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Centre for Irish Studies Newsletter

Nuachtlitir Ionad an Léinn Éireannaigh                                  Issue 11     Winter 2011

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FEATURES 

Ó Ghlúin go Glúin...
Treasa Ní Mhiolláin and Lilis Ó Laoire in conversation
IACI-NUI Galway Fellow 2011-12
Letter from Canada
Letter from Japan
Where are they now?
Irish Life and Culture Programme
Letter from Prague
MA in Irish Studies
Irish Studies Society
Meitheal: Irish Studies Graduate Research Group
Launch of PhD in Irish Studies Writing Group 
Comhrá Ceoil
Ómós Áite: Space/Place Reading Group
Mapping Spectral Traces International Network

Ó Ghlúin go Glúin...

Róisín Ní Mhainín, Sean-nós Dancer in Residence 2011-12 at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway

 

The Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway is delighted to announce the appointment of Róisín Ní Mhainín, a native of Rosmuc, as Sean-nós Dancer in Residence for 2012.  Róisín’s residency was formally launched on the 2 November 2011 at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway.  Dr Louis de Paor, Director of the Centre for Irish Studies and fear an tí for the evening, remarked in his introduction that Róisín’s appointment was an exciting continuation of the artist in residency scheme at the Centre and noted the continued support of Ealaín na Gaeltachta, Údarás na Gaeltachta and An Chomhairle Ealaíon this year.

Recognised as one of the first generation of female sean-nós dancers to gain widespread popularity, Róisín began dancing and competing when she was just four years of age.  She has developed a distinctive style of dancing which draws heavily on the various individual and regional characteristics of Connemara sean-nós dancing and is acknowledged by her peers as a leading exponent of sean-nós dance in the new millenium. Her success at An tOireachtas further demonstrates her leading role among sean-nós dancers and within the wider traditional arts community. 

Over the past number of years, Róisín has performed extensively in stage productions and shows such as A Midnight Court with Seán Tyrell, Between the Jigs and the Reels and The Well in Vicar Street and further afield at the Milwaukee Festival and Las Vegas. In 2003, she travelled to South America to participate in a series of concerts as part of President Mary McAleese’s tour of Brazil. Treasa Ní Mhiolláin, Sean-nós Singer in Residence for 2010-11 handed over the baton eloquently, recalling the first time she saw Róisín dance and the many stages on which they have appeared together since that time.    

Much closer to home at NUI Galway last week, Róisín once again captivated family, friends and admirers when she danced at the launch, ably assisted and accompanied by Verena Commins (accordion) and Tim Collins (concertina). In his address, an tOllamh Gearóid Denvir commented that Róisín drew from the wellspring of traditional culture in Connemara through her steps. Indeed, he asserted that the sean-nós dance culture of Connemara was quite unique and Róisín’s appointment at the Centre for Irish Studies emphasised the university’s commitment to and recognition of the value of that tradition. 

The Centre for Irish Studies is particularly delighted that during the period of her residency, Róisín will participate in a series of performances and also importantly, give a series of sean-nós dance workshops at NUI Galway. The workshops at NUI Galway will be open to the public commencing on 11 January 2012. For further details concerning the forthcoming workshops please see:

http://www.nuigalway.ie/research/centre_irish_studies/documents/ceardlann_roisin_eanair_2012.pdf 

See related news items with regard to Róisín Ní Mhainín

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFdxlNQCiWY

http://www.rte.ie/tv/thereeldeal/s1ep4.html

This project is funded by Ealaín na Gaeltachta, Údarás na Gaeltachta and An Chomhairle Ealaíon in association with the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI, Galway.

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Irish Studies Seminar Series, 2011-12

Treasa Ní Mhiolláin and Dr Lillis Ó Laoire in conversation about her life in song

The first seminar of the Irish Studies Seminar Series, 2011-12 was also the closing event of the year-long tenure of Sean-nós Singer in Residence 2010-11, Treasa Ní Mhiolláin. A first for the Centre, this seminar took place in the ’overseas’ location of Árainn, home of Treasa, and followed the highly successful model of public interview-style seminars conducted by the Centre in previous years.

                            

Treasa Ní Mhoilláin in conversation with Lillis Ó Laoire, Ostan Árainn, Árainn, 9 September 2011.

In his opening address to those gathered for the occasion, Centre Director Dr Louis De Paor highlighted the immense value created by the Sean-nós Artist in Residence scheme, both to the academic community and the community of practice of sean-nós singers in particular. And it was in this spirit of exchange that NUI Galway attempted to reciprocate just some of Treasa’s numerous visits to its Galway city campus by visiting Treasa’s home-place of Árainn on the evening to listen to Treasa speak of her life in song.

Under the knowledgeable guidance of Lillis Ó Laoire, the audience traced the steps of Treasa’s life, from her earliest memories of singing through to her own subsequent realisation that her singing was representative and the acme of a much wider community of practice. In her own quiet and modest way, we learned of Treasa’s developing role as ambassador for the unique singing style of Árainn. Her successes at Oireachtas na Gaeilge, touring ventures alongside De Dannan and Clannad and her role in transmission – internationally, nationally and locally, were also noted by Lillis over the course of the evening. The seminar, of course, finished in song: Treasa’s Donal Óg led the way, and Lillis Ó Laoire extracted songs from the audience and after repeated requests, added his own voice to the proceedings. The event was recorded for the Centre for Irish Studies’ archive.

The evening continued in the bar of Óstan Árainn, where entertainment continued with the versatile Mulkerrin brothers, whose song repertoire and style paid its own homage to their teacher Treasa Ní Mhiolláin. The talents of the islanders presented themselves in song, dance, music and recitation as the night progressed. Our thanks to Treasa Ní Mhiolláin, the people of Árainn and Óstan Árainn, for a wonderful evening of songs and stories.

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Visiting Scholars

IACI-NUI Galway Fellow 2011-12

The IACI-NUI Galway Fellow for 2011-12 is Professor Donna L. Potts from Kansas State University. While doing research for her book The Pastoral Tradition in Contemporary Irish Poetry (University of Missouri Press, 2011), Donna became interested in the impact of the environmental movement on contemporary Irish literature and culture. During her research stay in Galway she plans to visit sites of recent environmental protests, interview writers whose work responds to these protests, and work with sociologists who have documented Ireland’s environmental movement.

Professor Potts delivered a lecture ’The Wearing of the Deep Green’: Environmentalism in Irish Literature and Culture’ on 8 December 2011, as part of the Irish Studies Seminar Series 2011-12, at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway.

Professor Donna Potts, IACI-NUI Galway Fellow 2011-12

Locked in the Landscape’s Fierce Embrace: Francis Harvey’s Environmental Ethos
Professor Donna Potts, Kansas State University, USA.

My project here at the Centre for Irish Studies grew out of the book project I’d just completed on the pastoral tradition in contemporary Irish poetry, which concludes by exploring how various environmental movements around Ireland are actually manifestations and continuations of the pastoral impulse to recognise and celebrate the deep connection between nature and human nature. Whereas classical pastoral had been anthropocentric, more recent versions of it by poets like Michael Longley and Eavan Boland have been more environmentally aware, more biocentric - less focused on the human subject, more willing to regard nature as not merely setting or backdrop for human action, but as integral to it.

The Wearing of the Deep Green: Contemporary Irish Literature and Environmentalism examines how the Irish environmental movement and the contemporary Irish literature which inspired and was inspired by it have been shaped by a variety of social, political, and economic forces - from British colonisation, to the rhetoric of Irish cultural nationalism, to the unique role of Catholicism in Irish culture, to feminist efforts to restore redefine women’s relationship to the landscape, and to the recent phenomenon known as the Celtic Tiger and the concurrent impulse to become as involved in global environmental activism as in more local environmental efforts. While Liam Leonard’s The Environmental Movement in Ireland (2008) and other works document the growing momentum of the Irish environmental movement, and scholars have examined individual Irish writers from an environmental perspective, there has been little comprehensive effort to examine Irish environmental writing from within its cultural contexts. My study relies on environmental theory to analyse Irish literature, and places the Irish environmental movement within the contexts of Irish national and postcolonial discourses.

Since arriving in Galway, I’ve found directions I never expected to find. I ended up being exposed to and even becoming involved in a range of environmental projects in Galway and around Ireland. Even at my four-year-old daughter’s school, they’re introduced to the concept of biodiversity, and they have a garden that they tend; our neighbors down the canal, furious about the amount of litter thrown into the beautiful park across from Ward’s Shop, relentlessly fight it by showing up at the park with gloves and their bags to pick up litter, and my daughter and I joined in. She’s now obsessed with picking up litter wherever she goes.

When Tadhg Foley found out about my project, he gave me Maureen O’Connor’s book The Female and the Species: The Animal in Irish Women’s Writing on animal rights; the knowledge that Galway’s own Richard Martin was responsible for cruelty to animals laws around the world led me to spend more time investigating the issue of animal rights than I might have otherwise.

I also felt a compelling need to focus on a poet whose great sensitivity to the landscape of Donegal is its own form of environmental activism, and certainly inspires it in others. Moya Cannon’s interview with Francis Harvey, which Louis de Paor shared with me earlier in the term, inspired me to think about Harvey as an environmental poet, whose dedication to hillwalking and to poetry led him into all areas of the natural sciences, ultimately producing extraordinary, environmentally sensitive poetry. I made a trip to Donegal Town with Eamon Little to interview Francis Harvey, now in his eighties. Eamon shared his own recordings of Harvey, and I’ve been working on a festschrift for Harvey, for which I’ve received many contributions of poems, critical essays, and creative non-fiction. After my return to the US I plan to submit the festschrift to a publisher.

Further information on Professor Donna Potts:

http://www.k-state.edu/english/people/alph/potts.html

http://overtheedgeliteraryevents.blogspot.com/2011/10/erin-buttner-stephen-byrne-donna-potts.html

For further details concerning the IACI-NUI Galway Fellowship scheme for 2012-13 please contact Dr Louis de Paor: louis.depaornuigalway.ie

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Letter from Canada

Fifty-two musical days in the west of Ireland
Professor Christine Beckett, Concordia University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

 

Christine Beckett, Galway 2011.

A chairde,

It was a great honour to be invited to join the Centre for Irish Studies on the campus of NUI Galway, as a visiting Research Scholar in music, in March and April of 2011.  I was heart-warmed by the welcome and generosity shown by Centre Director Dr Louis de Paor in absentia, by Dr Nessa Cronin, by Centre Administrator Samantha Williams, by all the other faculty members, the brilliant doctoral candidates, and the students at every level. On 1 March 2011, the day of my arrival in Galway, the sun was blazing in a hot blue sky and the grass everywhere was as green as June, though the trees were bare. The sun, it seemed, continue to shine throughout my wonderful, exciting fifty-two days in the west of Ireland.

Why was I there in the first place? As a music perception and cognition researcher, I had become intrigued by certain listening and production aspects of Irish traditional music (ITM), after taking a course taught by Dr Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin in the School for Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University, which is my home institution in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Gearóid is a Clare man, a champion concertina player, and a long-time member of the Kilfenora Céili Band (Tim Collins now occupies ’Gearóid’s chair’). Gearóid encouraged me to start perception research on ITM because there is so little of it done to date. He further encouraged me to spend time in Ireland during my sabbatical research leave 2010-2011. I had already run two experimental studies, one on perception and production, the other on aural analysis of, double jigs, in Montréal at my research lab BRAMS [1], before coming to Ireland. Using Galway as my home base, my main goal was to run the second study (aural analysis) again, with Irish musician and non-musician participants. But first, a word about the experiments…

In the first study (Beckett & Eck, 2010), participants unfamiliar with ITM listened for 30 minutes to recordings of 6 Irish jigs, as performed on a wooden whistle by one of Gearóid’s esteemed Montréal colleagues. (Musicians and non-musicians with high experience of ITM were excluded because it was thought that being familiar with the music would give them an unfair advantage.)  Participants heard the jigs either once only, or twice each, or four times each, in mixed-up orders. At the end of 30 minutes, participants were asked if they could ’make up a new jig and sing it’; they were given 2 min to prepare their ’new’ jigs.  I had predicted that participants would refuse even to attempt this task, and would run screaming from the room. My co-author Doug Eck thought that it would be an easy task. Results were somewhere in between. No-one refused to try; everyone was able to produce a few hummity-hummity bars of typical tunes, tempos and rhythms in six-eight time; and musicians were significantly better than non-musicians at making 8-bar, contrasting A and B parts, with repeats. Because the ability to produce the structure was so markedly different between the two groups of participants, the second study asked the question, what do people hear as the structural segments of the tunes.

In the second study (Beckett 2011 a, b), participants heard 4 of the original whistle jigs, and 3 of the sung jigs produced by participants in the first study. They listened to each jig twice. The first time was to get familiar with the tune; no response or action was needed. On the second listening, participants use the computer Enter key to mark dividing points between what they heard as important structural segments of that particular jig.  There were no wrong answers; it was a truly free exploration of how different people reported they heard the jigs.  In Montréal it was possible (as noted in the first study) to find participants with little to no exposure to ITM.  In the second study, both ITM musicians, and non-musician listener-devotés of ITM were included, as well as musician and non-musician participants who were naïve about ITM.

The results in Montréal indicated that the more familiar with ITM was a participant, the more finely-grained were the segments marked as structural units. No-one marked merely the entire A and B parts. Some participants marked AABB. Those basic divisions were included in responses as the divisions between segments became more and more fine-grained, but many, many more segment-division points (up to 32) were marked by experienced ITM performers and listeners than by naïve participants in Montréal. What would I find in Ireland?

 

Connemara, 2011. Photograph, Christine Beckett.

Well, first, in Ireland it was basically impossible to find anyone who had not been exposed to ITM. And in Galway, honestly, it was hard to find non-musicians! However, over the two months of my residency at Ionad an Léann Éireannaigh, slowly but surely I found 24 participants, roughly half and half musician performers and non-musician/non-performer listeners. The pattern of more finely-grained perception of structural segment divisions was even more pronounced in Ireland (up to 62 divisions!). This confirmed my tentative interpretation of the Montréal results as indication that high familiarity with ITM inclines listeners to a ’microscopic’ listening style.

In talking with the Irish participants, I gained some indications of why this might be so. ITM is learned young, by ear, by demonstration, and slowly at first. Ornaments, too, must be learned carefully and properly located, note-by-note. Eventually, players who teach also find tiny segments to concentrate on, to help their students master local technical and musical challenges; these tiny units do not always respect what a Euro-classical theorist would deem to be the ’phrases’. Over a lifetime of familiarity, seasoned ITM players and listeners come to find the greatest richness in those subtle virtuosic variations between performances of highly-overlearned, intimately familiar tunes, variations which lie truly at the note and ornamentation level. To make a visual analogy, participants familiar with the Euro-classical way of thought would perceive a forest and be aware, perhaps, of some trees.  ITM-savvy listeners would perceive the very veins of the leaves.

I worked with participants from as far south as Cork and as far north as Drumcliff, ’under bare Ben Bulben’s head’. Many months later, back in Montréal, I remain deeply touched by the free sharing of perceptions, knowledge, and wisdom of all the Irish participants.

Back at the Centre, I was welcomed to classes, including those of Verena Commins,  the Ómos Áite: Space/Place Research Group, and the last two classes of the sean nós singer in residence Treasa Ní Mhiolláin (a real challenge - I missed every lenition!). I was showered with course-packs, spending many nights at my B&B reading into the wee hours. Why were early céili bands considered a ’corruption’ of tradition, I would ask myself one night: then the next night read the thoughts of Seán Ó Riada on the matter (and different thoughts from others!). Samantha Williams made sure I could print documents and gave me much help, especially with posters when looking for participants for my project. Nessa Cronin made sure I had all necessary university support available, internet, a phone, and a library card. Hardiman library archivist Vera Orschel (herself a fine fiddler) helped me explore the Joe Burke collection. I learned so much. 

And I had a bit of craic. I went out - to Tígh Cóilí, to the Crane, to Áras na nGael, to many other spots where the music would meander into action at ’half nine’ which usually meant more like ’three quarters ten’. Never mind! The sessions were always, always, worth the wait. The Éigse at Spiddal - the speeches, the prizes, the singing, dancing, puppetry, people travelling in from so far away - thrilling and unforgettable. So many other highpoints: the generosity of Lillis Ó Laoire; hearing Mick O’Brien’s sweet pipes; hearing Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich sing ’An Raibh Tú ar an gCarraig’ (oh, that heart-wrenching low note!); visiting Katharine Mannion’s thriving Suzuki school of music at Athenry, such a contrast to pub sessions… the music stores, the books, instruments, CD’s…  being tutored in Gaelige by Máirtín Ó Meáchair (Is múinteoir maith é)… I could go on and on, but I see I already have.

A few last “GRMA”s are in order (and if I have left anyone out, you are surely thanked too):

The chaplains at NUI Galway let me practice on the piano in the chapel common room. The folks at St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church asked me to please (!) come in daily to practice on their organ, an experience unique in my nearly 40 years as an organ builder’s wife. Fellow visiting Research Scholar Scott Spencer from USA was a delightful colleague with whom to share an office. Tim Collins took Scott and me around the Burren on one of my last days in the west of Ireland. I did enjoy Easter weekend in Dublin, but the incomparable welcome, music, spirit and scholarship of Galway stay in my heart as the best part of Ireland.

References

Beckett, C. (2011a). Auditory structural parsing of Irish jigs: The role of listener experience. Oral presentation to the conference of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC 2011), Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, USA.

Beckett, C. (2011b).  Human perception of Irish jigs: Two pioneering studies.  Concordia University Music Department Faculty Research Series Inaugural Lecture, Montréal.

Beckett, C. & D. Eck. (2010). The 37^th Jig (well, the 25^th anyway). Poster presented at the 11^th International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC 11), Seattle, WA, USA.

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[1] The International Laboratory for BRAin, Music, & Sound http://www.brams.org/

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Letter from Japan

Professor Masaya Shimokusu, English Department, Doshisha University

My institutional affiliation is Doshisha University which is situated in Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto is a mid-sized city, but always vibrant with tourists attracted by a great number of historical sites, just like Galway. Every summer Kyoto lures a huge crowd, although it is awfully hot here. Fortunately, this summer, I could avoid the heat of Kyoto and was honorably invited as a Visiting Scholar of the Centre for the Irish Studies, NUI Galway from 29 August to 24 September 2011. I would like to thank Dr Louis de Paor for the approval of my stay, and Dr Nessa Cronin for her hearty and sincere help with my research. I am also grateful to Dr Riana O’Dwyer (Department of English) as she consulted my research plan and paved the way for my coming to Galway. I wish to show my gratitude to Dr Lillis Ó Laoire (Scoil na Gaeilge), since Dr Ó Laoire answered my queries on Irish folklore both at informal meetings and via email. I would also finally like to thank the university’s librarians for their assistance with my research.

   

Professor Masaya Shimokusu, Dr Riana O’Dwyer and Mr Pat O’Dwyer at the ’Autograph Tree’, Coole Park, Co. Galway, September 2011.

My research stay in Galway was short and in the most hectic period of the university calendar, the beginning of September. I came to the Centre for my three-year research project, ’The Change of Folk Tales into Artistic Works and Their Globalization’. It has been funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology through its Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) Programme (No. 21520295), and in the last two years, I had made a few folkloric research trips - albeit my being a literary scholar - Orkney and Northern Ireland. Therefore at the Centre, I originally planned to conduct research in a similar vein. However because the paper I read at the last year’s conference of the North East Irish Culture Network held at the University of Sunderland was picked up for the forthcoming publication project, Celtic Connections: Irish-Scottish Relations and the Politics of Culture, edited by Professor Willy Maley (University of Glasgow) and Dr Alison Younger (University of Sunderland), I decided to push forward my research on the subject treated in my paper from last year at the Centre.  The fruits of my research at the Centre will come out at the 9th North East Irish Cultural Network conference with the Scottish Irish Network, which will be held, from 11-13 November again at the University of Sunderland. 

’Selkies’ and Sea Women 
I have focused on the folk tales or legends of ’Seal Woman’ as my research subject. In the course of my research, Mr Joseph Woods, the Director of Poetry Ireland, suggested an interesting piece of poetry written by Scottish poet Robin Robertson, dedicated to the Irish-American poet Michael Donaghy, in memoriam. In the poem, the dead poet temporarily comes back as a seal. The poet, who was also a musician, takes off the sealskin and plays the bodhrán. When a new day comes, he leaves with an empty glass and a grin, putting the sealskin on again. Robertson must know that folk tales or legends of Seal People exist both in Ireland and in Scotland. In both countries, stories about supernatural sea mammals are often accompanied with the image of death. Of course, there are differences between the stories of both of the areas as well as commonalities.  For example, in some cases, the Irish seal people are called as ’mermaids’.  Actually, the title of Robertson’s poem is ’Selkie’, which is the appellative for the seal man or woman mainly used in Scotland. Consulting various materials which I collected during my stay at the Centre, I am now examining how Robertson bridges various gaps to conjure the dead poet from the other world, fully making use of the differences and commonalities between Irish and Scottish seal people folk stories. (Since the paper also discusses the mermaid poetry of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, written in Irish, and Seamus Heaney’s poem with a Gaelic title, I was very fortunate to be given some instruction on Gaelic expressions and pronunciations by Dr Cronin at the Centre.  I here again wish to show my gratitude to Dr Cronin.)

’Galway as a Transatlantic Port’: Joyce’s Journalism

The following is an episode related to my secondary research purpose at the Centre; I think that this may draw some attentions of Joyceans who may have in mind a plan to come to Galway in order to read a specific document.  While some of my recent research deals with poetry, I started my academic career as a Joycean, and I am still interested in this area. At last year’s symposium of the James Joyce Society of Japan, I read a paper focusing on young Joyce’s journalistic activities.  One of the articles I dealt with was Joyce’s ’The Mirage of the Fisherman of Aran: England’s Safety Valve in Case of War’, originally written in Italian. In the essay, the narrator, possibly Joyce himself, opens a map attached to a pamphlet. The editor of Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing by Joyce in Oxford World’s Classics, former NUI Galway Professor Kevin Barry, annotates that the pamphlet appearing there is ’ Galway as a Transatlantic Port’ and that it is in the archive of the Galway Harbour Commissioners. Before leaving Japan, I had expected to read it during my stay at the Centre.  But the reality is that I could not even arrive at the archive of the Galway Harbour Commissioners. Thanks to the help of some librarians at the James Hardiman Library, I found a pamphlet with the same title in the National Library of Ireland. However, it could not be the one Joyce consulted since Joyce’s article appeared in Italian paper Ill Piccolo della Sera on 12 Sept. 1912 and the pamphlet treats a public meeting held in Dublin on 25 Sept. 1912.  In addition to that, no presenter at the public meeting clearly mentioned the Galway Harbour as ’England’s safety valve in case of war’.  In fact, in the notes section of Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, Prof. Barry quotes the passage in which the strategic significance of Galway Harbour in the case of war is stressed. A detailed analysis of the pamphlet is still a work in progress for me at the moment, but this research absolutely convinced me of young Joyce’s astuteness as a journalist. Just about two weeks before The Times, Freeman’s Journal and other newspapers reported the plan of Galway Harbour as a trans-Atlantic port - these are quoted in the pamphlet I read at the National Library - Joyce already published the article on the scheme for the Italian newspaper, with a great stock of Syngean imagery. 

Yes, I could feel Joyce’s highly sensitive and quick talent as a journalist, but could not read the original pamphlet itself after all. It is certain that I could not fully devote myself to the search for the document during my stay, but it is also certain that the document cannot be easily accessed. Since the pamphlet, Galway as a Tranatlantic Port, is the genuine primary document, which is considered that Joyce directly referred to, I hope that many scholars of Joyce will directly read and examine it. My suggestion for Joyceans outside Ireland is that if they really wish to read the pamphlet, they should stay at Galway for a certain period, having full determination to find it.

Salthill

The residence where my family and I stayed was situated in Salthill, the famous seaside resort area beside Galway Bay. Several times I walked along the seashore Promenade and kicked at the prom wall of Blackrock, which is at the end of Promenade, as local walkers and joggers do. My family and I could even enjoy the moon on the glassy water surface of Galway Bay just like a postcard, walking back home after a concert of Irish traditional music and dance. However, nearly everybody I met at Galway said that the weather was the worst this September. Actually, on the day when the awful winds attacked the western coast of Ireland, my family and I appeared in the evening news of RTÉ television for one or two seconds. We looked like tourists foolishly roaming the coast even in the storm, but we just tried to go to the nearest bus station to come to the university. Of course, even this is a kind of family memory. 

I really wish to have another chance to experience the Galway climate for a much longer period. A year has four seasons as you know. Of course, I hope to experience it, joining the Centre again.

Go raibh maith agat.
Masaya.

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Where are they now?

Dr John Eastlake, IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellow 2009-11 ( MA and PhD in Irish Studies, NUI Galway)

Dr John Eastlake has recently completed a two-year research project investigating links between Irish and Native American cultures and experiences through the work of Jeremiah and Alma Curtin. This work, supported by an IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2009-2011), was generously hosted by the Departments of Folklore and Modern Irish in University College Cork, where he is currently based.

John Eastlake at the Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2011

Jeremiah Curtin, and his wife, Alma Cardell Curtin, were among the earliest ethnologists to conduct fieldwork in Ireland, where they collected Irish-language stories, which they published in English translation to great success. Curtin, a nineteenth-century ethnologist and translator, sustained diverse interests throughout his life, rooted primarily in his love of languages. He is well known for his work in Ireland, and even more so for his literary translations of Polish and Russian literature, but one of his earlier occupations has received less attention. Curtin was a part of J.W. Powell’s team of linguists at the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1883 – 1891 engaged in producing a linguistic map of Native American languages. During this time, both Jeremiah and Alma criss-crossed America conducting fieldwork in many Native American communities.

In Eastlake’s research, Curtin’s time in Native America, the pivotal role played by his extraordinary wife, Alma, their work together in Ireland, and the links that bind it all together are being uncovered. Working extensively with the Curtin collection of papers held by the Milwaukee County Historical Society and, in particular, Alma’s rich travel diaries and correspondence, the story behind the Curtins’ fieldwork in Ireland and Native America has emerged. Though Curtin, born of Irish parents in the American Midwest, had what might be described as a hereditary interest in Irish stories, it was actually his first-hand experience of Native American story-telling traditions that informed his understanding of Irish stories that he collected in Irish-speaking areas of Kerry, Limerick, Galway and Donegal at the end of the nineteenth century.

            

                                           Milwaukee County Historical Society

The relationship between Natives of North America, and Natives in Ireland, is a dynamic and developing area of interest in Irish Studies. Increasing attention is being paid both to historical and cultural encounters between Irish people and indigenous people of the Americas, and also, to how and why people are conceptualised as Native in differing circumstances, and what unfolds when one Native encounters another. Eastlake’s previous research has explored the parallels and connections demonstrated by the practice of Native Autobiography in Ireland and Native America, and now his work on Jeremiah and Alma Curtin is extending that investigation in new directions. His work has been accepted recently into a Mellon Scholarly Monograph Initiative, Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World, and will be published in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Press.

Dr John Eastlake completed his PhD in Irish Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway in 2008, and was the recipient of an IRCHSS Postdoctoral Fellowship 2009-2011.

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Irish Life and Culture Programme, Semester 1 2011-12

Visiting Students from Hobart and William Smith/Union Colleges, New York State
Programme Leader, Professor Kevin Dunn, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Irish Life and Culture Student Fieldtrip (with local dog!) Aran Islands, Galway, September 2011.

This semester, I have been fortunate to lead a study-abroad programme for nineteen American students. The students, from the Hobart and William Smith/Union Colleges consortium in New York State, participated in a programme that NUI Galway has hosted for many years. Students take any two courses of their own interest from across the course catalogue at NUI Galway, but they are also required to take two common courses run through the Centre for Irish Studies. The first is an extensive course on Irish Life and Culture (ILC), taught via four modules covering Irish History, Irish Society, Irish Literature in English, and Irish Literature in Irish. In many ways, the ILC course is akin to having four separate courses, though the overlap and connective tissue that binds the four modules together makes the whole experience far greater than the sum of its parts.

One of the most significant and enriching aspects of the ILC course are the weekend excursions organised for the benefit of the students. In addition to a day trip to Inis Mór, this semester we travelled to Dublin, Cork, the Dingle Peninsula, Derry and Belfast for 2 and 3 day weekend fieldtrips. These excursions were extremely varied and students found something different to love from each trip. Some were unexpectedly enthralled by the visit to the GAA Museum at Croke Park, and some were captivated by the poetry reading held in Cork just for us, while others were moved to tears on the walk through Derry and its troubled history.

The other common course that all the students took was my own seminar on the ’Political Implication of Irish Cultural Production’. The course was largely a Cultural Studies survey course, with the majority of empirical examples coming from Ireland, and it was geared to explicitly connect with the ILC course. For example, during the two weeks preceding our visit to Northern Ireland, we investigated the politics of Orange parades, wall murals, images and symbols, and government advertising campaigns in the North. The course also aimed to get students to connect to Galway and its rich local culture. Students were required to attend and write an essay on at least four local events, ranging from musical gigs, spoken word performances, theatrical productions, sports events, museums and ’official’ guided tours. Finally, students had to sit down and interview a local cultural producer themselves. Happily, they engaged with a wide spectrum of artists in Galway, from the Shop Street buskers and Farmer’s Market painters to local slam poets and artisans.

Throughout the semester, the students enjoyed opportunities that are not readily available to most NUI Galway students. They, and I, are deeply appreciative of everything NUI Galway and the Centre for Irish Studies has done for them. 

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Ahoj!

Letter from Prague

Aisling Nolan and Leanne Lynch, BA students at the Centre for Irish Studies, on their BA Semester abroad at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, Autumn 2011.

Ahoj! Greetings from the NUI Galway Irish Studies contingent abroad!

Known as the city where time stood still and that of a thousand spires! And for us our Erasmus base for our semester abroad! We are very fortunate to now be able to call Prague some form of home. We never thought in talking about this city before we left Galway that we would ever refer to it as home but for the last few months, that’s what it has been. It surprising how quickly you settle into a place and when names, places and people become familiar and when everything that once concerned you about it seems to disappear. From its Old Town Squares to ultra-modern dance buildings the charm of this city has won us over.

The transition from tourist to resident has been a slow and expensive one (eating out every night, ghost tours, and museums and shopping - not good for the bank balance!).  But there is nothing better than strolling along the river, exploring the side streets or sitting in Old Town Square just people-watching. Add a glass of wine and suddenly you feel very suave, chic and European. (Just be careful of Czech wine! Very strong and we’ll say no more!)

Prague is a cultural hub and the mass influx of international students means it’s a pot of cultures, languages and traditions. It’s also great for us to practice the cúpla focail as Gaeilge. It is also a city of extremes, from its architecture and history to its weather but thus far those have made for an unforgettable experience. We have seen all seasons in our time here. From the glorious 30ºC heat and endless days of sunshine to the current minus degree figures and predictions of snow which makes the 8am starts slightly painful, it’s something about Prague we won’t forget in a hurry. 8am starts! Yes we said it! Heading to college in the dark some mornings is aided by the great classes we are taking. Often being the only Irish person, or indeed fluent English speaker, in the class makes for interesting debates and viewpoints. From classes on Hollywood and the Czech Republic to Czech culture and language classes we are taking full advantage of what is offered to us here.

Spending the first few days in Prague, we got hopelessly lost, got on random trams and walked A LOT! We have found Prague a very easy city to navigate, trams run every few minutes and as students we have a three month travel pass which cost us the equivalent of €30.

So far, the Irish Studies Abroad experience has been all and more we expected it to be. We have made some wonderful friends, it feels like we have known them a lot longer than the few short months we have been here and no doubt we will be friends for a long time to come. We have been very lucky and have taken full advantage of being in Prague. We have seen all the sights and even ventured further than the Czech borders to Berlin, Vienna and Budapest: to say we have had an amazing experience I think is an understatement.

With our time here in Prague soon reaching its end, and our return to Galway imminent, (excited but tinged with sadness that we have to leave), it’s so hard to believe that what began last March is almost over. We have enjoyed every minute so far and will no doubt make the most of the time left.

From a FREEZING cold Prague!

Aisling Nolan and Leanne Lynch

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MA in Irish Studies

The Irish Community in London
Dan Griffin, Journalist The Irish World
(MA in Irish Studies, 2010-11)

In the 2011 London hurling final, 11 of the starting players were from Galway. Such indicators give a picture of the extent of emigration from the west of Ireland. In many ways, the state of the GAA in places like London, New York, and Sydney acts as a barometer for the state of the Irish economy. If one were to graph the economic fortunes of Ireland over the past six or so decades a wave pattern would emerge, showing peaks and troughs, growth and decline at fairly regular intervals.

Troughs bring high levels of unemployment and, inevitably, a corresponding level of emigration as young people travel abroad to gain experience or make a living otherwise unavailable at home. Traditionally the destinations have been London, Birmingham, and Manchester in the UK; New York, Boston, and San Francisco in the US; and Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne in Australia.

With the country’s most recent economic travails, however, new destinations have started to emerge. Dubai in particular has attracted a considerable number of young Irish people in recent times. This reflects a change in the typical Irish emigrant. While trying to avoid sweeping generalisations it is fair to say that the Irish abroad were traditionally synonymous with blue-collar, casual labour. Now, as Patrick Dolan, a young Irish executive with a London-based finance company, told me recently, the Irish are perceived as very well educated, hard working, and with excellent communication skills. The choice of new destinations represents an emerging, ambitious diaspora with strong professional acumen.

The Irish abroad have always had a very strong sense of community. Recently I got a job in London as a reporter with one of two weekly newspapers which serve the Irish expat community. Both of these papers cost £1.20. In a time when we are constantly reminded about the slow death of the printed press the fact that two such newspapers can survive is evidence of the strength of the Irish community abroad.

But there are also communities within communities. In the mid-twentieth century London experienced a large influx of Irish immigrants. This group settled mostly in the north of the city in areas such as Camden, Cricklewood, and Kilburn. Around them grew enduring institutions of the cultural emigrant identity: the Galtymore and the Crown in Cricklewood are just two of a number of establishments where young Irish men and women would go to watch showbands in the 1960s and 70s. The Irish pubs of north London have also been credited with helping to revitalise the traditional music scene, providing a melting pot environment for musicians from around the country to meet, collaborate and share tunes.

The Irish scene in north London peaked around the 60s and 70s, since then the area has become better known for its Afro-Caribbean associations as a new wave of immigrants arrived from the West Indies and the Irish began to spread throughout the capital.

Today there are two distinct Irish demographics within the city. Members of the older generation can still be found around all the traditional Irish enclaves. After thirty years or more living in England their accents are still as strong as the day they left Mayo, or Galway, or Clare (and many of them do tend to be from the west). They keep up to date with the goings on at home by buying the Irish county and national papers from Mandy’s on Willesden High Road.

Then there are the new arrivals. It is difficult to specify a geographic stronghold of the ’nouveau Irish’ in London as they were not inherently drawn to areas which boasted a high number of Irish people. This is an important distinction between the immigrants of the 60s and the immigrants of the 2000s, and represents a new destination within the same city as young graduates seek out different employment from their predecessors. There is no longer the same barrier between Irish and British culture that there once was. Irish people are now more confident and ready to assimilate into the social and business life of the UK. That Irish people can now come to the UK and achieve success in business, entertainment, sport, etc while maintaining an underlying appreciation of their cultural identity is a triumph and illustrates the success of our university system in producing confident, talented young women and men.

That many Irish graduates feel obliged to go abroad when they leave college is a disappointing failing of past governments. But these international forays are providing them with important experience and, also, a sense of empowerment which can be put to constructive use when they return home in the years to come. When the international GAA clubs start to get a bit weaker, we’ll know the country is on the way up again.

http://www.theirishworld.com/
http://www.theirishworld.com/article.asp?SubSection_Id="2&Article_Id="21297 "

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Irish Studies Society, NUI Galway

The Irish Studies Society promotes Irish culture on campus and helps to make cultural events in Galway more accessible to students. This year the Society has attended the Pan Pan Theatre’s production of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane, and a show by the Cathy Sharp Dance Ensemble called Step-by-Step, which were both very much enjoyed by the students who attended.

The Society also organises its own events for students, and so far this year we have put on a Comedy Night in which films of the best Irish stand-up comedians were shown and a Social Night in which the members of the Society got to know each other. Both events were well attended.

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Meitheal: Irish Studies Graduate Research Group

                         

                                                                  'Ag Obair’, Stella Frost. NUI Galway Art Collection.

Meitheal, the Irish Studies Graduate Research Group, continues to provide an invaluable platform to showcase new research currently underway by the Centre’s graduate community, while also providing a space for other doctoral scholars based in other cognate disciplines and institutions to present their work in an Irish Studies’ context.

In addition to creating and consolidating collegiality amongst resident and visiting scholars attached to the Centre, a glimpse of the range of research topics presented and discussed over the course of the Autumn semester demonstrates both the range and depth of interdisciplinary research currently underway with the graduate research community. Recent papers have included a presentation on the Dublin-based Góilín Singers’ Club, the role of women in Irish traditional burial rituals, and studies concerned with Irish attitudes towards local food pathways in Ireland.

Meitheal presentations for Semester 1 were as follows:

19 October 2011:        Performing Social Memory: The Góilín Singers’ Club, The Liberties and the Mapping of Oral History, 
                                 Therese McIntyre (PhD Candidate, Irish Studies).

2 November 2011:       Ar thóir na mban: The elusive female of Irish Folklore Rita O’Donoghue, (PhD Candidate, Irish Studies).

16 November 2011:     Exploring the Uniqueness of Irish Attitudes Towards Local and Sustainable Food, Brídín Carroll (PhD 
                                 Candidate, Geography).

7 December 2011:       Linguistic preferences and cultural implications of “pseudo-transparency”: the impact of publishers"
                                 “easy way out” on literary texts in translation Debora Biancheri, (PhD Candidate, Irish Studies).

Meitheal is a discussion group for the Irish Studies’ postgraduate community at NUI Galway. Its speakers are usually working on an advanced research project and the fortnightly meetings give an opportunity to present a work in progress for discussion. Visiting Scholars attached to the Centre for Irish Studies also regularly attend and present papers that they are working on for discussion at this forum.

Meitheal takes place in the Seminar Room, Centre for Irish Studies, at 2pm every second Wednesday of the month. We welcome new members to attend any of the sessions. Beidh fáilte roimh chách.

For further information contact irishstudiesnuigalway.ie

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Launch of PhD in Irish Studies Writing Group

In August 2011, the first official meeting of the Irish Studies PhD Writing Group was held at Martha Fox House. The initiative to establish the group was undertaken by both Sara Hannafin and Thérèse McIntyre, both of whom are third year doctoral candidates at the Centre for Irish Studies. While Meitheal, the Centre’s forum to allow researchers from all disciplines to present their work in a relatively informal atmosphere, represents an important opportunity for both improving ones presentation skills and receiving valuable feedback from peers and other academics alike, it was felt that there was a need for an additional focus on the writing aspect of thesis research.

The model for the PhD Writing Group is based upon a group founded recently by Barbara Heisserer, a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science and Sociology at NUI Galway. Barbara graciously offered her support to the formation of the Centre’s group as well as her outlines for the structure of the meetings and for the general guidelines concerning feedback. For this, the Writing Group would like to extend its sincere thanks.

The Writing Group currently convenes on a monthly basis at the Centre for Irish Studies.  It is hoped that the meetings will provide an occasion through which not only content, but the finer elements of writing such as grammar, style, and format may be discussed in a relaxed and positive atmosphere. In conjunction with the PhD Writing Group, a Blog/Facebook/Twitter page will be launched early in 2012 under the title An Sionnach Glic/The Sly Fox. These networking sites will offer a forum for discussion outside of the normal assemblies as well as providing links to relevant research sites, grammar rules, and all of the other necessities of PhD research.

While the Writing Group is primarily for PhD candidates, other students within the Centre that are involved in projects requiring a good deal of writing, i.e. MA and Final Year BA students, would be welcome to attend.

For more information concerning the PhD Writing Group please contact Sara Hannafin

( nuigalway.ie href="javascript:mail('s.hannafin2nuigalway.ie">s.hannafin2nuigalway.ie) or Thérèse McIntyre ( gmail.com href="javascript:mail('cailinrua.mcintyregmail.com">cailinrua.mcintyregmail.com)

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IRISH STUDIES RESEARCH GROUPS

Comhrá Ceoil

Irish Music and Dance Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies

History of Comhrá Ceoil

Since the establishment of the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway over ten years ago, the inflection of Irish Studies has included a strong research thread in music and dance studies. Through the recent development of the BA with Irish Studies undergraduate programme, Irish Music and Dance Studies is now firmly embedded into the fabric of undergraduate teaching and continues to be an important research cluster at the Centre for Irish Studies.

For a number of years now, a music and dance studies reading group, Comhrá Ceoil, has been meeting regularly as a forum for debate and discussion (and, it must be admitted, a little bit of gossip!). In light of the central role which music and dance studies has held at the Centre, we would like to develop the thematic possibilities of Comhrá Ceoil: Irish Music Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies and expand it to encompass a variety of research driven initiatives and events, both on and off campus.

Upcoming Events

As part of that ambition, we have three identified elements of Comhrá Ceoil on which to focus our attention over the course of 2012: Comhrá Ceoil, the reading group currently running; a new lecture series, the Comhrá Ceoil Martin Reilly Lecture; and a symposium, Comhrá Ceoil: New Directions for Irish Music and Dance Studies. The new occasional lecture series, named fittingly after the East Galway piper Martin Reilly, is inspired by Na Píobairí Uilleann's Notes and Narratives series. (For further information please see http://www.pipers.ie/home/_events.htm ). 

The first lecture in the occasional series which will take place at the Galway City Museum, will be given by Dr Jimmy O’Brien Moran in February 2012.  The other lynchpin event in the Comhrá Ceoil troika is a day long symposium to be hosted at the Centre for Irish Studies titled, Comhrá Ceoil: New Directions for Irish Music and Dance Studies in May 2012.  This day-long event will include an introductory address by Professor Harry White (Department of Music, UCD), a keynote lecture delivered by Dr Gerry Smyth (School of Humanities and Social Science, Liverpool John Moores University) and two panels of current research in the field drawn from researchers located at NUI Galway and the University of Limerick.

All of these events and initiatives will hopefully continue to expand the horizons of music and dance in Irish Studies.

Further information available from Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin  meabh.nifhuarthainnuigaway.ie  or Ms Verena Commins v.commins2nuigalway.ie

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Ómós Áite: Space/Place Reading Group

Collaboration with Ríonach Ní Néill

Galway Dancer in Residence 2010-2012
Arts & Older People Bursary Recipient 2010
supported by the Arts Council's Artist in the Community Scheme, managed by Create

Choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill was appointed Galway Dancer in Residence in 2010 in a scheme initiated by the Arts Council, and supported by Galway County Council/City Council Arts Offices, the Town Hall Theatre, the Discipline of Geography and the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway. She is also a current member of the Ómós Áite research group based at the Centre for Irish Studies.

Ríonach Ní Néill. Photograph © Ceara Conway.

About Ríonach

Ríonach Ní Néill is a Conamara-based choreographer and performer. She initially studied geography, completing her PhD (a comparative study of the late twentieth-century development of the Dublin city quays), at University College Dublin, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at Leicester University. She commenced her career as a dancer in 1996, performing with many Irish companies including Rex Levitates, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Daghdha Dance Co and Finola Cronin, and from 2002-06 she was a member of Tanztheater Bremen, Germany. She founded Ciotóg in 2006, for which she has choreographed eight works, which have been performed throughout Ireland and internationally. Her cross-disciplinary focus has led to collaborations with composers, actors, writers, musicians, visual artists, and architects.

Participation is also central to Ríonach’s dance practice and performance, and she founded Ar Mo Sheanléim, an Irish language dance for older people programme in the Conamara Gaeltacht (supported by Ealaíon na Gaeltachta) and The Macushla Dance Club for +50s, for which she has choreographed and commissioned a number of performance pieces, including a new dance film with video artist Joe Lee, premiering in Spring 2011. Ríonach was awarded the first Arts & Older People Bursary, supported by the Arts Council’s Artist in the Community Scheme managed by Create. In 2010 she was appointed lecturer at the Bundesakademie für Kulturelle Bildung Wolfenbüttel, Germany, where she teaches on Kulturgeragogik (arts education and older people).

 

Ríonach Ní Néill. Photograph © Ceara Conway.

About Ciotóg

Founded in 2006 by Ríonach Ní Néill, Ciotóg is a performance company dedicated to new engagements with dance. Ciotóg’s practice is inspired by the person behind the movement and an engagement with human and social issues. Dance can be a form of civic dialogue, creating spaces for us to engage with one another and our surroundings, provoke reflection and allowing us to imagine ourselves, and others differently. In creating dance that aims to reflect human diversity and reveal the individual behind the movement, Ciotóg works are often situated within a social context, integrating professional and non-vocational artists, and using the inately collaborative nature of the artform to engage with a wide range of artistic disciplines and people.

Based in the Conamara Gaeltacht, Ciotóg creates in Irish and in English. Its body of 12 works have been performed by a diverse range of performers, professional and non-vocational, aged 8 to 78, in different settings from theatres to streets, across Ireland and internationally. In 2011, the company tours to the US, UK and in Ireland.

Throughout the residency, Ríonach and her company Ciotóg have a programme of nationwide and international engagements, representing Galway dance throughout Ireland and abroad.

In the past year, her choreographies have been presented in the US at the Pittsburgh Childrens Festival, Germany at the Thüringer Theaterfestival Rudolstadt, the UK at Dance Exchange Birmingham and Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as throughout Ireland.

About the residency

Ríonach’s 2011/2012 residency is developing a dance festival and symposium from 19-21 April 2012, in association with the Centre for Irish Studies, and forms part of the Mapping Spectral Traces V International Conference to be held for the first time in NUI Galway. In aiming to introduce into NUI Galway’s interdisciplinary environment contemporary dance art’s contribution to research in cultural geography and social philosophy and in furthering links between artistic and academic practices, the symposium will partner choreographers and dance artists with counterparts in fields including neuroscience, architecture, health and planning, and will also include public platform performances of choreographies.

The symposium will also premiere FRAME, a performance collaboration between Ríonach, Michelle Fagan of FKL Architects and film-maker Marek Bogacki. A three-dimensional dialogue on how people are shaped by the spaces they create, FRAME has been created through the Arts Council Engaging with Architecture scheme.

Focusing on stimulating a public dialogue with dance, the festival will include live performances, film screenings, workshops and social dances, with events for all age groups and dance experiences and multi-format guides will be available for the works to introduce dance to the wider public.

Ríonach’s residency since 2010 is working towards the development of a large-scale landscape based work, focused along the north shore of Galway Bay, for which she is working with artists across media, and would be very interested to hear from anyone researching any aspect of the region, from marine life to economic development.

Ríonach is available to share her work, or provide an insight to dance from all levels of experience and interest, through workshops, classes, informal showings, and can be contacted at eolasciotog.ie or 087 4121775.

Galway Dancer in Residence 2010-2012 Scheme is supported by the Arts Council, Galway County Council, Galway City Council, Town Hall Theatre & National Univesrity of Ireland Galway.  

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Mapping Spectral Traces International Network

Website Launch, September 2011

Following on from the success of Mapping Spectral Traces IV international symposium, co-convened by Dr Nessa Cronin (Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway) and Dr Karen Till (Department of Geography, NUI Maynooth) in May 2011, we are delighted to announce the international launch of the Mapping Spectral Traces Network website: http://www.mappingspectraltraces.org/

The May conference marked the launch of an Irish-wide collaboration between Ómós Áite, based at the Centre for Irish Studies at NUI Galway, and the Space&Place Research Collaborative based at the Department of Geography, NUI Maynooth, and was one of a series of events organized by the Mapping Spectral Traces International Network to take place in 7 institutions across 5 countries in 2011-12. The next Mapping Spectral Traces international conference will take place in Galway, April 2012, and further details will be announced later this year.

 

St Joseph’s Holy Well, Leenane, Co. Galway. © Conor Foley, 2010

Mapping Spectral Traces is a trans-disciplinary, international group of scholars, practitioners, community leaders and artists who work with and in communities, contested lands and diverse environments. As part of a commitment to socially engaged creative practice, network members have worked collaboratively and individually on projects that ’map’ the unseen and unacknowledged difficult pasts that continue to structure present-day social relations. Acknowledging and addressing this emotive layer of the present and the past in contemporary life – in our cities, rural landscapes, and in ourselves – is a primary concern of this network. Through workshops, exhibitions, presentations, excursions, poster sessions and other forms of exchange, we have engaged in place-based social justice agendas in different parts of the world.

She Lay as if at Play. ©Mel Shearsmith, 2011

The network also serves to mediate and facilitate inter- and trans-disciplinary international dialogue to explore the role of the visual and performing arts in addressing such relevant concerns as ecological activism, ’deep mapping’, place-based memory work, geographies of trauma, postcolonial geographies and related topics. As such, it has the ability to address the unseen as well as the seen, and to wed a wider, more holistic approach to topics that too often have been the subject of narrow focus. We believe that our work should have social relevance; creative practices that enable communities and various publics to care for and represent their pasts will be particularly relevant for primary and secondary educators, for those engaged in research in higher education, and for professionals working in urban design and policy at the neighborhood scale. We also support the participation of younger and older artists and community leaders in our network who may not otherwise have access to institutional resources.

The network is linked through its members (artists, landscape architects, architects, scholars, urban professionals, curators, media experts, local historians and community-based practitioners), and to a number of related initiatives and research groupings across its partner collaboratives and institutions across the humanities, social sciences, and visual, conceptual and performing arts.

If you wish to receive further information about Mapping Spectral Traces and/or Ómós Áite: Space, Place Research Group based at NUI Galway, please contact Dr Nessa Cronin, Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway. Email: nessa.croninnuigalway.ie 

Convening Collaboratives

Land2 (University of Leeds, School of Design; UWE-Bristol, PLaCE Research Centre): http://www.land2.uwe.ac.uk/

Ómós Áite (National University of Ireland Galway, Centre for Irish Studies): http://www.nuigalway.ie/research/centre_irish_studies/omos_aite.html

PLaCE Minnesota (University of Minnesota Departments of Art and Landscape Architecture; College of Design)

PLaCE Research Centre (UWE-Bristol, Faculty of Creative Arts, Humanities and Education, UK): http://www.uwe.ac.uk/sca/research/place/

PLaCE Scotland (University of Dundee, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design):
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/research

The Space&Place Research Collaborative (National University of Ireland Maynooth, Department of Geography): http://geography.nuim.ie/research/space-place

Department of Landscape Architecture, University of Melbourne

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This online newsletter is published by the Centre for Irish Studies.  Any views, comments, or suggestions are welcome and should be forwarded to Nessa Cronin, Editor at nessa.croninnuigalway.ie or Samantha Williams, Technical Editor at samantha.williamsnuigalway.ie

 

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