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.