Tuesday 18 June 2013

Thank You


We would like to thank all who attended the symposium on Friday, and to thank especially all those who presented papers. We very much enjoyed meeting you all and feel that the discussions that developed over the course of the day opened up some new and fruitful lines of enquiry. Given the enthusiastic response we received, over the coming weeks we will examine ways of taking this project forward and will announce any news on this front here.

If you have any comments or suggestions please contact us via writinghome2013@gmail.com.

Wednesday 12 June 2013

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy on Twitter

We are delighted to announce that the Documents on Irish Foreign Policy project at the Royal Irish Academy will be tweeting several primary source documents to coincide with relevant sessions at the symposium on Friday June 14.

These documents detail aspects of the wartime experiences of James Joyce, Francis Stuart, Samuel Beckett, and Denis Devlin from an Irish diplomatic perspective.

Follow Documents on Irish Foreign Policy at https://twitter.com/DIFP_RIA and join the discussion using the hashtag #writinghome2013.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Writing Home on Twitter

If you'd like to mention the Writing Home symposium on Twitter, we'd be delighted if you would use the hashtag #writinghome2013

Saturday 25 May 2013

Abstracts and Biographies

Click here for details of contributions and contributors to the academic symposium on June 14.

Thursday 4 April 2013

Professor Gerald Dawe

We are delighted to announce that our symposium will close on June 14 with a poetry reading and talk by Professor Gerald Dawe, Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin:

 
'The war came down on us here': Aftermaths of WW2

Gerald Dawe discusses the impact of the Second World War in the writing lives of some Irish contemporaries, including Brian Moore, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon, and examines how the critical legacy of the war continues to influence Irish views of Europe and European views of Ireland.

Gerald Dawe has published several collections of poetry, including Lake Geneva (2003), Points West (2008) and Selected Poems (2012). He edited the ground-breaking anthology Earth Voices Whispering: An Anthology of Irish War Poetry 1914-1945 (2008).


'Gerald Dawe teaches in Dublin at the heart of a Europe that informs his work as richly as it has infused, in turn, that of Joyce, Mahon and Paulin.'


The Guardian


'His clear and unadorned voice articulates an imagination of European scope.'

 
Terence Brown

Monday 4 March 2013

Professor Harry Clifton

We are delighted to announce that Writing Home: Irish Culture and Wartime Europe, 1938-48 will be launched on Thursday 13 June 2013 with a reading by Professor Harry Clifton.

Professor Clifton is the author of several poetry collections, including Comparative Lives (1982); Night Train through the Brenner (1996); The Desert Route: Selected Poems 1973-1988, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks, 1994-2004, winner of the 2007 Irish Times/Poetry Now Award.

He has also written an account of his year spent in the Abruzzo Mountains, On the Spine of Italy (1999); and a collection of short stories, Berkeley's Telephone and Other Fictions (2000). His work has been translated into many languages.

Professor Clifton was born in Dublin in 1952, and educated at Blackrock College and University College, Dublin. He was International Fellow at the University of Iowa, and has lived in Africa, Asia and Europe. From 2010 to 2013 he was Ireland Professor of Poetry, spending his second year of the Professorship in Trinity College, where he gave the lecture ‘The Unforged Conscience: Europe in Irish Poetry’ in February 2012.

Professor Clifton is a member of Aosdana, and lives in Dublin.

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Call for Papers

Writing Home: Irish Culture and Wartime Europe, 1938-48
 
Trinity College Dublin, 13-14 June 2013
 
Call for papers
 
If Europe, as Dan Diner has written, ‘seems more and more to be finding a common unifying memory in the events of World War II’, then what are the cultural consequences of this dynamic process for Ireland?
 
The decade between 1938 and 1948 was a time of immense revolutionary upheaval across Europe, but tends to have been characterised as a time of stagnation and isolation for Ireland. During these years, however, many Irish writers and artists travelled extensively across the continent, whilst several of their European counterparts arrived in Ireland. Taking these migrations as a starting point, this symposium will examine afresh the history of this decade and its impact on Irish cultural memory. Writers under consideration may include, but are by no means limited to: Samuel Beckett, John Betjeman, Christabel Bielenberg, Hubert Butler, John Hewitt, Denis Johnston, Thomas McGreevy, Brian Moore, Francis Stuart, and Rebecca West.
 
As cultural memory is mediated through a wide variety of discourses and artefacts, from literature to visual art, architecture, film, music and journalism, we welcome interdisciplinary participation from the fields of modern languages and literature, media studies, history and history of art. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
 
Memory, migration and identity
Art as a memory trigger
War reportage
Cultural communities
Emigrés and refugees
Life writing
The visual arts and architecture
Allegiances and affiliations
Censorship
Secret histories
Diaspora
Collaboration
Forgotten writers and artists
Documents and archives
 
We invite abstracts for papers of twenty minutes duration, and also invite proposals for panels that provide a platform for innovative or challenging approaches to these issues. We particularly welcome proposals from early career academics and graduate students.
 
Please send a 250-word abstract with a brief biographical note to Dorothea Depner and Guy Woodward at writinghome2013@gmail.com by 10 March 2013.