The Irish Hero Conference

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Irish Hero - Programme

Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway, 2-3 April 2004

The Conference, and registration, will take place in Room 203, at the Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change.
Directions: From the Porter's Desk on the Concourse (marked No 15 on the campus map), walk towards the Bank of Ireland, take a right, go to the end of that passage, cross the new bridge - the seminar room is located on the other side of the bridge. On the day it will be signposted. For campus map see: http://www.nuigalway.ie/about/maps/map_ie.html

Friday 2 April

10.30 – 11.10  coffee and registration

11.10 – 11.55  Plenary 1:

Chair: Nicholas Canny

Robert Savage (Boston College), The Grapes of Roth: the first Director General of RTE

11.55 – 13.25: Session 1A: Heroes and History

                        Chair:

I:          Jennifer Kelly (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick), The myth of Captain Rock in early Nineteenth Century Co. Leitrim.

II:         Enda Leaney, The Scientist as National Hero in Nineteenth Century Ireland

III:        Elizabeth Keane (Cambridge University), 'Yesterday's

Terrorist is Today's Statesman': Seán MacBride's Career of Conversion

13.25 – 14.25: Lunch

14.25 – 15.10: Plenary 2:

                        Chair: Phil Dine

Professor Richard Holt (De Montfort University Leicester), The Sporting Hero.

15.10 – 16.40: Session 2: Heroes made and re-made

                        Chair: Tadhg Foley

I:          Kate Hennessey (University of Notre Dame), Star-crossed lovers or Gun-toting Gangsters?  Diarmuid and Grainne in Twentieth Century and Contemporary Irish Theatre

II:         Elizabeth Crooke (University of Ulster), The antiquarian as Irish hero

III:        Thomas J. Brophy (NUI Galway), Funeral Souvenirs and Panegyrics: Passports into an Irish Nationalist Pantheon

16.40 – 17.25: Plenary 3:

                        Chair: Mike Cronin

Maria Moynihan (Chief Executive, St Patrick’s Festival), Selling an Irish Hero? St Patrick’s Day and the national festival.

Saturday 3 April

09.15 – 10.00  Plenary 4:

                        Chair: Louis de Paor

Dáithí Ó Hógáin (University College Dublin), The Hero and Irish Folklore

10.00 – 11.30  Session 4: Heroes and Writers I

                        Chair: Adrian Frazier

I:          Jana Fischerova (University College Dublin), Irish heroine: Kate O’Brien and The Land of Spices

II:         John  Kenny (NUI Galway), ’Kill and You Will Be Free’: John  Banville and the Existential Hero

III:        Derval Tubridy (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Beckett’s Failed Heroism: A ’Fair to Middling’ Attempt

Session 4A: Heroes and Sport

Chair: Richard Holt

I:          Marcus Free (Mary Immaculate, Limerick), Object of Ambivalence/Ambivalent Subject: The Emigrant Sporting Hero in Contemporary Ireland

                        II:         Paul Rouse (RTE), Hurling Heroes

III:        David Hassan (University of Ulster ), 'A champion inside the ring and a champion outside it' - An examination of the socio-political impact of the career of Barry McGuigan.           

11.30 – 12.00: Coffee

12.00 – 13.30: Session 5: Portraying the Hero

                        Chair: Mary Harris

I:          Meighen Katz (Monash University), The Man behind the Iron Mask. in a Glass Case: The Ned Kelly Renaissance      

II:         Yvonne Igoe (Dundalk Institute of Technology), The General and the Saint of the Underworld: the cinematic creation of Cahill the antihero and Guerin the heroine

III:        Ruadhan Cooke (NUI Galway), The Green Fields of France: Ireland's sporting heroes and "Le Tour

Session 5A: Heroes and Writers II

Chair: Maureen O’Connor

I:          Sean Kennedy, Beckett and the Irish Hero: the case of Patrick Pearse

II:         Frank Shovlin (University of Liverpool), The Vanishing Fada; or, how Séan O’Faoláin fell out of love with Éamon de Valera

III:        Stanley van der Ziel (University College Dublin), A Portrait of the Soldier as an Ageing Man: John MacGahern’s Amongst Women as a Novel of the Post-Heroic Age

13.30 – 14.30: Lunch

14.30 – 16.00: Session 6: Heroes and Literature

                        Chair: Mike Cronin

I:          Kenneth Nally (NUI Galway) ’Mine was not the stuff of heroes’: Contested loyalties in Frank McGuinness’s Observe the sons of UIster marching towards the Somme.

II:         Brian Ó Ó Conchubhair (Boston College), Minor Heroes in a Minor Language.

III:        Asier Altuna (NUI Galway), ’ Erin’s son and England’s shield’: Wellington in Spain, the Anglo-Irish hero.

16.00 – 16.50: Plenary 5:

                        Chair: Robert Savage

Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch (National Gallery of Ireland), Commemorating the Warrior Hero in Independent Ireland.

16.50:              Close of conference

If you have any questions or queries, please e-mail me at: mjcronindmu.ac.uk or else call me on 087-9133194

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