Women in Irish Culture and History Conference, 20-22 October 2006, University College Dublin
Friday 20th October (The Humanities Institue of Ireland, UCD)
2.15-3.00 REGISTRATION
During registration, there will be a screening of short films from the IFI archives.
Light lunch, tea and coffee will be available
3.00-3.10 OPENING REMARKS
3.10-4.40 PLENARY PANEL 1
HEA North/South Project: Women in Public and Cultural Life in Twentieth Century Ireland
Participants: Mary MacCarthy (Department of History, University of Limerick), Gerardine Meaney (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD), Sarah O’Connor (School of English and Drama, UCD), Mary O’Dowd (School of History, Queen’s University Belfast),Chris Shepard (School of History, Queens University Belfast), Bernadette Whelan (Dept of History, University of Limerick).
4.40-5.00 COFFEE
Prostitution in Ireland and Human Rights: Why Can’t Ireland Deliver on its Commitments?
Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies, Trinity College Dublin
Participants:Chair: Maryann Valiulis, Ivana Bacik,* Jennifer Redmond, Mary Rogan, Marguerite Woods
[*Note: Due to Ivana Bacik’s involvement in the Gilligan/Zappone case, scheduled for court on this day, it may not be possible for her to present on this panel]
7.00 OFFICIAL CONFERENCE OPENING
Speaker: Mary Daly
PLENARY LECTURE: ELIZABETH BUTLER CULLINGFORD
Followed by Reception and Book Launch of Yvonne McKenna’s Made Holy: Irish Women Religious At Home and Abroad (Irish Academic Press).
Saturday 21st October (The Clinton Auditorium, UCD)
9.00-10.30 PARALLEL SESSION 1
Panel A: From Emigration to Immigration Chair: Bernadette Whelan (Dept of History, University of Limerick)
Yvonne McKenna (Centre for Women’s Studies, University of Limerick), ‘Irish Women Religious: Cultural Producers, Historical Enigmas’.
Suzanna Chan (School of Art and Design, University of Ulster), ‘“Irish Born Chinese”: Interrogating ‘Irishness’ in diasporic spaces, culture and art by women’.
Borbála Faragó (School of English and Drama, UCD), ‘Anthologising Immigrant Women Writers in Ireland’.
Panel B: Politics and Identity: Kate O’Brien and Molly Keane Chair: Moynagh Sullivan (Dept of English, NUI Maynooth)
Michael G. Cronin (Dept of English, NUI Maynooth), ‘Kate O’Brien’s Women and the Exclusionary Limits of Liberal Critique’.
Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka (School of English and Drama, UCD), ‘Young Woman. Seeks Knowledge. Will Travel’ – Kate O’Brien’s Mary Lavelle and the Governess Abroad Bildungsroman’.
Lidia Montero Ameneiro (University of Coruna, Spain), ‘Women and the Big House in Molly Keane’s Works’.
Panel C: Irish Women and Auto/Biography Chair: Mary O’Dowd (School of History, Queen’s University Belfast)
Claire Lynch (Faculty of English, University of Oxford), ‘Auto/biography: The Barometer of Irish Women’s Identity’.
Diane Urquhart (Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool), ‘Women and Political Patronage: the Ladies Londonderry’.
Norma Clarke (Kingston University, London), ‘Laetitia Pilkington’s Memoirs’.
10.30-11.00 COFFEE
11.00-12.30 PLENARY PANEL 3
The Women in Modern Irish Culture Project
Participants:Maria Luddy (Dept of History, University of Warwick), Gerardine Meaney (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD),Jim MacPherson (Dept of History, University of Warwick), Anne Mulhall (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD), Sarah O’Connor (School of English and Drama, UCD), Emma Radley (School of English and Drama, UCD).
12.30-1.30 LUNCH
1.30-3.00 PARALLEL SESSION 2
Panel D: The Language Question: Women’s Literary Production in Ireland and Multilingual Contexts Chair: Patricia Coughlan (Dept of English, University College Cork)
Marie-Louise Coolahan (Dept of English, NUI Galway), ‘Literary Cultures and Early Modern Women’s Poetry’.
Ríona Nic Congáil (IRCHSS scholar, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics, UCD), ‘Professor Agnes O’Farrelly: Lady of the League’.
Caitríona Ní Chléirchín (IRCHSS scholar, School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics, UCD), ‘Water: A New Way of Writing Contemporary Irish-Language Women’s Poetry’.
Paula Pratt (Al Akhawayn University, Morocco), ‘Taking the Boat from the Water: Exploring the Cultural Experience of Reading Translated Work, from the Perspective of a “Pharaoh’s Daughter”’.
Panel E: Women and Religion Chair: Chris Shepard (School of History, QUB)
Cara Delay (The College of Charleston, USA), ‘“A Most Harrowing Sight”: Women’s Roles in Religious Rituals in fin-de-siècle Catholic Ireland’.
Sonia Tiernan (WERRC, UCD), ‘“Blessed Hope of Eternal Life”: Eva Gore-Booth’s Radical Feminist Theology’.
Penny Pollard (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Irish Goddesses and Irish Women: Healers, Shamans, and Diviners’.
Panel F: From Women’s Rights to Mainstreaming Equality Chair: Maura Conway (School of Law and Government, DCU) Convenor: Gemma Carney (TCD)
Gemma Carney (Trinity College Dublin), ‘What is the legacy of gender mainstreaming? Learning from the Irish Experience’.
Bronagh Hinds (Institute of Governance, Queen’s University Belfast), ‘Women and Political Participation in Contemporary Northern Ireland’.
Philippe Brillet, MD, PhD, MBA (School of Public Health, University of Marseilles, France), ‘Health and Social Policies in the post-Celtic Tiger: Ireland as No Women’s Land’.
3.00-3.15 COFFEE
3.15-4.45 PARALLEL SESSION 3
Panel G: Female Activism and the Nation-State Chair: Maria Luddy (Dept of History, University of Warwick)
Leeann Lane (Mater Dei Institute of Education, Dublin City University), ‘The social and cultural dimensions of Irish female activism: single women and the newly independent state’.
Donna Maria O’Connor (Dept of Modern History, NUI Maynooth), ‘Jennie Wyse Power: the parliamentary arguments of an equal-rights activist in the Irish Free State’.
R.M. Douglas (Dept of History, Colgate University), ‘“Cultural Nationalism” or “Fascist Feminism”? Irishwomen, Ideology and Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, 1942-1950’.
James M. Smith (Boston College), ‘The Adoption Act (1952), Baptismal Certificates, and Adoptive Parents’ Identity Crisis’.
Panel H: Revising the Subaltern: Contemporary Writing by Women Chair: Anne Mulhall (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD)
Moynagh Sullivan (Dept of English, NUI Maynooth), ‘Raising the Veil: Mystery, Myth, Melancholia and Irish Studies’.
Claire Bracken (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD), ‘Milking the Mother’.
Pilar Villar Argáiz (University of Granada, Spain), ‘Can the Irish Subaltern Speak in Eavan Boland’s Poetry?’.
Caitriona Moloney (English Dept, Bradley University), ‘Feminist Strategies for Re-imagining History’s Absent Woman in the Fiction of Eilís Ní Dhuibhne, Anne Enright, and Kate O’Riordan’.
Panel I: Border Crossing: Emma Donoghue, Una Troy, Edna O’Brien Chair: Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka (School of English and Drama, UCD)
Libe Garcia (University of Zaragoza), ‘Landscapes of Transgression in Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch’.
Ann M. Butler, ‘The Marginalized Woman in Una Troy’s Fiction: Authenticating the Outsider’.
Jennifer Mangan (Glasgow University), ‘Strangers within: The existential crisis of female selfhood in the works of Edna O’Brien’.
Gina Granter (Dept of English, Memorial University of Newfoundland), ‘“Until She[…] Could Barely Breathe”: Dressing, Defining, and Defiling the Body in Edna O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation’.
4.45-5.15 COFFEE AND LIGHT SNACK
5.15-6.30 PLENARY LECTURE: BRÍONA NIC DHIARMADA
‘Doubly Silenced? Women, Writing, and the Irish Language’
6.30 READING: EILÍS NÍ DHUIBHNE
8.30 CONFERENCE DINNER at The Courtyard, Donnybrook
Sunday 22nd October (The Clinton Auditorium, UCD)
10.00-11.30 PARALLEL SESSION 4
Panel J: Margins and Centres: Contemporary Women’s Writing Chair: Moynagh Sullivan (Dept of English, NUI Maynooth)
Kristina E.B. Quynn (Michigan State University), ‘Eccentric Moves: Irishness and Gender sans Exile in Emma Donoghue’s Touchy Subjects’.
Yulia Pushkarevskaya (School of English, UCD), ‘Learning “to remain a minority”: Women in Changing Ireland in Jennifer Johnston’s Novels’.
Katarzyna Poloczek (Institute of English Studies, Lodz), ‘Sinead Morrissey’s State of the Prisons: Redefining Women’s Relation to Power’.
Panel K: Women, Law and Education Chair: Mary MacCarthy (Dept of History, University of Limerick)
Maeve Mulryan-Moloney (NUI Maynooth), ‘Women national schoolteachers’ role in preparing girls for life in the late nineteenth century’.
Virginia Crossman (Oxford Brookes University), ‘Domestic Politics: Women and the Poor Law in Ireland 1850-1921’.
Brian Griffin (Irish Studies Centre, Bath Spa University), ‘Cycling and Women in Victorian Ireland: Image and Reality’.
Panel L: Intersections: Sexuality, Race, and Gender Chair: Marie-Louise Coolahan (Dept of English, NUI Galway)
Zélie Asava (Film Studies, UCD), ‘Multiple ethnicities and sexualities in The Crying Game’.
Sophia Ann-Marie McFoy (Department of Anthropology, UCLA), ‘“White Negroes” and “Smoked Irish”: Racialization in British Commonwealth Jamaica during the 1600s’.
Bryan Russell (San Angelo, USA), ‘Thank You, Mistress: The Illusion of Sexual Control in Ulysses’.
11.30-12.00 COFFEE
12.00-1.30 PARALLEL SESSION 5
Panel M: Women in the Visual Arts and Popular Culture Chair: Gerardine Meaney (School of English and Drama/Irish Studies, UCD)
Karen Brown (Dept of History of Art, QUB), ‘Irish women artists and modernism: The case study of Norah McGuinness’.
Ann Morrison Spinney (Music and Irish Studies, Boston College), ‘Enya’s Worlds: Negotiating Local, Global, and Postcolonial Contexts in Music’.
Jonathan Skinner (School of History and Anthropology, QUB), ‘Women dancing back—and forth: generations of sexuality and freedom of expression altogether in Belfast salsa’.
Panel N: Female Activism and Irish Nationalism Chair: Jim MacPherson (Dept of History, University of Warwick)
Karen Steele (Dept of English, Texas Christian University), ‘“Need I Preach to Irishmen of Courage?” Female Literary Nationalists during the Act of Union’.
Anthony J. Jordan, ‘Eithne Carbery: Poet, Publisher, Activist’.
Shannon Byrne (School of English and Drama, UCD), ‘Conflict in Consensus: Irish Suffragists and Nationalists, 1908-1918’.
Panel O: Refiguring Women and the Nation in contemporary Irish writing Chair: Borbála Faragó (School of English and Drama, UCD)
Bridget N. Hogan (Dept of Languages and Cultural Studies, UL) ‘Mothers and Daughters in Jennifer Johnston’s Two Moons’.
Ellen McWilliams (University of Bristol), ‘The Celtic Twilightzone: Madness and Mother Ireland in the Fiction of Patrick McCabe’.
Heather Donahoe LaForge (Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California, San Diego), ‘Rupturing the Space: empowering female character and actress in Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City’.
Jennifer Malia (Dept of English, University of Southern California), ‘Liam O’Flaherty’s Revolutionary Women’.
1.30-2.30 LUNCH
2.30-4.00 PLENARY ROUNDTABLE 2
Women in Irish History and on Film
Participants will include Margaret MacCurtain, Gerardine Meaney, Jim Smith, and women filmmakers to be confirmed
4.00 Screening of recent short films by women filmmakers
This conference is jointly organised by the Women in Modern Irish Culture Project, Department of History, University of Warwick and School of English and Drama, UCD, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Britain; and the HEA North/South Project Strand ‘Women in Public and Cultural Life in Twentieth-Century Ireland’, School of History, Queen’s University Belfast, Department of History, University of Limerick and School of English and Drama, UCD. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Humanities Institute of Ireland, UCD.