Múscailt 03 - Springtime Arts Festival
Aideen Barry with actor, Sean McGinley, who officially opened this year's "Múscailt" Festival. The week-long celebration of the arts on campus featured a packed programme of events including drama, art, music, modern dance, film and photography.
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The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing - the NUI Galway Connection
NUI Galway academic staff members have contributed considerably to Volumes IV and V of The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. Dr Riana O’Dwyer (Department of English) edited ‘Women’s Narratives, 1800–1840’. Dr Caitríona Clear (Department of History) edited ‘The re-emergence of nuns and convents, 1800–1962’, and ‘Women of the house in Ireland, 1800–1950’. Professor Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha (Scoil na Gaeilge) edited an entire section, ‘Medieval to Modern, 600–1900’.
No sequel had been intended to the orignal three Field Day volumes which appeared in 1991 but the lively debate which greeted their publication regarding issues of inclusivity, and particularly focussed on the perceived marginalisation of women’s writing. The General Editor, Seamus Deane, invited some of the most vociferous critics to assemble a new editorial team to address these shortcomings and supported the projected publication in practical ways until it was taken on by Cork University Press. As the research proceeded, the quantity of texts (some 3000 pages in total) required that two volumes, rather than the proposed single volume be published.
The volumes have been reviewed extensively in the Irish, British and American press, and the monumental scale of the work has been acknowledged. One of the great achievements of the work is the editorial and scholarly apparatus rendering them accessible and useful to the reader and researcher. All texts are annotated, and original texts in Irish, Latin, and other languages are accompanied by translations. The two volumes provide an account of the female contribution to Irish literary and oral traditions, from the beginnings of literacy to the present. They map the broad terrain of the history of women in Ireland: their formation as individuals and within groups, and the significant ways in which they changed the world around them.
Pictured are from left are, "Field Day" editors Dr Riana O’Dwyer (NUI Galway); Dr Angela Bourke (Roinn na Gaeilge, UCD), Dr Caitríona Clear, Professor Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha (NUI Galway).
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NUI Galway report calls for new UN Treaty to protect people with Disabilities
A major report launched in January, entitled “Human Rights and Disability: the current use and future potential of the United Nations human rights instruments in the context of disability”, calls for a new UN Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities as the most effective way of guaranteeing those rights. The report which was carried out by a research team based in the Faculty of Law in NUI Galway, under the direction of Professor Gerard Quinn, was launched by Mr Tom Kitt T.D., Minister for State at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Report argues that a new UN treaty for peoples with disabilities would focus attention on disability and tailor general human rights norms to meet particular circumstances of persons with disabilities. It would add visibility to the disability issue within the human rights system and State parties would be clearer on their precise obligations in the disability field. Civil society would also be able to focus on one coherent set of norms rather than six different sets of norms.
According to Professor Gerard Quinn, Director of the NUI Galway Law School, “The core problem in the field of disability is the relative invisibility of persons with disabilities, both in society and under the existing international human rights instruments. What people with disabilities aspire to most is to have access to the same rights – and civic responsibilities – as all other persons”.
The Report was commissioned by the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights and funding for the project came mainly through the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Pictured are Professor Gerard Quinn with Mr Tom Kitt T.D., Minister for State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and the President, Dr. Iognaid Ó Muircheartaigh.
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Threat of war in Iraq will worsen situation for Kurdish people
A report released in January entitled, “The Ilisu Dam: Displacement of Communities and Destruction of Culture”, finds that the area around Ilisu, located in the Kurdish region of Turkey could be facing significant displacement of Kurdish people if the Ilisu dam is constructed. The report was written by Maggie Ronayne, Lecturer in the Department of Archaeology, NUI Galway and was published by the Kurdish Human Rights Project based in London.
The report also finds that the threat of the war in Iraq will make the situation for the Kurdish people more unbearable. If a million refugees flee from war in Iraq, large numbers will come to this area, adding further to the severe economic distress in the shanty areas of many towns and cities in the region.
The Ilisu dam, if constructed, will not benefit those most affected by it, will have devastating impacts on them, will cost €2 billion to build and would displace up to 78,000 mostly Kurdish people. The report argues, on economic, cultural and social grounds, that governments and institutions continuing to support the project would be complicit in what amounts to ethnic cleansing.
The report features extensive input from women and their organisations and makes women's case against the Ilisu dam the key indicator as to whether the project can ever be beneficial to all of those affected. It finds that the cost to women, all of those they care for and, as a result, to the whole of society and culture in Southeast Turkey, would be enormous.
Pictured are author of the report, Maggie Ronayne and Kerim Yildiz, the Kurdish Director of the Kurdish Human Rights Project, London.
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