First Galway Conference of Irish Studies 7 -10 June 2006

'Orality and Modern Irish Culture'
Call for Papers

The First Galway Conference of Irish Studies will be hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI, Galway in June 2006. The conference will provide a platform for both established and emerging scholars to engage with new ideas and approaches to interdisciplinary research in Irish Studies. In order to further discussion and dialogue, the conference programme will include a number of workshops with leading scholars who will speak on aspects of theory and method that have informed their work. A select number of presentations will be included in a publication derived from the conference proceedings. A feature of the Galway Conference will be the provision of a simultaneous translation facility for those who wish to present their work in Irish.

Given that so much of the material under consideration in the field of Irish Studies originates within, or is transmitted by, an oral mode, there has been a remarkable reluctance to engage with orality in the investigation of modern and contemporary Irish culture. This conference will attempt to get beyond the misleading dichotomies that equate orality with the traditional, the rural, and the communal, while literacy is associated with the urban, the written, and the individual. The persistence of these distinctions has tended to elide the extent to which oral and literate modes co-exist in various forms of cultural production. The conference will investigate the modes of performance and transmission of orality, and its formative role in the construction of modern Irish culture. Are there official and unofficial avenues of transmission of oral culture? What role does audience play in these processes? How is orality linked to folk culture and an idea of the authentic, and what are the implications for identity construction in Ireland? What methodologies are most effective for engaging orality?

Submissions are welcome from all relevant disciplines including literature, history, social studies, gender studies, ethnography, diaspora studies, music, and media studies.

Proposals can be submitted in Irish or in English to the Conference Administrator Angela Roche at irishstudiesnuigalway.ie before 1 February 2006.

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