- Centre of Irish Studies
Aims and Mission:
The EFACIS Klagenfurt Centre of Irish Studies (EKCIS), officially started on 17 January 2025, is an interdisciplinary centre within the body of the Department of English at the University of Klagenfurt. The aim of the Centre is to strengthen Irish Studies and to promote Irish literature and culture in the Alps-Adriatic region and within the European context through offering seminars at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, stimulating research in the field, organising guest lectures and conferences, and encouraging collaboration for further research on Irish Studies. The Centre also aims at providing a platform for the fostering of Irish culture and literature by organising events with the cooperation of Irish writers, artists and musicians.
Founding Members (alphabetical order, by surname):
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Werner Delanoy
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nursen Gömceli
Prof. Dr. Allan James
Assoc. Prof. Dr. René Schallegger
Dr. Eva-Maria Trinkaus
Irish Studies at the Department of English:
- Centre of Irish Studies Guest Lecture Series:
The Klagenfurt Centre of Irish Studies is grateful for the kind support of The Embassy of Ireland in Vienna for its guest lecture series in Irish Studies.
Ondřej Pilný, “J.M. Synge in Context”, 31 October 2024. (Inaugural lecture)
Clare Wallace, “Marina Carr: Making and Unmaking Mythic Stories”, 27 March 2025.
Aidan O’Malley, winter semester 2025, to be announced.
Patrick Lonergan, summer semester 2026, to be announced.
- Courses and Teaching Foci:
The courses offered on Irish culture and literature focus on theatre, drama, the short story, literary linguistics and film analysis. Areas covered include modern Irish drama and theatre; the Irish literary revival; contemporary Irish drama and theatre; culture and society in the Celtic Tiger and post-Celtic Tiger periods and the literature of the two periods; the literary linguistic analysis of works by Irish playwrights, such as J.M.Synge, Seán O’Casey, Enda Walsh; the linguistics of Irish and Irish English in the context of Celtic-English language contact; and the analysis of Ireland in film and playtexts.
Research and Teaching Cooperations:
EFACIS, IASIL, Anglo-American University Prague, Charles University Prague, University of Galway, University of Ljubljana, Meikai University, University of Rijeka.
Core Research Interests:
Modern and contemporary Irish drama and theatre, postdramatic theatre and the theatre of Enda Walsh, literary linguistics, Irish culture and society since the 1960s.
The Klagenfurt Centre of Irish Studies would like to acknowledge the debt to Prof. Dr. Patrick Lonergan and the National University of Ireland Galway for supporting and hosting the following research projects:
“Research into the theatre of Enda Walsh and contemporary Irish drama”, the Moore Institute and John Hardiman Library, July-August 2015.
“The Abbey Theatre digital archives research”, the Moore Institute, July-August 2014.
Publications:
Delanoy, Werner. 2021. “Dialogue, Drama and English Language Education.” In: Drama in Foreign Language Education: Texts and Performances, edited by Christiane Lütge and Max von Blanckenburg, 169-90. Wien and Zürich: LIT.
Gömceli, Nursen. 2020. “‘Emotionally Stunted Anarchists’ or ‘Simply Teenagers’? An Alternative Reading of Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs (1996)”. Söylem Filoloji Dergisi 5 (2): 578-96. https://doi.org/10.29110/soylemdergi.786607.
Gömceli, Nursen. 2017. “Language and Physicality in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs (1996): A Postdramatic Analysis.” In The Polyphony of English Studies, edited by Alexander Onysko, Eva-Maria Graf, Werner Delanoy, Guenther Sigott, and Nikola Dobrić, 261-76. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag.
Gömceli, Nursen, and Allan James. 2015. “Hiberno-English and Beyond in J.M.Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World: A Literary Linguistic Analysis of its Dramatic Significance.” Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 40 (1-2): 105-25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24722042.
Gömceli, Nursen. 2015. “We Laugh A Lot When Mum’s Away: The Production of The Walworth Farce in Turkey.” In The Theatre of Enda Walsh, edited by Mary P. Caulfield and Ian R. Walsh, 201-14. Dublin: Carysfort Press.
James, Allan. 2020. “Linguistic Layering and the Play Semiotics of Postdramatic (and Dramatic) Theatre: The Case of Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh.” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 45 (2): 109–38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26974200.
James, Allan, and Nursen Gömceli. 2018. “The Textual Analysis of Dramatic Discourse Revisited: Linguistic Layers and the (Social) Semiotics of Play-Constitutive and Play-Realisational Elements.” English Text Construction 11 (2): 199-24. https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00009.jam.
James, Allan. 2010. "Gemeinschaft, Identität und Sprache: Wales und Irland als soziolinguistische Räume [Community, Identity and Language: Wales and Ireland as Sociolinguistic Spaces]." In Sprachlandschaften: Regionale Literaturwissenschaft im europäischen Kontext, edited by Reinhard Kacianka and Johann Strutz, 132-45. Klagenfurt: Hermagoras.
Kompein, Nina. 2018. “The Claddagh: The Visualisation of Irishness in a Local Irish Pub outside of Ireland and the Intentionality and Awareness Thereof.” Anthropos (Ljubljana) 50 (3-4): 97-126. https://www.dlib.si/stream/URN:NBN:SI:DOC-O9LWHIHP/80568229-4be0-470a-95... (Based on a seminar paper supervised by Allan James.)
Pichler, Anastasia. 2015. “Social and Political Discourse in Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock: A Linguistic and Literary Analysis of the Play's Language.” MA Thesis, University of Klagenfurt. https://netlibrary.aau.at/obvuklhs/download/pdf/2409429. (Supervised by Allan James.)