21st Australasian Irish Studies Conference
Ireland’s Others: Diversity in History and Culture
18-20 June, Maynooth University
Plenary Speakers:
Dr Guy Beiner, on diversity and Irish memory
Professor Keith Jeffery, on Gallipoli
Professor Margaret Kelleher, on the literary politics of diaspora
Professor Terence Dooley, on the Irish Big House and the War of Independence
Public Reading on Friday June 19, 6pm, Iontas Theatre
As part of the conference, we are delighted to host Davy Byrne award-winning author Sara Baume, whose best-selling first novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither (Tramp Press) is the talk of the town, and Aosdana member Evelyn Conlon, whose most recent novel, Not the Same Sky (Wakefield Press), has garnered praise in Australia for its moving portrait of historical migration. Join us for readings by these exceptional Irish authors.
Film Premiere Friday June 19, 8pm, Iontas Theatre
ISAANZ 21 will also see the premiere of the Australian-made film ‘All Politics is Local’, which portrays the fray within a 2007 Irish electoral campaign. There will also be a showing the following day of an episode of ‘Convict Women and Orphan Girls’ followed by a discussion with the film-makers of this acclaimed series.
Conference Overview
Over 60 speakers from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Korea, Northern Ireland and Britain will deliver papers on history, literature, music, art & politics in relation to diversity in Ireland’s past & present; in relation to gender issues; in relation to war, & particularly the Great War; and in relation to commemoration. The conference dinner takes place at historic Carton House. More details of the programme, & the link for registration, can be found on the conference website: https://isaanzmaynooth2015.wordpress.com. For further information contact oona.frawley@nuim.ie.
Proudly hosted by Maynooth University’s Department of English, with the support of Maynooth University’s Research Office; Office of the Dean of Arts; Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates; the Department of History; and the Peace and Reconciliation Fund of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Ireland’s Others: Diversity in History and Culture
21st Australasian Irish Studies Conference
Maynooth University
18–20 June 2015
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Conference proudly hosted by Maynooth University’s Department of English, with the support of Maynooth University’s Research Office; Office of the Dean of Arts; Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates; the Department of History; and the Peace and Reconciliation Fund of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Thursday 18 June
8.30-9.30 – Registration
9.30 – Official Opening of the Conference (Iontas Foyer)
Professor Philip Nolan
President, Maynooth University
9.45-11.00
|
Women’s Interactions with War Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Protestants in a Changing Ireland Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Sharon Crozier-De Rosa |
Gendered Emotions: The Militant Woman, Irish Nationalism and British Patriotism
Gemma Clark
Women, Everyday Violence and the Irish Civil War
Laura McAtackney
Gendering the Decade of Centenaries: Re-inserting the roles of the ‘brave women of the many fights’Ian d’Alton
Prisoners of war? The Anglo-Irish and the conflict of 1914-18
Philip Bull
One Landlord Family’s Responses to Changes in the Irish Polity: The case of Monksgrange
Deirdre Nuttall
“We were like the poor whites”: Stories of poverty and exclusion among Protestants in the Republic of Ireland
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.15 Plenary Lecture: Margaret Kelleher — Rites and Rights: The literary politics of Diaspora (Iontas Theatre)
12.15—1.00 Lunch
1.00-1.30 Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ) Annual General Meeting (Iontas Theatre)
1.30-3.10
|
Politics, Nationalism and Diversity Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Irishness in the Diaspora Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Livia Szedmina |
John Devoy and Irish independence: A rebel’s balancing act
Senia Paseta
The Irish Question in British Suffrage Politics, 1909-1914
Pauric Travers
Lynch’s War: Colonel Arthur Lynch, the First World War and Ireland’s Others
David Blaazer
Undoing difference: Symbolism, finance and nationalism in the creation of the Irish Free State currencySophie Cooper
Changing Narratives: Memory and identity in the Victorian Irish diaspora
John Roberts
Lehitraot Ireland: Finding the Jewish experience in the Irish Diaspora
Dianne Hall
‘Excruciatingly funny’: Patsy O’Wang, race, Irishness and humour in early 20th century Australia
3.10-3.30 Coffee
3.30-4.45
|
Gender and the Irish Experience Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
Commemoration 1: Principle and Practice |
Chair: Dominic Bryan Room: Iontas Seminar RoomJoan Kavanagh
In a Class of Their Own: The selection of Irish female convicts for transportation to Van Diemen’s Land
Liz Rushen
‘Haybags, wanton widows and discontented old maids’: Perceptions of Irish women in colonial Australia
Elizabeth Malcolm
Disarming Irish Men, 1760-1845: Masculinities, nostalgia and the civilizing process
Roundtable, with Deirdre McBride, Jason Burke, William Blair and Keith Lilley
This roundtable, the first of two on commemoration at the conference, considers the ways in which commemoration should be and/or can be guided by a set of principles. How does such a set of principles work in the practice of commemoration? In the middle of the ‘decade of centenaries’ in an all-Ireland context, such questions have particular resonance.
5.30-6.30 Plenary Lecture: Terence Dooley — ‘Is everything we love gone forever?’: The Irish Big House and the War of Independence’ (Morrison Room, Carton House)
7pm Conference Dinner (Carton House)
Friday 19 June
9.30-11.10 a.m.
|
Literature, Place and Culture Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
Commemoration 2: The Politics of Now |
Chair: Dominic Bryan Room: Iontas Seminar RoomChristina Hunt Mahony
Dramatic Repercussions: The effect of the Wilde Trials on the London theatre – a test case
Shelley Troupe
The Dublin Jewish Dramatic Society: Performing at the margins
Raquel Merino-Alvarez
Irish drama in Spain: Integrating diversity through translation
Melania Terrazas
Memory and the Working Through of Conflict and Trauma: Evelyn Conlon’s Not the Same Sky
Roundtable, with Jonathan Evershed, Gillian McIntosh and Dominic Bryan
This roundtable, the second on commemoration of the conference, considers the ways in which commemorative practice reflects political issues of the present, and never merely the events of the past. This discussion aims to consider the layers of political meaning in commemorations of events as distinct as the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme in both Northern Ireland and the republic of Ireland.
11.10-11.30 Coffee
11.30-12.30 Plenary Session: Keith Jeffery— Reclaiming Gallipoli from the Australians (Iontas Theatre)
12.30-1.15 Lunch
1.15-2.15 Plenary Lecture: Guy Beiner — Forgetting Ireland’s Others: Diversity and Irish memory (Iontas Theatre)
2.15-3.30 p.m.
|
The Emigrant Experience I Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Irish Influence and Culture in the Antipodes Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Susan Arthure |
The Irish of Baker’s Flat, South Australia: Forgotten and misremembered
Mark Finnane
The Irish and crime in the colonies: A reprise
Carla King ‘A country blessed with almost everything …’: Michael Davitt in New Zealand, 1895Jonathan Wooding
Three Australian Churches with ‘Irish’ Round Towers
Rodney Sullivan and Robin Sullivan
Monumental Messages: Irish-Australians in Brisbane, 1872-1928
Elaine Byrne
IRA Activity in Australia, 1968-1974
3.55-4.15 – Coffee
3.45.- 5.25 p.m.
|
The Emigrant Experience II Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Politics, Identity and Nationalism Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Charles Fahey |
‘All my prospects for this year. I think is spoiled’: William Farrell, Thomas Purcell and unskilled Irish labour in Melbourne, 1878-1911
Loretta Dynan
How research brought an Irish family to life in Australia: The Leahys of Tallarook
Laurence Geary
‘No man in Australia did greater work for Ireland’: Dr Nicholas M. O’Donnell (1862-1920)James H. Murphy
Purging the Liberals: Reducing political diversity during the Repeal takeover of Dublin Corporation, 1841-3
Felix Larkin
Edmund Dwyer Gray Jr: His life in two hemispheres
Thomas Mohr
Prime Minister James Scullin and the Sovereignty of the Irish Free State
Troy Piechnick
Europe and Irish Euroscepticism
6.00 Reception and launch by Professor Mark Finnane of volume 15 of the Australasian Journal of Irish Studies (Iontas Foyer)
6.30 p.m. Readings by Sara Baume and Evelyn Conlon (Iontas Foyer)
8 p.m – Film Premiere of ‘All Politics is Local’ – Christopher and Declan Eipper (Iontas Theatre)
In Ireland, ‘If you’re hungry enough, you’ll dig up the tar on the road with your teeth to get a vote’. It’s not only the other parties that are a threat to you, it’s your running mate. Indeed, it’s the internal rivalry that can be the most bitter and acrimonious, as well as the most entertaining. Based upon three decades of ethnographic research, All Politics is Local is the first feature-length documentary depiction of Irish politicians from an ethnographic (rather than a journalistic) perspective. A depiction of the 2007 electoral campaign in Cork South-West, it portrays the fray from within. As such, it aims to make an academic contribution to Irish studies designed to inform and explain as well as entertain.
Saturday 20 June
9.30-10.45 a.m.
|
Identity, Language and Literature Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Film as Ethnographic History Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Barbara Hoffmann |
Irish Convicts and Australian Identity in Roger McDonald’s The Ballad of Desmond Kale
Rónán McDonald
John Mitchel and the Prison-house of Language
Kevin Molloy
Tradition and the Literature of Irish-Australian Identity: Kickham, Bulfin, Lynd, and the anthropologist’s view of early twentieth-century IrelandChristopher Eipper
A panel discussion of the film All Politics is Local – details to be advised.
10.45-11.00 Coffee
11.00-12.40
|
Literature and the Environment Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Irish Catholicism and Australia Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Janna Knittel |
Irish Salmon, Native Salmon: Environmental, economic and spiritual Links
Jaclyn Allen
Wipe the Sea of Memory: The sea in the poetry of Temple Lane and Rhoda Coghill
Anna Pilz
‘Graceful and capricious’: Trees, national character, and Rosa Mulholland’s The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil
Oona Frawley
Postcolonial ecocriticism: the cases of Ireland, New Zealand and AustraliaDonato Di Sanzo
Daniel Mannix: An Irish-Australian nationalist
Danny Cusack
Mannix: Friends and Foes
Mary Louise O’Donnell and Frances Thiele
Cultural Transmission and Catholicism in a Colonial Context: A study of the Loreto Order (IBVM) in Australia
Damien Burke
The Archives of the Irish Jesuit Mission to Australia, 1865-1931
12.40-1.20 Lunch
1.20-3.00 p.m.
|
New Zealand and Ireland: Art, War and Identity Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Ireland’s Others: Reception, Representation and Identity Chair: Room: English Seminar Room |
| Charlotte Bennett |
For God, Country, and Empire? Irish and New Zealand boys’ schools during the First World War
Ann Elder
Path Without Primroses: A reluctant Irish-New Zealander’s war 1917-18, and the lifelong effects
Nicola Morris
Irish Methodist Chaplains in the Great War
Yvonne Scott
Cooke’s Explorations in New Zealand: The work of Irish artist Barrie Cooke (1931–2014) in New ZealandAttracta Brownlee
Irish Travellers: Faith, identity and ethnicity in contemporary Ireland
Patrick O’Callaghan
Robert Torrens and the Reception of the Torrens System of Land Registration in Different Countries
Seokmoo Choi
James Joyce’s Representation of Irish people in the (Former) British Colonies
3.00-3.15 Coffee
3.15-4.30 p.m.
|
Literature and War Chair: Room: Iontas Seminar Room |
Convict Women and Orphan Girls Series Room: English Seminar Room |
| Joseph Heininger |
Representing the Great War’s Unheralded Others in Patricia McCarthy’s Horses Between Our Legs
Catherine Thewissen
Narratives of Hospitality: Representations of the Great War in Irish home front wartime novels (1914-1922)
Claire Lynch
Who’s for the Game? Irish boyhood and virtual battlefieldsScreening of episode 2 – The Voyage. This series is described by Richard O’Brien, the former Irish ambassador to Australia as ‘a compelling portrayal – meticulously researched, vividly scripted and brilliantly enacted – of the dramatic story of the Orphan Girls and indeed of an entire generation of single, married and widowed women transported from Ireland who became the founding mothers of modern Australia’, followed by discussion with the filmmakers Barrie Dowdall & Siobhan Lynam.
Further information about this series can be found at: www.convictwomenandorphangirls.com
4.30-4.45 p.m. Conference round-up session (Iontas Foyer)
End of Conference
Conference Convenors: Philip Bull, Oona Frawley and Pauric Travers
Conference Website: https://isaanzmaynooth2015.wordpress.com