Irish Centre for Transnational Studies

This conference is organised by Brian Griffin and John Strachan of Bath Spa University, and will take place in Castlecoote House, Co. Roscommon from July 10 to July 12, 2019. Please find the Call for Papers here.

It is intended to publish the conference proceedings in a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal, Irish Studies Review, in 2020. For more information on the conference and the festival, click here.

This conference is a collaboration between Britta C. Jung (UCD, ICTS Guest Faculty), Anne Fuchs (UCD), Godela Weiss-Sussex (IMLR), Maria Roca Lizarazu (University of Birmingham) and Stephan Ehrig (UCD), and will take place in Dublin from September 25 to September 27, 2019. Please find the Call for Papers here.

The event is supported by the UCD Humanities Institute, the Institute of Modern Language Research (School of Advanced Study, University of London), and the Cross-Languages Dynamics project.

This conference is a collaboration between Christiane Schönfeld (Department of German Studies, MIC) and Lisa Anderson (Hunter College/CUNY) and will take place in New York City from May 30 to June 1, 2019. Please find the Call for Papers here: CFP Toller_ Exiles and Refugees NYC 2019(7).

The event is supported by the Max Kade Foundation, Roosevelt House at Hunter College, the Ernst Toller Gesellschaft and the International Feuchtwanger Association.

Irish Centre for Transnational Studies, in cooperation with the Departments of French Studies, History and Philosophy, MIC

MIC, Foundation Building, G08

All welcome!

Programme

12pm: Dr. Gillian Jein (School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Bangor University)

Sensitive Zones: Re-Viewing the Rioting Body in JR’s Paris Projects.

1pm: Lunch

2pm: Prof. Linda Mulcahy (Department of Law, LSE)

Looking for Resistance in Photographic Archives: The Case of the Suffragettes and Other Revisionist Histories.

3pm: Coffee

3.15pm: Ms. Aoife McInerney (IRC Scholar, Department of Philosophy, MIC)

Invisibility and the Constitution of the Political: The Politics of Nationalism vs Naturalism.

4.30pm: Round Table Discussion

Funded by the Departments of French, History and Philosophy, MIC.

For further information, please contact Dr. Mairead Ní Bhriain (mairead.nibhriain@mic.ul.ie).

Dr. Gillian Jein presenting her work on Parisian street artist JR

Round table discussion

Ms. Aoife McInerney giving a talk on Hannah Arendt's notion of the political in light of statelessness and the refugee crisis

The globalisation processes of the early 21st century and the current global refugee crisis have caused growing political and social tensions which profoundly impacts upon relations and identity politics both within the European Union and within individual member states. Although migration into, out of and within Europe has shaped the continent since antiquity, both globalisation and the European integration project are increasingly questioned by nationalist movements and right-wing populist parties who have repeatedly proclaimed the death of ‘multiculturalism’ and questioned states’ principle of religious pluralism. In the aftermath of 9/11 – and more recently terrorist attacks in European capitals such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid – religion and religious expression and indeed secularism have once again become an important marker of cultural identity. Islam in particular has come to be identified as a cultural adversary, with various movements and populist parties often occupying public space to aggressively assert their cultural values and norms in opposition to Islamic practices, the female body being one of the most central symbolic ‘battlegrounds’.

Mainstream parties are divided on these issues and how to respond to these movements. After decades of publicly and diplomatically pursuing policies of both integration and inclusion vis-à-vis migrant communities, local and national government policies in Europe seem to increasingly enable nationalist discourses by banning and stigmatising Islamic practices. While many countries have moved towards banning or have already partially banned the burqa and niqāb in recent years, it is perhaps France which stands out as the primary battleground in this ongoing standoff between state and religion, the controversial ‘burkini ban’ debate and subsequent widespread press coverage in France being but the most recent in a series of episodes opposing religious and secular values. However, it is also important to note that the complexities and tensions surrounding the relationship between state, religion and public are not due solely to migrant contexts but extend – as the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling in Lautsi v Italy and its subsequent reversal in 2010 illustrate – to more general debates and identity politics which involve all religious groups, including Christianity. While understandings of ‘multiculturalism’ and religious pluralism and their relationship to public spaces are first and foremost shaped by the national histories, political cultures and social imaginaries of individual countries, international crises and events, EU laws and policies, and the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights add supranational layers of meaning.

This workshop seeks to explore the relationship between states, religion and public space by discussing a number concepts, issues, and examples. The workshop takes its lead form a selection of articles and short presentations on France’s notion of laïceté and Germany’s attempt to separate state and church, while simultaneously encouraging the political and civic involvement of religious persons.

Questions and terms that will be interrogated include, but are not limited to:

– What constitutes a public space?
– How is secularism defined in modern Europe and how does it relate to the idea of religious freedom and the freedom of expression?
– To what extent can religion be viewed as a central component of national identity and how does this manifest itself in national and European politics?
– To what degree is the female body appropriated in political debate and policy and how – in such cases – can women regain agency over it?

The workshop is envisioned as forum to discuss and explore the relationship between state, religion and public space and a formal preparation is by no means necessary in order to attend and participate.

If you wish to receive a list of suggested articles, please email either Dr. Britta C. Jung or Dr. Mairead Ní Bhriain:

• britta.jung@mic.ul.ie
• mairead.nibhriain@mic.ul.ie

On the occasion of the centenary of Johannes Bobrowski, the Irish Centre of Transnational Studies and Department of German Studies, MIC, will organise an international conference on “Borderland Spaces in German-language Literature and other Media”. The conference will take place on 27 and 28 April 2017 at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London.

The event is organised in cooperation with Nottingham Trent University, and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, and is supported by the Modern Humanities Research Association.

With his „Sarmatien“, Johannes Bobrowski’s poetry and fiction of the 1950s and early 1960s, marked by his experience of the Second World War in Central and Eastern Europe, suggests a European borderland space which questions national borders as well as cultural and temporal boundaries, and challenges prevalent ideas and aesthetics on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Taking Bobrowski’s Sarmatia as a starting point, this international conference aims to provide researchers with a forum to discuss how Central and Eastern European borderland narratives and poetics have changed in the course of the 20th to 21st century in German-language literature and other media, and how such processes may be interlinked with national, European or global discourses, structures, and contexts.

Plenary speakers will include Professor Bill Niven (Nottingham Trent), Professor Maren Röger (Augsburg), Professor Joanna Jablkowska (Łódź), PD Dr. Andreas Degen (Potsdam), and Professor Wladimir Gilmanov (Kaliningrad). The conference languages will be English and German.

CALL FOR PAPERS

On 31 October and 1 November, 2016, the Irish Centre of Transnational Studies (Mary Immaculate College) and the Centre of Irish-German Studies (University
of Limerick) will host an international conference “Connections in Motion: Dance in Irish and German Literature, Film and Culture.”

The event is organised in close collaboration with the National Dance Archive of Ireland, the Irish World Academy for Music and Dance, the School of Culture and Communication, and the School of Design (University of Limerick) and will take place in the Irish World Academy Building on the north bank of the UL campus.

The conference explores Irish-German connections through dance from the 1920s to the present. It includes presentations on dance in literature, theatre, film, architecture, archives and education. Presentations will address dance in Irish and German modernism, choreographies of space in locations such as Ardnacrusha, dance in early German film, and the transgression of boundaries. Films to be screened will include Deirdre Mulrooney’s Dance Emergency (2014), about the Irish-German modern dancer and teacher, Erina Brady, and Wim Wenders’ film Pina (2011), based on the work of the German pioneer of Tanztheater, Pina Bausch. The conference will open with an exhibition of the celebrated Irish choreographer Marguerite Donlon, who made her name in Saarbrücken, and is currently working with the Bolshoi Ballet; it will close with a live performance of a new choreography by Donlon.

Please click here for more information and the programme.

Please click here for information regarding registration.

For further dance events in Limerick see Dance Limerick

2-4 pm, Room 202 (Foundation Building), Mary Immaculate College

All welcome!

The Seventy-Eighth Meeting of the AGS, with a lead panel on “Transnational Screen Adaptation: Cultural and Medial Hybridities”, was hosted by the Department of German Studies, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick from 2 September to 4 September 2015.

The conference programme is available on the AGS website (http://www.ags.ac.uk).

LIMBO – A  Performance on Families Living under Direct Provision

31 March 2015, 9 am, Lime Tree Theatre, Mary Immaculate College

There is a building nearby, it might be close to where you live. We have all heard rumours about what is happening there but somehow we never talk about it. Somehow it stays invisible. And the people inside are invisible too, waiting endlessly, stuck in Limbo. With dancer Angie Smalis and musician Rory Grubb, director Maeve Stone sets out to ask questions, starting at the beginning with: What is direct provision and how do we start to talk about it? In a short piece that fuses movement, the voices of asylum seekers and live music, we begin to trace the snakes and ladders of a story so close, it is nearly impossible to see.

LIMBO is a collaboration of the Associate Director of the PAN PAN Theatre, Dublin, Maeve Stone, with dancer/choreographer Angie Smalis and musician Rory Grubb. It is a gripping 45-minutes piece that responds to the controversial direct provision system. In conversation with Limerick based advocacy group , Trinity sociology academic Katie Sheehan and human rights lawyer Shauna Gillan, the director undertook a period of research in advance of the week’s work in which she gathered material on the subject; interviews with refugees and their children, footage, recordings, media responses and official reports. One of the challenges was to look for the best frame to create a human, non-didactic, engaging way of presenting this difficult material. Games are a great leveller, they engage us, disarm us and connect us. The idea was to create a massive snakes and ladders ‘Game of Life’ board that fills the space and corresponds to certain events relating to the journey of a refugee. The cruelty of the system can be in how arbitrary decisions and circumstances feel, from children and adult perspectives; representing this through a game of chance, and giving it life through dance, may highlight the real frustration and damage to real people and families in such a vulnerable position. The play is a work-in-progress, a stimulant for conversation and the beginning of a larger process.

How to see the Other? If someone is at risk of being persecuted in their own country, s/he may go abroad and ask for asylum in another country. Granting ‘asylum’ means giving someone permission to remain in another country because of that risk of persecution. What is everyday life like for adult and children asylum seekers who are living for an indefinite period of time in direct provision –  accommodation provided by the State whilst they await the decision about their future? How can they and their everyday lives become visible? For whom and for what am I responsible? How can I empathize with others struggling to make a home in constant transit?  The performance will provide a stimulant for discussion about questions of care, duty, dignity, responsibility and children’s rights with first year BED students as part of the Ethics Strand of ERB and E.

The project has been led by Dr. Aislinn O’Donnell (Philosophy of Education) and Dr. Sabine Egger (Irish Centre for Transnational Studies, ICTS). Funding has been provided by the Faculty of Education and DICE.  We wish to thank the Lime Tree Theatre and Dr. Michael Finneran for their support.