Nordic Irish Studies Network biennial conference
RECIRCULATIONS
Transmissions and Transits in Irish history, literature, and culture
All events will take place on the University of Iceland campus, at Veröld Hús Vigdísar (VHV), Brynjólfsgötu 1, 107 Reykjavík
Thursday 25th May
9.00 Meeting – VHV 201 (Heimasvæði)
9.30 – 9.45 Welcome – VHV 201
9.45 – 10.45 Keynote lecture
Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh: ‘Transmissions, translations and transits: Ireland and the Nordic World’ (Chair: Ciaran McDonough) – VHV 201
10.45 – 11.00 Coffee
11.00 – 12.30 Panel sessions
Panel 1 (Chair Caitlin Ellis) – VH201
- Anthony Olsson: ‘The Faroe Islands is the center of heroic balladry – is Ireland as a staging place significant in that tradition?
- Fangzhe Qiu: ‘Revisiting the Nordic names in pre-11th century Irish annals’
- Elín Ingibjörg Eyjólfsdóttir: ‘Working towards an Icelandic (and a new English) translation of the Bórama’
12.30 – 1.30 Lunch
1.30 – 3.00 Panel sessions
Panel 2 (Chair Fangzhe Qiu) – VH201
- Isabelle Torrance ‘Greece and Rome in Irish Culture: A Bird’s Eye View’
- Gregory Darwin ‘Dala Ercuil: Hercules in Translation’
- Cameron Wachowich ‘Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Lat. 366: A Remnant of the Irish in Salzburg?’
Panel 3 (Chair Ruben Moi) – VH103
- Anne Karhio ‘Cartographies of consumption and recycling in contemporary Irish poetry’
- Simon Workman ‘To Ireland in the End Times: Figuring the Future in Contemporary Irish Fiction’
- Wit Pietrzak ‘Revis(it)ing Yeats: Paul Muldoon and Contemporary Irish Poetry’
3.00 – 3.30 Coffee
3.30 – 5 NISN Business Meeting
Friday 26th May
9.45 – 10.45 Performance and talk
Poet Kathy D’Arcy (Chair: Anne Karhio) – VHV 201
10.45 – 11.00 Coffee
11.00 – 12.30 Panel Sessions
Panel 4 (Chair Elín Ingibjörg Eyjólfsdóttir) – VHV 201
- Gísli Sigurðsson ‘Memory of Ireland in the different versions of the Book of Settlement’
- Ásta Kristín Benediktsdóttir ‘‘Rise, thou youthful flag of Iceland!’ Moonstone and Sjón’s queer antipatriotism’
- Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir ‘Iceland – Ireland: Transnational memories of crises in Álfrún Gunnlaugsdóttir’s Siglingin um síkin and Conor O’Callaghan’s Nothing on Earth’
Panel 5 (Chair Charles Armstrong) – VH103
- Anthony Johnson ‘Drama and the Recirculation of Justice: Massinger’s Comedy, A New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1625), and its Restaging in Smock Alley (c. 1760)’
- Fionna Barber ‘Outmoded Paintings and Revolutionary Politics: the Portraits of Estella Solomons’
- Ruben Moi ‘The Lonesome West, Again: What’s New in Martin McDonagh’s Recirculations, Myths and Structures in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)?’
12.30 – 1.30 Lunch
1.30 – 3.30 Panel Sessions
Panel 6 (Chair Cameron Wachowich) – VH201
- Charles Armstrong ‘“’Twixt lays and re-lays”: Neoclassicism and Ekphrasis in Thomas Moore’s Rhymes on the Road’
- Genna Scott ‘“The cradle of our noblest energies and blood:” national identity and the misuse of Viking history in Britain and Ireland’
- Virginie Roche-Tiengo ‘Molière in Ireland, Transmissions in Irish Literature from 1906 to 2023’
Panel 7 (Chair Gregory Darwin) – VH103
- Ira Ruppo ‘A look at James Joyce in Russian Translation’
- Ástráður Eysteinsson ‘Reading, Rereading – Across Borders Encountering James Joyceʼs “The Dead” in English and Icelandic’
- Brianna Riggio ‘Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill: The Undead and Untranslatable’
4.00 Conference close
Call for papers: NISN 2023: Recirculations: Transmissions and Transits in Irish history, literature, and culture
Háskóli Íslands/University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 25-26 May 2023
Ireland’s geographical position as an island at the western edge of Europe has made it, in turns, a marginal or central location for various forms of material, social, and cultural transmission. Rather than novelty, such encounters in literature, culture, and art have often emerged as instances of revision, rediscovery, or recirculation of texts, languages, narratives, and images. Similarly, people, goods, and documents travel along familiar or revised routes in the North Atlantic and North Sea region; information and ideas are received and transmitted within networked infrastructures connecting Ireland and other parts of the globe.
Ireland’s history, culture, and geography thus demonstrate how stories of origin and authenticity can gloss over entangled cartographies of exchange. These recirculations highlight Ireland as situated at the intersection of diverse cultural and material flows within and outside its borders. Joyce’s Finnegans Wake reflected this idea by embodying the manner in which, as David Earle has observed, “history recirculates, water recirculates, [and] the cultural debris of Dublin recirculates”, as do commodities of various kinds in and outside the capital, and the island itself.
Literary texts and narratives appear, disappear, and reappear, often without clear sense of origins or originals, from medieval re-tellings and translations of classical Greek and Roman literature to Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s prose rendering and interweaving of Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire. Irish writers have drawn on stories and imagery of previous eras, from the imagined pagan past in Táin Bó Cúailgne to narratives providing the historical backdrop for discussions on the Good Friday Agreement. In the nineteenth century, medieval Irish formed the bulk of European philological research, and antiquarian activity was largely centred around translations of medieval and early modern texts, both Irish and Latin. The constant return of past images and ideas both sustains and complicates relations between social groups and informs responses to changing society, including newcomers seeking to make Ireland their home. Historically and in the present, personal and collective pasts are re-used and revised to suit present circumstances, in literature, the arts, everyday life, or political rhetoric.
To address the above themes, the forthcoming Nordic Irish Studies Network conference explores the idea of recirculations in Irish culture through themes including, but not restricted to
- Exchanges between Ireland and other culture
- Uses of the past in literature, culture, and society
- The manuscript trade in Ireland and beyond
- Antiquarianism
- Renderings of foreign literature into an Irish form
- Translations to and from Irish, and interface between Irish and English
- Medieval literature in the early/modern era, and beyond
- Ireland, material culture and travel in the North Atlantic and North Sea region
- Old and new media
As always, the organisers also accept submissions on topics related to Irish Studies but not directly connected to the conference theme.
We are delighted to welcome Dr Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh, University of Edinburgh as a keynote speaker and Dr Kathy D’Arcy as artistic performer and speaker.
Abstracts of 200-300 words should be sent by 28 February to nisn2023@gmail.com, with a short biographical note. For any queries related to the CFP or the conference, please contact Ciaran McDonough at mcdonough@hi.is.
Please note that all speakers must be paid members of NISN at the time of the conference.