Call for Papers

Deadline extended to January 15, 2017

As we live through a decade of centenaries, we remember or reimagine cataclysmic events that helped shape the modern world, not least the Great War, Ireland's Easter Rising, and Russia's Bolshevik Revolution. Each passing year provides opportunities to reflect on the nature of commemoration and remembrance.

Carrigafoyle Castle, Ireland

Our conference provides a venue to explore the relationship between remembering and the writing of literature and history, and also to think about connections between personal, collective, and national memories. Participants will explore the theme of "remembering" in its widest sense, from personal memories in diaries and oral histories to collective memory, embodied or transmuted in history, literature, folklore, and mythology.

Participants are invited to explore the ways in which memory is produced, represented, and used in Irish culture. Presenters might focus on topics pertaining to:

• personal and collective memory  • selective memory  • nostalgia  • literature and memory  • literary history  • art history  • film  • history and the novel  • poetry and national memory  • grief and elegy  • historical fiction, poetry, or drama  • autobiography and life-writing  • journals and correspondence  • oral history and folklore  • digital memory and digital cultures  • archives  • book history  • tradition and the individual talent  • anxiety of influence  • the author in history  • cultural revivals  • ghosts  • historical writing and the shaping of the past  • the Great War and modern memory  • the Great Hunger and other Irish famines  • 1916  • the Troubles of the early twentieth century  • the Northern Irish Troubles  • the Missing  • history and the postcolonial  • nationalism and gender  • new historicism  • modernism or postmodernism  • music and theatre history  • revisionism  • nationalist, republican, and unionist history  • imagined communities  • cultural studies  • alternative histories  • feminist history  • LGBT history  • politics of commemoration  • anniversaries and centenaries  • parades, memorials, monuments  • funerals  • Celtic languages  • languages in Ireland 

While preference may be given to proposals related to the conference theme, we encourage proposals on any aspect of Irish Studies.

We welcome both individual and panel submissions (three to four participants), as well as proposals for roundtable discussions, performances, and dramatic readings. Interdisciplinary topics are encouraged. Individual proposals should not exceed 250 words and include a sentence about the presenter. Panel proposals should be not exceed 500 words and include a rationale for the panel, plus a brief description of each paper and of the participants. Proposals of 500 words for other presentations should include a rationale and mini-biographies of the participants.

Click HERE to submit proposals and speaker bios

Deadline: 5:00 pm Eastern on January 15, 2017

Please Note • Presenters must be members of the American Conference for Irish Studies

Should you have questions, please contact the conference organizer Jonathan Allison at jonathan.allison@uky.edu