Previous Projects

The Crossings of Art in Ireland (Peter Lang, 2014).

Moi, Ruben / Boyce, Brynhildur / Armstrong, Charles I. (eds)

The essays in this volume explore interartistic connections in Irish literature, drama, film and the visual arts. Within modern and postmodern culture, innovation is often driven by surprising interrelations between the arts, and this book offers a discussion of this phenomenon and analyses a number of artworks that move across disciplines. Several contributors examine the concept of ekphrasis, looking at how Irish writers such as Seamus Heaney, John Banville, Paul Muldoon, Ciaran Carson, Patrick Kavanagh, W.B. Yeats and Samuel Beckett have responded to the visual arts. Others explore interartistic ‘crossings’ in the drama of Brian Friel, in James Barry’s eighteenth-century Shakespeare paintings and in contemporary Irish film. Together, the essays present a fresh perspective on Irish artistic culture and open up new avenues for future study.

Contents: Róisín Keys: Brian Friel’s Performances: Meaning in an Intermedial Play – Anne Karhio: Between Text, Video and Performance: Landscape in Pamela Brown’s ‘Ireland Unfree’ – Bent Sørensen: ‘True Gods of Sound and Stone’ – The Many Crossings of Patrick Kavanagh’s On Raglan Road – Seán Crosson: ‘All this must come to an end. Through talking’: Dialogue and Troubles Cinema – Fionna Barber: Visual Tectonics: Post-millenial Art in Ireland – Stuart Sillars: James Barry’s Shakespeare Paintings – Charles I. Armstrong: Proud and Wayward: W. B. Yeats, Aesthetic Engagement and the Hugh Lane Pictures – Britta Olinder: John Hewitt and the Sister Arts – Erik Tonning: The Christ Disbelieved by Beckett: Christian Iconography in Samuel Beckett’s Work – Joakim Wrethed: ‘A Momentous Nothing’: The Phenomenology of Life, Ekphrasis and Temporality in John Banville’s The Sea – Eugene O’Brien: ‘A Shabby Old Couple’: Seamus Heaney’s Ekphrastic Imperative – Ruben Moi: Verse, Visuality and Vision: The Challenges of Ekphrasis in Ciaran Carson’s Poetry – Anthony W. Johnson: The Adoration of the Maggot: A Muldonic Coronation.

Beyond Ireland: Encounters Across Cultures (Peter Lang, 2011).

This essay collection focuses on analysing aspects of interculturality, transculturality and transnationality in contemporary Irish writing. Its editors are Hedda Friberg-Harnesk, Gerald Porter and Joakim Wrethed. The collection will include the work of the following NISN members: Charles Armstrong, Åke Persson, Britta Olinder, Ruben Moi, Billy Gray, Gerald Porter, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Carmen Zamorano Llena, Lena Ydling Pedersen, Anne Karhio, Ronald Paul, Roisin Keys, Anders Olsson, Martin Shaw, Hedda Friberg and Joakim Wrethed.

Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007).
The essays resulting from the second NISN joint research project were published in April 2007. The title of the collection is Recovering Memory: Irish Representations of Past and Present, edited by Hedda Friberg, Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Lene Yding Pedersen, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The volume consists of 17 essays, with guest contributions by Richard Kearney and Shane Alcobia-Murphy. The following NISN members contributed to the volume: Michael Böss, Britta Olinder, Billy Gray, Heidi Hansson, Carmen Zamorano Llena, Róisín Keys, Anders Olsson, Åke Persson, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Brynhildur Boyce, Anne Karhio, Ulf Dantanus, Hedda Friberg, Lene Yding Pedersen and Joakim Wrethed.

The volume is divided into five sections, each of which examines one broadly defined aspect of memory. The introductory section focuses on memory and history, and is followed by sections on memory and autobiography, place, identity, and memory in the work of novelist John Banville. Within each section, the individual writers engage in a fruitful dialogue with each other and with the approaches of such theorists as Arendt, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Baudrillard. Additional details, including the table of contents and the introduction to the volume, are available here.

Re-Mapping Exile: Realities and Metaphors in Irish Literature and History (Aarhus University Press, 2005)
The essays resulting from the first NISN research project were published in the collection  Re-Mapping Exile: Realities and Metaphors in Irish Literature and History (Aarhus University Press, 2005), edited by Michael Böss, Irene Gilsenan Nordin and Britta Olinder. This collection contains 11 essays written by the following NISN members: Michael Böss, Billy Gray, Heidi Hansson, Ida Klitgård, Britta Olinder, Bent Sørensen, Irene Gilsenan Nordin, Åke Persson, and Hedda Friberg.

The essays in this collection combine historical, cultural, and literary analyses in their treatment of aspects of exile in Irish writing. Some are ‘structuralist’ in seeing exile as a physical state of being, often associated with absence, into which an individual willingly or unwillingly enters. Others are ‘poststructuralist’, considering the narration of exile as a celebration of transgresiveness, hybridity, and otherness. This type of exile moves away from a political, cultural, and economic idea of exile to an understanding of exile in a wider existential sense. The theme of exile is discussed in a wide range of texts including literature, political writings and song-writing. The essays cover, among others: Hubert Butler, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, Rosa Mulholland, James Joyce, John Hewitt, Van Morrison, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Roddy Doyle and John Banville. (Information contained in the blurb)