Call for papers; “Ireland in crisis” conference, Berkeley, July 10 and 11 2012

The Organizing and academic committees of the conference “Ireland in crisis” welcome submissions for

Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions

Date/Time; July 10 and 11 2012 8-30 am to 5pm

The location is the home room international house at UC Berkeley;

http://ihouse.berkeley.edu/

Please distribute to anyone who might be interested. We have already been approached by a major publishing house for publication of the proceedings. The conference chair has a good record of getting conference proceedings published with 3 such volumes already published with John Benjamins.


Organizing committee

Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University) (Conference chair)
Liliane Koziol (program director, International house at UC Berkeley
Jackie Fulmer (UC Berkeley)

Academic committee
Peter Glazer (Chair, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
Cathal Brugha (UC Dublin)
Mary Power (English dept New Mexico)
Jacqui Fulmer (UC Berkeley)
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Peter M. Toner (Professor Emeritus The University of New Brunswick)
Alison Harvey (Core Humanities Program University of Nevada, Reno)
Virginia Morris - (B.A. Radcliffe) - Celtic Arts Center, LA
Micheal o hAodha (UL)
Carmel MccAffrey (emeritus, Johns Hopkins)
Gabriel Rosenstock


Confirmed plenary speakers/performers


Ishmael Reed
Peter Glazer (Chair, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, UC Berkeley)
 Cathal Brugha (UC Dublin)
Mary Power (English dept New Mexico)
Jackie Fulmer (UC Berkeley)
Sean O Nuallain (CSLI, Stanford University)
Virginia Morris (B.A. Radcliffe), Celtic Arts Center, LA
Gabriel Rosenstock
Melanie O’Reilly
Seamus Brennan (UCC)
 Micheal o hAodha (UL)


Format

Plenaries will be interspersed with ample time for discussion with relatively “light touch” moderation.



Schedule for submission;

Abstracts are to be submitted to contuirt2012@gmail.com

May 7, 2012; Deadline for submission of (max 2000 words) abstracts. They will be assessed by an appropriate program committee member

May 14. 2012; Notification of acceptance

There is absolutely no Irish state or corporate involvement in this conference, and best principles of academic freedom will be upheld.

Speakers will be added as time progresses.


Registration

Fees will be payable by cheque on the day. We currently envisage a registration fee of $100 with $50 discount for the unwaged. No-one will be turned away for lack of funds. Ihouse has on-site inexpensive meals, and participants can buy tickets for these at the site.




Prologue: Ireland in crisis? - analyses and proposed solutions

While the economic crash in 2008 Ireland was both foreseeable and not untypical for that historical year, there are many indications that recovery this time will be both more difficult and more multi-faceted than its 1990's equivalent. A related issue is the dearth of real analysis that characterises Irish studies, which allowed the absurdities of the so-called “Celtic tiger” period to reach vertiginous heights. This conference can perhaps begin to address at least the latter issue.

Unlike the case in the 1980's, this economic crash has occurred at a time of fracture in the major national narratives. It may be the case that Irish people have had difficulty adjusting themselves to living in a state that is the result of imposed borders, versus an island that is unequivocally their home. Simultaneously, it is perhaps true that the Irish state has perfected a totalising corporatism that has replaced Roman Catholicism with neoliberalism as its dogma. What is certainly arguable is that the cultural output of the Irish, exemplified in popular music, has never been of worse quality in the history of the state, and perhaps indeed before the state came into being.

A second major difference from the 1980's crash is the vastly different economic context, both at the macro and micro levels. At the former level, the country has signed on to a set of EU agreements that restrict its ability to govern, both in fiscal and monetary terms. At the latter level, the transaction cost of simple commercial activity in Ireland has grown enormously, due both to vastly higher costs for infrastructure and labour and the incursions by the state into civil society that have made Ireland the most regulated country in the world. Paradoxically, these incursions have been accompanied by a dearth of real corporate enforcement, resulting in the rest of the world losing faith in the now surely doomed Irish stock market.

Finally, the fact that EMI was compelled to sue the Irish state to get it to conform to EU copyright law did not surprise many of those working in area that need to protect intellectual property. The dearth of corporate enforcement is attested by the assignment of a laughably small team of investigators to the Anglo-Irish bank investigation, a tiny investment in cleaning up one of the greatest financial scandals in recent world history, and one that the head of the commercial court in Ireland has frequently criticized. In fact, may one ask whether we are living through the aftermath of a fortunately incomplete coup, one devised to destroy ancient and well-functioning aspects of civil society while placing power and money irrevocably in a very few hands?

Papers are of course welcome which disagree with any or all of the above propositions




Four themes


Theme 1: Theater and other performing arts.


A panel discussion will begin this section. It will comprise (inter alia);

Virginia Morris, Director of “An claidheamh soluis” in LA, which was founded by one of James Connolly's granchildren
(Associate) Prof. Peter Glazer, Theater and Performing arts UC Berkeley, writer and director of musical theater
Jacqui Fulmer


It will be noted that Ireland's only recent original off-Broadway success was tiny rough Magic's “Improbable frequency”, a musical tinged with science and espionage, and peopled by such untypical visitors to Ireland as Schroedinger and John Betjeman, both active in their wildly different ways in WW2 Dublin. By contrast, the huge budget of “Grania” succeeded only in acting as life-support in prolonging the run. Has the lode of the “Celtic Twilight” finally been over-mined? Or was the Grania mistake precisely the opposite; that of bringing in the non-Irish writers of Les Miserables? Papers might address this kind of theme, extending it to prose and poetry, along these lines, inter alia;

- Corporatism in music; how far is IMRO to blame for the dearth in new Irish music? How destructive has its unique enclosure of the commons, involving assignment of musicians' copyrights, actually been? Or are there other, better reasons?
- The starring role of the foul-mouthed gangster in Irish fiction and film




Theme 2: Metaphysics and Myth in Joyce

Speakers include Mary Jane Power

While the workaday implications of Bloom's peregrinations have been worked
perhaps to death, more fundamental themes are perhaps discernible in
Joyce. For example, the attack on coloniality may be perceived as being
mediated through an attack on space and time itself, particularly after
the “Nighttown” episode. On a more prosaic level, the occasional
cartographic inaccuracies in Ulysses may perhaps be a reaction to the
ordinance survey.

Yet the attack in Joyce's last two great works may be more fundamental
still. The Citizen in “cyclops” is secure in his identity as coextensive
to, and identical with, the island of Ireland. After Nighttown, it can
perhaps be argued that this distinction of subject and object will no
longer be possible. In fact, a new way of experiencing Ireland is being
proposed; one that counters classical western epistemological tenets. And
so, the Bhagavad gita is evoked in lined like “I am the dreamery creamery
butter”

Yet many will recognise this as referring also to the song of Amergin. So
was Joseph Campbell correct in finding tantric echoes in the Wake? Or is
the material linking Joyce to the medieval Gaelic sagas mere fantasy?

Papers are invited which

Explore the above, even in disagreement
Contextualise their argument in terms of anomie in modern Ireland

Theme 3 Politics, technology, and the economy

Speakers include Harry McGee

Topics include;


- Civil society and the state in Ireland; for example, do trade unions really exist in the public sector there?
- Unilateral interpretation of the Good Friday agreement by the British government, and its aftermath
- The economization of life in Ireland; neoliberalism as the new dogma, with attendant sacrifice of political capital if reality contradicts its precepts. An example would be the health charges for pensioners.
- The destruction of the island narrative; the strange case of the Tara/M3 motorway, and the ascent of historical revisionism to state dogma
- Ireland as Delaware in Europe; from Intel to rendition flights
- Is political violence inevitable within the 26-county state, starting perhaps from the student fee protests or the North Mayo/ Shell oil situation?
- The obsession with paying back bondholders. Is it impossible for Ireland to relaunch its own currency?
- Are 40,000 native speakers sufficient to keep An Ghaeilge alive?


Theme 4 Ireland’s Fanon? – Terence MacSwiney and intellectual freedom


Speakers include Melanie O’Reilly and Cathal Brugha (UC Dublin),  one of Terence MacSwiney's grandsons  - and also a grandson of the hero of 1916 of the same name, and son of the late  Ruairi Brugha, the distinguished parliamentarian


(22u Bealtaine) Update  - we regret to say that the great Mrs Macswiney-Brugha has just passed away

As conceived of by Trrence Macswiney, Intellectual freedom is neither more not less than the right to live life by one’s own lights. Therefore, academic freedom is a consequence, an assent in the academy to a practise that affects the larger society. This conference theme deals with how Intellectual freedom is being violated in Ireland, with consequences ranging from the very increase in the suicide rate for which the Iar-Taoiseach expressed a preference to a restriction of the cultural commons with a coarsening of Irish culture

Papers are invited that deal with (inter alia);

1. The incursions into academic freedom by both the British and Irish governments, acting at times in unison. The Boston college/McIntyre case, with such interlocutors with the IRA as Ed Moloney, and Eamon McCann surely next on the firing line (perhaps literally); the botched attempt to extend Britain’s recission of academic tenure to Ireland and the attempt in the Supreme court by both DCU and UCC to introduce summary dismissal, without cause, for all academics of whatever seniority

2. The suspected infiltration of the American congress of Irish Studies by British intelligence; the attested (by O Snodaigh’s Dail question) preference of the Irish department of foreign affairs for using Irish taxpayers’ money for British studies revisionism rather than Irish culture

3. The application of EU law, and - when not directly applicable – interpretations of EU directives to strengthen the hand of the Dublin oligarchy by massive handovers of Irish taxpayers’ money to “bondholders” (several of which did not expect to be repaid in full), and the constraining of Irish civil society

4. The destruction of the native software and music industries in favor of mediocre foreign imports by Irish state bodies - like the failed Medialab and Science Foundation adventures ; the real story of corporation tax and law in Ireland

5. The fact that tiny Ireland has 3 of the top 20 biggest law firms in the EU is already problematic; what are the consequences of the state’s readiness to use them against its citizens for civil cases?

(Very) preliminary schedule

Tues 10 July

8-30 to 9am Registration and Coffee/Tea

9 am Welcome and introductory comments by Sean O Nuallain (conference chair), and Peter Glazer for UC Berkeley

9-15 am to 10-45 Am First panel on theater; Peter Glazer (Session chair), Jackie Fulmer, Virginia Morris with response by Melanie O'Reilly

10-45 am Tea/Coffee break

11 am to 1pm Joyce presentations – invited papers by

Diarmuid Curraoin (Sandford Park) "Metaphysics and Myth in Joyce"
Jackie Fulmer (UC Berkeley - session chair) “Dilly Dedalus: Tomorrow's Girl and Next World Feminism “

Lunch

Submitted papers
2pm to 2-45 pm Seamus Brennan (UCC) (session chair) ; Milesians, Surnames and YDNA; Irish Identity in the Internet Age

2-45 pm to 3-30 pm Seamus Cain " A New Wave of INNOVATIVE writers and poets, in
Ireland and within the Irish diaspora"

Tea/Coffee break

3-45 pm to 5-30pm The destruction of academic freedom in Ireland; Stephen Myers Watt (session chair), Ignacio Chapela, Sean  O Nuallain

5-30pm Break

6 pm; Maurice Fitzpatrick introduces and shows  his film "The boys of St Columb's" with Q+A afterward

Wed 11 July

8am to 9-30 am
The technology and economy session (Chair Dr Sean O Nuallain)

8 am to 9am

 Presentations via Skype by those in Europe

This includes Harry McGee (8-9am) introduced by Sean O Nuallain
 9 am  "Unethical behavior and the rise and fall of Ireland’s Economy".
Author: Rick Revoir, EdD, MBA, CPA

Revisionism and Race  (Chair Catherine Eagan)

(9-30 am)Micheal o hAodha on Ireland's travelers (an ethnic minority)

10 am “Ireland, Irish Studies, and Ethnonational Narratives of Race”
Dr. Catherine M. Eagan, Las Positas College

10-30 am to 11-15 Ishmael Reed - "Does Irish America Need an Intervention from Ireland?"- introduction by Jackie Fulmer

11-15 Coffee

11-30 am to 1pm The Connemaras; a Gaelic-speaking Midwest experiment
Seamus Cain (session chair), Bridget Connelly
Performers of the Irish script  include Liodain ni hUallachain,  Sean O Nuallain

1pm Lunch

2pm  Cathal MacSwiney-Brugha (UC Dublin), Melanie O’Reilly (chair),  and others on the legacy of Macswiney and the neoliberal assault on Irish musical culture

315pm Coffee

3-30pm to end Submitted papers

Session chair; Conn Mac Aogáin

3-30 to 4-30 pm

Conn Mac Aogáin Lehman College, City University of New York
'The Irish Language and a “Gaeltacht” Language Community in the 21st Century: Re-Imaging and Re-Imagining in a Post-Modern, Post-Tiger Ireland'

4-30 pm Victor Vargas (Claremount) "Who goes with swami?

 5-30pm Stephen Myers Watt (Indiana University) "Neoliberalism, Tenure, and Academic Freedom in American and Ireland"


6pm Closing discussion

 Break

7pm Gaelic Jazz concert