna Bar-

ber, 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 Representa-

tions of Past and Present (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), and (3) Friberg-

Harnesk, Porter and Wrethed /(eds.), Beyond Ireland: Encounters Across Cultures

(Peter Lang, 2011).

33

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.

34

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 dis-cursive 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 commem-orated.

35

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 deple-tion - whether this hunger is experienced against one's will, as in the Famine, indeed fam-ines, 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 fixa-tion on an idealised, hypermasculine male body) and challenges to these pervasive narra-tives.

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 transfor-mation over time: papers that engage with issues pertaining to intertextuality, intermedi-ality, translation and adaptation are also welcome.

In keeping with tradition, it is also possible to submit abstracts which do not directly en-gage 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 pa-per.

36

The EFACIS Newsletter will be

coming to you three times a

year. The next issue will ap-

pear in June 2014. Please

send me any information you

might have regarding Irish

Studies events around Euro-

pe.

Newsletter compiled

by David Clark, EFA-

CIS Secretary, Univer-

sity of A Coruña, Gali-

za, Spain.

david.clark@udc.es