Leagan Gaeilge   Text Version   Display: Zoom (-) (+)   View ( Normal High contrast ) Printer Friendly  A to Z  Sitemap

Centre for Irish Studies Newsletter

Nuachtlitir Ionad an Léinn Éireannaigh                       Issue 12     Spring/Summer 2012

| Cover Stories| Back Issues |

FEATURES 

Irish Music Studies Symposium in assocation with Cómhrá Ceoil
Martin Reilly Lecture Series
Mapping Spectral Traces V
NUI Galway/IACI Visiting Scholar 2011/12
2012/13 IACI Scholar Announced
New Irish Studies Online Module
PhD Graduations at the Centre
3rd Year BA with Irish Studies Research project presentations
Irish Studies Seminar Series
Comhrá Ceoil: Irish Music and Dance Studies at the Centre
Ómós Áite
Meitheal
Irish Studies Student Society

Irish Music Studies Symposium in assocation with Cómhrá Ceoil

From L to R: Geraldine Cotter, Daithí Kearney, Nicholas Carolan, Gerry Smyth, Verena Commins, Gearóid O Tuathaigh, Orfhlaith Ní Bhriain, Harry White, Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, Niall Keegan and Thérése McIntyre.

Comhrá Ceoil, supported by the Centre for Irish Studies, NUIG was pleased to host the first in a planned series of symposia in Irish Music and Dance Studies which took place on 18th May 2012, at Martha Fox House, Distillery Road, NUI Galway. Researchers at the Centre for Irish Studies, NUIG and at the Irish World Academy of Music, UL, strategic partner universities, presented research under the theme of ’New Directions in Irish Music and Dance Studies’. Professor Harry White (University College Dublin) opened proceedings and the keynote speaker was popular music scholar Dr Gerry Smyth (Liverpool John Moores University).  Professor White, a leading figure in Irish musical thought, offered a challenge to those present to open up the discourse of Irish music and dance studies and announced that he was pleased to be in Galway contributing to that process.  Dr Smyth presented a critical and provocative riposte to previous interpretations of the iconic post-punk band, The Pogues as a diasporic entity. 

Contributors from the Centre for Irish Studies in Galway and the Irish World Academy of Music demonstrated the diversity of research currently underway between both institutions.  The panels were ably chaired by Prof Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, of our own parish, and Dr Daithí Kearney (DKIT) in which Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy, Oireachtas Cruinne na hÉireann and set dancing in Lough Mountain, among other topics, all subjected to the critic’s gaze. Comhrá Ceoil was delighted to welcome additional guests and was particularly pleased to have Nicholas Carolan from the Irish Traditional Music Archive drop in unannounced! 

|Top|

Martin Reilly Lecture Series

Comhrá Ceoil, supported by the Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway was pleased launch the Martin Reilly Lecture series this year, with guest speakers Jimmy O’Brien Moran in February and Máire O’Keeffe in May.

The series is dedicated to Martin Reilly, the celebrated East Galway uilleann piper, who left a rich musical legacy to generations of pipers. It offers an opportunity to researcher-practitioners in Irish traditional music and dance to present their research in a public forum and is reflective of the increasing interest in the study of these traditions.

The inaugural Martin Reilly Lecture took place on 21 February 2012, with piper Dr Jimmy O'Brien Moran as speaker.  Jimmy's illustrated talk, on Folk Music Collection in the West in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, drew a full house at the Galway City Library.  Attendees were particularly lucky to hear Jackie Small's erudite comments, which launched the series before the lecture.  Jackie spoke of the importance of unsung heroes in Irish music revival, whose cultural initiatives created connections and influences which still have resonances today.  He spoke in particular of Patrick Nally from Balla, Co. Mayo, who's initial work in recognising the importance of piping and pipers, and his insistence on that tradition being nurtured and handed on, placed pipers such as Martin Reilly within today’s piping legacy.  Jimmy's lecture provided, among other things, a fascinating insight into the life of Paddy Conneely, piper of Galway, who drew music collectors from far and wide to hear him play.  Jimmy's parting tune, a rendition of Martin Reilly's 'The Conor Donn' was a fitting sonic launch to the series and created yet another connection in the web of music making and music talking in Galway. 

The second lecture took place on May 17^th, 2012 given by fiddle player Dr Máire O’Keeffe. In ’Journey into Tradition: The Irish Button Accordion’, Máire described how her curiosity in the accordion was piqued by the realization that a wide variety of accordions and tuning systems were used within the tradition, in sharp contrast to the fiddle. Making extensive use of primary material such as old newspaper advertisements, she pinpointed the arrival of the button accordion into Ireland to the year 1831. She traced its development through the hands of many of the players who have contributed to an identifiably Irish style of playing. She examined in particular the influence of 78rpm recordings made in America from the 1910s and indeed the role of the button accordion in Irish music-making in America along with its role in the progression of Irish music from domestic to public dance spaces and solo to ensemble playing. She demonstrated the wide variety of accordions and tuning systems that existed and their subsequent consolidation into two main systems today: B and C and C#D.

Galway is renowned as an important storehouse for traditional dance, music and song and the first two Martin Reilly lectures were illustrated with musical examples which ably demonstrated this. This assembly of researchers, practitioners and Irish music aficionados created a forum in which insights on the tradition from the practitioners’ perspective were both gleaned and explored. 

Plans are already afoot for next year’s series.  Further information on this and other planned talks in the series are available at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Martin-Reilly-Lecture-Series/289147347801522 or e-mail: Martinreillylectureseriesgmail.com


|Top|

Mapping Spectral Traces V: Bodies – Space – Memory International Conference and Dance Festival from

19-21 April 2012, NUI Galway.

This International Conference and Dance Festival which marks the continuing 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 took place from 19-21 April 2012 at NUI Galway.  This International Conference is one of a series of events organized by the Mapping Spectral Traces International Network that took place in 7 institutions across 5 countries in 2011-12.

For this year’s series of events, the dance and site-specific performance elements of the Festival, to extend discussions of the role of traditional and contemporary dance forms in Irish culture and society today was curated by Galway Dancer in Residence, Ríonach Ní Néill.  Dancing Days was the dance and performance strand of the events that  took  place over three days across Galway city and county. Ómós Áite co-convenor, Tim Collins, a musician and scholar of Irish Traditional Music Studies, was also part of the conference organising committee this year. Click here to view full conference programme. This international conference explored the connections between how we inhabit such everyday spaces and how the traces of the past have shaped and moulded the places in which we live today.

Irish and international dancers, visual artists, writers, musicians and academics gathered in Galway throughout the weekend of specially commissioned performances and academic sessions which were free and open to the public. These events included a pop-up Art Exhibition in the Black Box Theatre and the launch of a new essay collection, Irish Contemporary Landscapes in Literature and the Arts, in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop.

Highlights of the conference included a talk by Dakota artist and community activist, Mona Smith, on landscapes of trauma and memory in Dakota culture, a talk by Professor Gerry Kearns (NUI Maynooth) on 'Catholic Body Memory', and a roundtable discussion panel on arts practice and academic research chaired by Dr Louis de Paor.

Associated highlights of Dancing Days included the premiere of Frame on Thursday 19 April, performed by Ríonach Ní Néill, and a contemporary re-visiting and re-awakening of the tradition of the Rambling House, Cuairteoireacht, with a site-specific performance event with artists, musicians and dancers at a mystery location on Saturday 21 April.

The event was organised by Dr Nessa Cronin and Tim Collins based at NUI Galway's Centre for Irish Studies, Dr Karen Till of NUI Maynooth, and Galway Dancer-in-Residence, Ríonach Ní Neill, a dancer that according to The Irish Times, 'would wow anyone (and there are many) with a fear of modern dance'.

Conference Websites:

www.nuigalway.ie/research/centre_irish_studies/
www.geography.nuim.ie/research/space-place
http://www.ciotóg.ie/
http://www.mappingspectraltraces.org/

Conference Programme
Dancing Days Programme 

Galway Ghost Estate Comes to Life

'Dancing at the Ghost Estates,' Michael Seaver, Thursday, 19 April 2012, Irish Times on-line article:  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/0419/1224314919876.html

'Galway Ghost Estate Comes to Life with Sean-Nos and Dance for One Night Only,' Lorna Siggins, Thursday 19 April 2012, Irish Times on-line article:  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0419/1224314925677.html

’An Irishman’s Diary,’ Frank McNally, Thursday 19 April 2012, The Irish Times on-line article:  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0419/1224314924104.html

’Three Day Dance Festival and International Conference’, Declan Rooney, 18 April 2012, Galway Independent online:  http://galwayindependent.com/stories/item/1902/2012-16/Three-day-dance-festival-and-international-conference

Galway City Tribune, ’Three Day Festival Celebrates the Role of Dance in Irish Life,’ 13 April 2012, article available at: Galway News on-line: http://www.galwaynews.ie/25261-three-day-festival-celebrates-role-dance-irish-life

|Top|

NUI Galway/IACI Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies – Professor Donna Potts, IACI Scholar 2011-12

The IACI-NUI Galway Fellow for 2011-12 is Professor Donna L. Potts from Kansas State University.

Locked in the Landscape’s Fierce Embrace: Francis Harvey’s Environmental Ethos

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 recognize 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 colonization, 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 analyze 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 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 U.S., I plan to submit the festschrift to a publisher.

|Top|

2012-13 IACI Scholar Announced at ACIS, New Orleans: Dr Cian McMahon

The IACI-NUI Galway Fellow for 2012-2013 is Cian T. McMahon, PhD , Department of History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas .

Cian's project at the Centre for Irish Studies will be The Coffin Ship: Irish Migration, Mortality, and Memory in Global Perspective which is a multidisciplinary and transnational, book-length study of the vessels that carried passengers from Ireland to the United States, Britain, Canada, and Australia during the Great Famine (1845-1855). Comparing the experiences of free emigrants who crossed the Atlantic to those of convicts and settlers transported to penal colonies in the Pacific Basin, the book will use the reports, diaries, letters, and songs of the crews, bureaucrats, and passengers themselves to offer an international perspective on the oft-ignored liminal space through which all Irish migrants passed. It will also investigate how and why various communities around the world have memorialized the potent symbol of the “coffin ship” in song, story, and statue from the Great Famine to the present. This IACI/NUI Galway Visiting Fellowship will imbue the project with a local and regional focus by permitting me to interrogate primary source materials only available in and around Galway and NUI Galway. As an interdisciplinary study of Irish migration, the project would make valuable contributions to the intellectual life of NUI Galway and its Centre for Irish Studies while furthering the Irish American Cultural Institute’s mission to “preserve, interpret, and promote Irish and Irish American cultures.”

|Top|

From Céilí to Riverdance to the Internet:  New Irish studies Online Module

 

Verena Commins and Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, Centre for Irish Studies

The Centre for Irish Studies has been busy preparing a new module for its Irish Studies online programme. Designed and written by Dr. Méabh Ní Fhuartháin, the new module is titled ’From Céilí to Riverdance: Irish Traditional Music and Dance in the Twentieth Century’. It will be offered to students for the first time in the Autumn and will bring the number of courses on offer within the programme to six. Successful completion of five of these courses earns students a diploma in Irish Studies.

The new module explores traditional Irish music and dance in the period 1893 to 2000, and the role of these practices in the development of Irish identity in Ireland and amongst her emigrant communities. Taking the cultural revival of the latter part of the nineteenth century as a starting point, students will critically examine the role of music and dance practice in rural Ireland and the process of modernization which occurred as these practices became urbanized both in Ireland and among her emigrant communities. The key concepts include issues of authenticity, institutionalization of oral music and folk dance, cultural practice and the diaspora, technology and oral music, the development of ensemble practice and Irish identity and cultural practice.

Key to this course is the development of a critical awareness of the crucial sounds, sights and movements of Irish traditional music and dance practice of the twentieth century. Engagement with key moments of cultural, political and social change will demonstrate the role of these practices in the development and negotiation of Irish identity throughout the century and their continuing importance.

The subject matter clearly lends itself to a multimedia learning experience that students will find both helpful and interesting. Conventional recommended reading is accompanied by recommended listening and viewing. The module incorporates a number of specifically recorded discussion and music pieces, featuring musicians Padraic Keane (uilleann pipes), Tim Collins (concertina), Verena Commins (button accordion, keyboard) and Méabh Ní Fhuartháin (tin whistle). Altogether, a very welcome addition to the online programme!

|Top|

PhD Graduations at the Centre

 

Dr Louis de Paor pictured with Dr Margaret Brehony, PhD Graduate at the Centre 2012 

There was cause for double celebration as Claire Lyons and Margaret Brehony were both awarded the degree of PhD in 2012. 

Margaret for her thesis ’ Irish Migration to Cuba, 1835-1845: Empire, Ethnicity, Slavery and ’Free’ Labour’.  Margaret’s research, supervised by Dr  Kathy Powell, ’examines and critically analyses previously unexplored materials relating to Irish transient labour in Cuba from 1835-1845’.

Dr Claire Lyons and family celebrating her award of PhD Degree at a reception at the Centre for Irish Studies

Claire's thesis on Sylvester O’Halloran’s General History (1788): Irish Historiography and the late Eighteenth-Century British Empire.  Her research supervisor was Dr Niall Ó Ciosáin and Professor Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam was the External examiner of her thesis.

|Top|

3BIS Research project presentations

Photographed from L to R:  Patrick Loughnane, Padraic Keane, Ian Corless, Leanne Lynch, David Powell, Aisling Nolan, Michael Lydon, Shane Walsh and Marcus Byrne

An integral part of the BA with Irish Studies is the Independent Research Project undertaken in the second semester of third year.  This year the Centre for Irish Studies hosted a day where students presented their project findings for supervisors and invited guests.  Topics ranged from the role of Spain in the poetry of Pearse Hutchinson, to an analysis of famine memorialization through the sculptures of John Behan and Rowan Gillespie.  Attendees were treated to an examination of the trials and travails of Alan Lomax as he collected folk songs in Ireland during the 1950s and an in depth analysis of the dramatic form agallamh beirte and its social and narrative importance.  Students spend a full semester developing, researching and writing up their Independent Research Projects culminating in the presentation day and a final thesis submission. 

NUI Galway BA Research Internships, Summer 2012
The Centre for Irish Studies is delighted to announce that Michael Lydon (3^rd Year student, BA in Irish Studies), was awarded a BA Research Internship by the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Celtic Studies at NUI Galway this year. The award is to support the extension of Michael’s undergraduate research work on the folk-song collector, Alan Lomax, who collected songs in Ireland during the period of the 1950s.

|Top|

Irish Studies Seminar Series

Audiences grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in their seats during two of the seminars in the second semester of the seminar series. The grimmer elements of capital punishment and child adoption in Ireland were the subject matters ably dealt with by some of this year’s speakers. Capital Punishment in Post-Independence Ireland, was delivered by former Centre for Irish Studies doctoral graduate Dr David Doyle, currently based at the School of Law, UCD and Ireland's Adopted Child: From Historical Archive to Fictional Representation was presented by Dr Jim Smith of Boston College.

Elements of gruesomeness persisted in Othering Masculinity in the Multicultural Irish Thriller by Dr. Zélie Asava and the subject of Irish music provided cultural light relief (for once) as the Centre welcomed PJ Mathews’ presentation on Reflections on the Irish Folk Music Revival 1951-1981

Confirmed speakers for the forthcoming academic year include, Dr Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin ‎on 27 September 2012 and Dr Robert Mahoney with ’Jonathan Swift and the Concept of Allegiance’ on 18 October 2012.

Irish Studies Seminars 2012

|Top|

Comhrá Ceoil: Irish Music and Dance Studies at the Centre for Irish Studies

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 post-graduate research thread in music and dance studies.  It is now also embedded in the fabric of undergraduate teaching and continues to be an important research cluster at the Centre.  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 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. 

As part of that lofty ambition, we have three identified elements of Comhrá Ceoil on which to focus our attentions for the coming year: 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 (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 Prof Harry White, Dr Gerry Smyth as keynote speaker and two panels of current research in the field drawn from NUIG and UL. 

All of these events and initiatives will hopefully continue to expand the horizons of music and dance in Irish Studies: there’s no stopping us now!

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

|Top|

Ómós Áite

Ómós Áite, the space/place post-graduate reading group based here at the Centre for Irish Studies continues to grow in numbers, and attracts academics with diverse research interests from both within NUi Galway and from institutions throughout Ireland, Europe and North America. The group meets once a month at the Centre for Irish Studies to discuss and debate among other things, how space is used, represented and given meaning in different academic fields, from Geography and Literary Studies, to Anthropology, Music, Dance and Film Studies.

Proceedings for semester one commenced in September with Dr Nessa Cronin providing some of her recent work for discussion. 'Lived and Learned Landscapes: Literary Geographies and the Irish Topographical Tradition’ is a chapter from a new publication by Palgrave Macmillan, titled Irish Contemporary Landscapes in Literature and the Arts (edited by Marie Mianowski). This wonderful collection of interdisciplinary essays on Irish Landscapes was launched in April during the Mapping Spectral Traces Symposium which was hosted by Ómós Áite on the NUI Galway campus. 

The October and November meetings of Ómós Áite merged the dance research of J'aime Morrison with the phenomenology of Edward Casey, focusing specifically on place and embodiment and the role of dance in what Morrison (2001) refers to as ’a kinesthetic recovery of place’. Tim Collins contributed some of the dance material from his PhD research to support Morrison’s and Casey’s work and Ríonach Ní Neill also provided some fascinating contributions from her experience as a contemporary dancer.

The first session of the New Year kicked off with some readings selected by Dr Conn Houlihan, who is Assistant Director of Research and Development at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media at NUI Galway, and a regular contributor to our seminars. Focusing on space and cinema, Conn suggested some chapters from Laura U. Mark’s The Skin of the Film (Duke University Press, 2000) and neatly dovetailed these with an excellent article of his own titled ’Wrong Turns: Radical spaces in the road movies of Tony Gatlif’ published in Transnational Cinemas, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2011): 21-35.

The sessions in February and March had a distinctive French intellectual flair with the works of Gaston Bachelard ( The Poetics of Space) and Michel de Certeau ( The Practice of Everyday Life) up for discussion. Dr Anne Karhio kindly suggested the readings and provided a plethora of supportive material to help us in our musings. The sessions proved to be very stimulating indeed and the afore-mentioned texts certainly provided excellent Francophone food for thought.

|Top|

Meitheal

Meitheal, the Irish Studies Postgraduate Research Group, is led by graduate students and meets throughout the academic year. Initiated in 2004, and open to students and academic staff, Meitheal has developed into a dynamic, interdisciplinary forum, and is now an essential part of the intellectual life of the Centre. The format allows for presentation of current research, close readings of key texts and discussion of dissertation drafts. Meitheal Schedule of presentations.

|Top|

Irish Studies Student Society

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.

|Top|

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

 

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility