10th EFACIS International Conference "Beyond Ireland: Boundaries, Passages, and Transitions

 

The Tenth Conference of

BEYOND IRELAND: Boundaries, Passages, Transitions

3-6 June 2015

UNIVERSITY OF PALERMO

Confirmed plenary Speakers:

Prof. Declan Kiberd

Prof. John Mc Court

 

The position of Ireland and Sicily – historical, as well as geographical and cultural – leads to their being liminal spaces. Their insularity and the fact that they are  both at the far ends of Europe makes them transitional spaces marked by mobility and the crossing of thresholds, where new definitions of selfhood take placeMoreover, Ireland (again, like Sicily) is going through a moment of change where the legacy of the past is crossing with the present and the future. Traditions are questioned and future outcomes are thrown into doubt. Furthermore, mobility – intended as a rite of passage – confirms the state of being ‘betwixt and between’ while conveying feelings of separation, marginality and (re)assimilation and implying such concepts as here and there, inclusion and exclusion, identity and difference.

This conference will probe into the diverse dimensions of liminality as they manifest themselves in Irish culture giving particular importance in this context to processes of cultural inclusion and exclusion  which are often the prerogative  of mobility experiences.

Papers, panels and workshops on the theme of liminality and travel are welcome. We are seeking papers in the areas of languages and literature, history, cultural studies, film, art history, folklore and other areas of humanities and liberal arts that would offer an original angle, approach or application to the study of Irish culture.

 

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

* Representations through different media of mobility: tourism, migration, expatriation, diaspora, exile; town and country, center and periphery, economic and cultural exchanges and developments.

* Rootedness: homecomings, cosmopolitanism, globalization; digital mobility.

* Cultural/social/linguistic borderlands of liminal/hybridized groups including but not limited to issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, religion, and politics; interdisciplinary, hybridized or/and liminal texts and theories of hybridization and liminality; multimodal, transformative, or genre-crossing works.

* Legacies of the past: Gaelic ascendancy.

* Adaptations, rewritings, translations, cultural transfers.

* Representations of the Irish in international film and literature; representations of otherness in Irish film and literature.

* Ireland and Sicily

 

Link to Irish Studies in Europe Vol VIII (conference proceedings)