The Canadian Association for Irish Studies (CAIS)

CAIS 2012 schedule (tentative, subject to change) now available!

Danine Farquharson — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:05:45 +0000

Click on the link below for a full conference schedule and information about cultural events. This schedule is tentative, and subject to change. More information will be available soon, so check back and check often.

2012 schedule – downloadable version

Thumbnail version:

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 2011
2:00 – 4:00 pm		Graduate Student Workshop Conducted by Dr. Cecil Houston	ARTS 141
4:00 – 6:30 pm		Conference Registration	Foyer ARTS Hall
7:00 – 9:00 pm		Welcome Reception	Residence of the Ambassador of Ireland 291 Park Road, Rockliffe Park, Ottawa, ON
Thursday, June 21, 20122011
9:00 – 9:15	Welcome and Opening Remarks : Pawl Birt Chairperson			Desmarais Hall Room 1140
9:15 – 10:30	Keynote Speaker Kerby Miller, University of Missouri, USA *Shattered Worlds: The Great Famine’s Impact on Edmund Ronayne in Ireland, Quebec and Chicago.* MODERATOR: David Wilson
10:30 – 11:00	health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)			Main Hall
Session 1 moderator: Sheila Scott
11:00 – 11:30	David Wilson The Fenian Diaspora.			Desmarais Hall Room 1140
11:30 – 12:00	Robert McGee Irish Nationalist Sentiment in Toronto in the 1860s.
12:00 – 12:30	Conrad Brunstrom Thomas D’Arcy McGee and the Invention of Burkeian Canada.
12:30 – 2:00	lunch

Session 2 moderator: TBD
2:00 – 2:30	Rosemary O’Flaherty Finding their Better Half: Irish Participation in the Rebellions of 1837-1838.				Desmarais Hall Room 1140
2:30 – 3:00	Brandon Corcoran The Irish Repeal Movement in the British North American Colonies, 1828-1847: Rethinking the Trans-Atlantic Repeal Movement from a Canadian Perspective.
3:00 – 3:30	Kevin Dooley The Human Aspect of the Building of the Rideau Canal (1826 – 1832).
3:30 – 3:45	health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)				Main Hall
	Session 3A moderator: Simon Jolivet		Session 3b moderator: TBD
3:45 – 4:15	Jason King ‘Le Typhus de 1847/The Typhus of 1847’: Virtual Archive.	Desmarais Hall Room 1130	Jane McGaughey The Fighting Irish? Defining the Irish Military Diaspora.	Desmarais Hall Room 1140
4:15 – 4:45	Noémie Beck Les irlandais du Québec rural. Étude historique, ethnographique et culturelle en Beauce: le compté de Frampton (Saint-Malachie et Saint-Edouard-de-Frampton).		Michael Quigley Ridgeway: Amateurs vs Professionals.
4:45 – 5:00	Closing Remarks : Pawl Birt

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Evening of Songs and Stories

ARTS 509

The Ottawa Celtic Choir was established in 2008, and reflects a rich heritage of Celtic music in our community and our country. We sing the music of the Celtic nations and diasporas, both accompanied and acapella, in English and in a variety of Celtic languages. The OCC is a non-auditioned community choir. An ability to read music or speak one of the Celtic languages is not necessary to sing with us

Ellen MacIssac

Caroline Pignat

CAROLINE PIGNAT (nee Cranny) Born in Ireland and raised in Ottawa, this Ottawa University alumnus is a Governor General’s Award winning author. Her first novel Egghead, explores bullying as told by two opposing bystanders and
> is a Red Maple Honour Book and a recommended resource for Kids Help Phone. Her historical fiction series follows young Irish immigrants as they flee the famine in 1847 and settle in Upper Canada. Greener Grass, the first in the series, received the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature. A two time finalist for both the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award and the CLA Children’s Book of the Year, Caroline’s historical fiction is
also short-listed for the 2012 national IODE Violet Downey Book Award. Canadian Children’s Book News calls her work “Historical fiction at its best.” Her freelance work appears in numerous publications for children, teens and adults. Caroline has taught elementary, intermediate and senior
grades and currently teaches Grade 12 Writers Craft in Kanata. Visit: www.carolinepignat.com

Gaby Monaghan

(Annie Coyle Martin)

Gaby Monaghan grew up in a little village in County Cavan, Kilnaleck, the child of country teachers, steeped in stories of leprechauns, faeries and pots of gold, WB Yeats, Walter Macken and Maurice O’Sullivan. She is a liar, and since fiction is lies, she writes fiction under a borrowed name, Annie Coyle Martin, which is her mother’s name. She came to Canada in 1957 and has lived in Newfoundland and Ontario. She attended The University of Toronto and
Larentian University. in Sudbury. At The Taddle Creek Writers Conference I met Ann Dexter of McGilligan Books and she published the first piece I wrote, ‘Jody’ and later ‘The Music of that Happens’. More recently she published ‘To Know the Road’, which will be followed by its sequel in the near future.

Friday, June 22, 2012
9:00 – 9:15		WElcome and Comments : Pawl Birt					Desmarais Hall Room 1140
Session 4 moderator Danine Farquharson
9:15 – 9:45		Sally Halliday Derry to New Brunswick: Female Migration from the North West of Ireland in the Early 19^th Century.					Desmarais Hall Room 1140
9:45 – 10:15		Sandra Barney Erin’s Daughters in new Caledonia: Irish Women in Cape Breton in the Nineteenth Century.
10:15 – 10:45		Mike McLaughlin Irish Women and the Charitable Irish Catholic Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Canada.
10:45– 11:00		health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)					Main Hall
Session 5A moderator: TBD					Session 5b moderator: Jerry White
11:00– 11:30		Heather Macdougall: Exiles as Gaeilge: Language and Community for Irish Ex-pats in Tom Collins’ Kings.		Desmarais Hall Room 1130	Dominic Brian: St Patrick the Meaningless Saint: Thoughts on Global Irishness.		Desmarais Hall Room 1140
11:30– 12:00		Jerry White: Cré na Cille as Multi-Media Extravaganza.			Rebecca Graff-McRae: From ‘Seachtar Fear, Seacht Lá’ to ‘Ten Men Dead’: the Shifting Commemorations of the Rising and the Hunger Strikes.
12:00– 12:30		Terry Byrne: Neil Jordan: Negotiating Duality.			Colin McMahon: The Uncrowned Monarch’s Dominion: Daniel O’Connell’s 1875 Birth Centenary in Canada.
12:30 – 2:00		lunch
2:00– 3:30		The Marianna O’Gallagher Lecture Cecil Houston, University of Windsor *Reflections Provoked by Marianna, Ann, and Kristine* MODERATOR: Pádraig Ó Siadhail				Desmarais Hall Room 1140
3:30– 3:45		health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)					Main Hall
Session 6A moderator: Heather MacDougall					Session 6b moderator: Michele Holmgren
3:45 – 4:15	Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin: Cultural Survival without Cultural Brokers.		Desmarais Hall Room 1130		Denis Sampson: Transatlantic Tóibín: The Lesson of ‘The Master’.	Desmarais Hall Room 1140
4:15 – 4:45	E. Moore Quinn: Singing Their Way to Sanity: The Irish American Musical Soundscape in Late 19^th and Early 20^th Century New England.				Danine Farquharson: The Rising and Romance: Novels of 1916.
4:45 – 5:15	Ellen MacIssac: From Lilting to Parlour Laments : Adapting Irish Traditional Singing to the Choral Context.				TBD?
4:15 – 4:30	Closing Remarks : Pawl Birt

Performance by

Celtic Cross

Friday Evening

at the Banquet

Celtic Cross is a group of Ottawa dancers who perform a mix of traditional and contemporary choreographies. With decades of experience in Highland, Irish, and Ottawa Valley stepdance, the Celtic Cross Dancers have performed for Irish ambassadors and British high commissioners; have shared the stage with the likes of Ashley MacIsaac, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, the Sons of Scotland, Ottawa Police, Cameron Highlanders, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police Pipe Bands, and with countless Celtic bands; have appeared on CTV, City TV, and other networks; and have performed and competed across Europe and North America. Celtic Cross performances are a lively blend of all three dance styles and are a mix of traditional solo and group dances as well as original choreographies. The group’s repertoire is suited to any venue or event from festivals to pubs to live concerts to wedding receptions and anything in between. With a roster of over 20 adult dancers, Celtic Cross can perform in almost any space and with any number of dancers. Visit http://www.celticcrossdancers.com for more info.

Please use Cumberland Street entrance.

David Wilson has been driving people to distraction for many years now with his desperate attempts to play traditional Irish music. A failed drinker who passes out after three pints of Guinness, he can usually be found sitting on a barstool talking about how much better his life would have been had he learned Latin. It is rumoured that he has a day job, but no one — least of all himself — is quite sure what that is.

Frank’s tin whistle playing was discovered by a traveling gypsy who told him he would never amount to anything if he did not leave his home in the middle of the bog and seek his fame and fortune elsewhere. He also told Frank other stuff which must remain a secret. Frank escaped the song of the wild birds, misty heather mornings and armed only with a tinwhistle he left Ireland disguised as a very young man with a beautiful blond lass named Eileen by his side. They traveled through Africa and North America seeking their fame and fortune but mostly just steady work.

40 years later Frank and Eileen reside in Ottawa where Frank plays his tin whistle and dreams of the day he can catch up with that traveling gypsy.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

9:00 –

9:15

Welcome and Comments : Pawl Birt

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

9:15 – 10:30

Keynote Speaker

Maria Eugenia Cruset, University of La Plata, Argentina

Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in Argentina.

moderator: Pawl Birt

10:30– 11:00

health break

Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)

Main Hall

Session 7

moderator Fred McEvoy

11:00 –

11:30

Andrew McGaffey: The Identity Crisis of the Friends of Irish Freedom.

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

11:30 –

12:00

Pádraig Ó Siadhail: From ‘Uplifting’ Natives to ‘Self-sacrifice’ for Ireland: the Curious Career of Miss Katherine Hughes.

12:00 –

12:30

Sarah O’Brien: Legacies of the Irish Settlement in Argentina.

12:30 –

2:00

lunch

Session 8

moderator Pawl Birt

2:00 –

2:30

Sheila Scott After the Scattering Comes the Gathering:Transplanting and

and Ellen MacIssac: Preserving the Irish Language Culture and Arts in the North American Gaeltacht.

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

2:30 –

3:00

Jonathan Giles: What Can Irish Language Networks in Canada Tell us about Language Revitalization?

3:00 –

3:30

Aralt Mac Giolla Chainnigh: TBD

3:30 –

3:45

Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements: Paul Birt

3:45 –

4:00

health break

Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)

Main Hall

4:00 –

5:45

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies / L’Association canadienne d’études irlandaises

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

Cocktails 6:30

Dinner 7:30

Banquet

St Brigid’s

Please use entrance off Cumberland Street

310 St. Patrick Street

Many thanks and safe home!

CAIS 2012: Ottawa … Registration and Details

Danine Farquharson — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 13:24:04 +0000

Details on the conference can be found by clicking on this link.

Tentative Schedule:

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 2011
2:00 – 4:00 pm		Graduate Student Workshop Conducted by Dr. Cecil Houston	ARTS 141
4:00 – 6:30 pm		Conference Registration	Foyer ARTS Hall
7:00 – 9:00 pm		Welcome Reception	Residence of the Ambassador of Ireland 291 Park Road, Rockliffe Park, Ottawa, ON
Thursday, June 21, 20122011
9:00 – 9:15	Welcome and Opening Remarks : Pawl Birt Chairperson			Desmarais Hall Room 1140
9:15 – 10:30	Keynote Speaker Kerby Miller, University of Missouri, USA *Shattered Worlds: The Great Famine’s Impact on Edmund Ronayne in Ireland, Quebec and Chicago.* MODERATOR: David Wilson
10:30 – 11:00	health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)			Main Hall
Session 1 moderator: Sheila Scott
11:00 – 11:30	David Wilson The Fenian Diaspora.			Desmarais Hall Room 1140
11:30 – 12:00	Robert McGee Irish Nationalist Sentiment in Toronto in the 1860s.
12:00 – 12:30	Conrad Brunstrom Thomas D’Arcy McGee and the Invention of Burkeian Canada.
12:30 – 2:00	lunch

Session 2 moderator: TBD
2:00 – 2:30	Rosemary O’Flaherty Finding their Better Half: Irish Participation in the Rebellions of 1837-1838.				Desmarais Hall Room 1140
2:30 – 3:00	Brandon Corcoran The Irish Repeal Movement in the British North American Colonies, 1828-1847: Rethinking the Trans-Atlantic Repeal Movement from a Canadian Perspective.
3:00 – 3:30	Kevin Dooley The Human Aspect of the Building of the Rideau Canal (1826 – 1832).
3:30 – 3:45	health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)				Main Hall
	Session 3A moderator: Simon Jolivet		Session 3b moderator: TBD
3:45 – 4:15	Jason King ‘Le Typhus de 1847/The Typhus of 1847’: Virtual Archive.	Desmarais Hall Room 1130	Jane McGaughey The Fighting Irish? Defining the Irish Military Diaspora.	Desmarais Hall Room 1140
4:15 – 4:45	Noémie Beck Les irlandais du Québec rural. Étude historique, ethnographique et culturelle en Beauce: le compté de Frampton (Saint-Malachie et Saint-Edouard-de-Frampton).		Michael Quigley Ridgeway: Amateurs vs Professionals.
4:45 – 5:00	Closing Remarks : Pawl Birt

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Evening of Songs and Stories

ARTS 509

Ellen MacIssac

Caroline Pignat

CAROLINE PIGNAT (nee Cranny) Born in Ireland and raised in Ottawa, this Ottawa University alumnus is a Governor General’s Award winning author. Her first novel Egghead, explores bullying as told by two opposing bystanders and is a Red Maple Honour Book and a recommended resource for Kids Help Phone. Her historical fiction series follows young Irish immigrants as they flee the famine in 1847 and settle in Upper Canada. Greener Grass, the first in the series, received the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Children’s Literature. A two time finalist for both the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award and the CLA Children’s Book of the Year, Caroline’s historical fiction is also short-listed for the 2012 national IODE Violet Downey Book Award. Canadian Children’s Book News calls her work “Historical fiction at its best.” Her freelance work appears in numerous publications for children, teens and adults. Caroline has taught elementary, intermediate and senior grades and currently teaches Grade 12 Writers Craft in Kanata. Visit: www.carolinepignat.com

Gaby Monaghan

(Annie Coyle Martin)

Gaby Monaghan grew up in a little village in County Cavan, Kilnaleck, the child of country teachers, steeped in stories of leprechauns, faeries and pots of gold, WB Yeats, Walter Macken and Maurice O’Sullivan. She is a liar, and since fiction is lies, she writes fiction under a borrowed name, Annie Coyle Martin, which is her mother’s name. She came to Canada in 1957 and has lived in Newfoundland and Ontario. She attended The University of Toronto and Larentian University. in Sudbury. At The Taddle Creek Writers Conference I met Ann Dexter of McGilligan Books and she published the first piece I wrote, ‘Jody’ and later ‘The Music of that Happens’. More recently she published ‘To Know the Road’, which will be followed by its sequel in the near future.

Friday, June 22, 2012
9:00 – 9:15		Welcome and Comments : Pawl Birt					Desmarais Hall Room 1140
Session 4 moderator Danine Farquharson
9:15 – 9:45		Sally Halliday Derry to New Brunswick: Female Migration from the North West of Ireland in the Early 19^th Century.					Desmarais Hall Room 1140
9:45 – 10:15		Sandra Barney Erin’s Daughters in new Caledonia: Irish Women in Cape Breton in the Nineteenth Century.
10:15 – 10:45		Mike McLaughlin Irish Women and the Charitable Irish Catholic Bazaars in Nineteenth Century Canada.
10:45– 11:00		health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)					Main Hall
Session 5A moderator: TBD					Session 5b moderator: Jerry White
11:00– 11:30		Heather Macdougall: Exiles as Gaeilge: Language and Community for Irish Ex-pats in Tom Collins’ Kings.		Desmarais Hall Room 1130	Dominic Brian: St Patrick the Meaningless Saint: Thoughts on Global Irishness.		Desmarais Hall Room 1140
11:30– 12:00		Jerry White: Cré na Cille as Multi-Media Extravaganza.			Rebecca Graff-McRae: From ‘Seachtar Fear, Seacht Lá’ to ‘Ten Men Dead’: the Shifting Commemorations of the Rising and the Hunger Strikes.
12:00– 12:30		Terry Byrne: Neil Jordan: Negotiating Duality.			Colin McMahon: The Uncrowned Monarch’s Dominion: Daniel O’Connell’s 1875 Birth Centenary in Canada.
12:30 – 2:00		lunch
2:00– 3:30		The Marianna O’Gallagher Lecture Cecil Houston, University of Windsor *Reflections Provoked by Marianna, Ann, and Kristine* MODERATOR: Pádraig Ó Siadhail				Desmarais Hall Room 1140
3:30– 3:45		health break Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)					Main Hall
Session 6A moderator: Heather MacDougall					Session 6b moderator: Michele Holmgren
3:45 – 4:15	Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin: Cultural Survival without Cultural Brokers.		Desmarais Hall Room 1130		Denis Sampson: Transatlantic Tóibín: The Lesson of ‘The Master’.	Desmarais Hall Room 1140
4:15 – 4:45	E. Moore Quinn: Singing Their Way to Sanity: The Irish American Musical Soundscape in Late 19^th and Early 20^th Century New England.				Danine Farquharson: The Rising and Romance: Novels of 1916.
4:45 – 5:15	Ellen MacIssac: From Lilting to Parlour Laments : Adapting Irish Traditional Singing to the Choral Context.				TBD?
4:15 – 4:30	Closing Remarks : Pawl Birt

Performance by

Celtic Cross

Friday Evening

at the Banquet

Please use Cumberland Street entrance.

40 years later Frank and Eileen reside in Ottawa where Frank plays his tin whistle and dreams of the day he can catch up with that traveling gypsy.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

9:00 –

9:15

Welcome and Comments : Pawl Birt

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

9:15 – 10:30

Keynote Speaker

Maria Eugenia Cruset, University of La Plata, Argentina

Nationalism and the Irish Diaspora in Argentina.

moderator: Pawl Birt

10:30– 11:00

health break

Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)

Main Hall

Session 7

moderator Fred McEvoy

11:00 –

11:30

Andrew McGaffey: The Identity Crisis of the Friends of Irish Freedom.

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

11:30 –

12:00

Pádraig Ó Siadhail: From ‘Uplifting’ Natives to ‘Self-sacrifice’ for Ireland: the Curious Career of Miss Katherine Hughes.

12:00 –

12:30

Sarah O’Brien: Legacies of the Irish Settlement in Argentina.

12:30 –

2:00

lunch

Session 8

moderator Pawl Birt

2:00 –

2:30

Sheila Scott After the Scattering Comes the Gathering:Transplanting and

and Ellen MacIssac: Preserving the Irish Language Culture and Arts in the North American Gaeltacht.

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

2:30 –

3:00

Jonathan Giles: What Can Irish Language Networks in Canada Tell us about Language Revitalization?

3:00 –

3:30

Aralt Mac Giolla Chainnigh: TBD

3:30 –

3:45

Closing Remarks and Acknowledgements: Paul Birt

3:45 –

4:00

health break

Book Display and Sales (DMS 1140)

Main Hall

4:00 –

5:45

Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies / L’Association canadienne d’études irlandaises

Desmarais Hall

Room 1140

Cocktails 6:30

Dinner 7:30

Banquet

St Brigid’s

Please use entrance off Cumberland Street

310 St. Patrick Street

Many thanks and safe home!

CFP: Ireland and Cinema

Danine Farquharson — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:41:34 +0000

Preliminary call for papers “Ireland and Cinema: Culture and Contexts”

Film Studies at University College Cork invites the submission of abstracts for a major conference titled “Ireland and Cinema: Culture and Contexts”. The three-day international conference will take place from Thursday April 18 to Saturday April 20, occurring during Ireland’s 2013 presidency of the EU.

Spring 2012 Newsletter

Danine Farquharson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:47:08 +0000

Latest newsletter 2012spring is available: information about 2012 conference in Ottawa included.

Honouring Brian John

Danine Farquharson — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:02:29 +0000

Ní bheidh a leithéid ann arís: We’ll never see the likes of him again.

From Ninian Mellamphy:When I begged the privilege of speaking for you and for CAIS at the memorial service at the Faculty Club at McMaster University on March 19, 2012, I promised to let you know how the ceremony developed.

My apologies for the lateness of this note and, perhaps, also for its length.

Master of Ceremonies Peter Walmsley, Chair of the English Department, and Michael Ross, a contemporary of Brian, set the tone of the gathering, Peter describing his diffidence in early meetings with his first boss, whose playful wit he found as mysterious as the daily presence of a Mars Bar on his desk; Michael confessing to shared corridor mischief and the singing of flippant duets in the elevator.

The spokesman for CAIS rose to explain that the consumption of the said chocolate bars perfectly reflected the wisdom and balance of Brian, a Man of Peace who made a daily propitiatory offering to the God of War.

Joan Coldwell, a colleague for decades, wrote that she especially remembered Brian’s unflappability in their mutual efforts to prepare for the CAIS conference and art exhibition in 1977, and remembered too their subsequent laughter at their fiscal genius in determining that Americans should pay their fees in Canadian dollars–just before the US dollar soared.

Ann Saddlemyer described her memories of Brian as so positive that it seems too Irish to believe and then combined warm praise and cold blame in this memorable expression: “All I recall are lengthy meetings when patient Brian managed to steer matters with his usual wry wit, even when dealing with explosive other members of CAIS.

Joe Ronsley’s memories centred on Brian’s quickness of the mark when the host of the 1980 CAIS conference at Western not only collapsed with an apparent heart attack but, to everyone’s relief, entered the banquet hall. Seeing Ninian enter, Brian, who was on the podium, immediately quoted Christie’s famous line in The Playboy of the Western World: “Are you coming to be killed a third time?”

Michael Kenneally, Principal of the School of Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia, and Pádraig Ó Síadhail, D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies at St.Mary’s spoke for the younger generations of scholars, Michael writing of Brian as a man of unfailing fair-mindedness, civility and humour. He was a good man, whose personality and behaviour always accurately reflected his values. Pádraig, for CAIS, offered our condolences to Margaret and the family and praised Brian for his part in pioneering and promoting in Canada the study of Ireland, its culture, and, especially its literature–and for his active service on behalf of the association.

Speaking with reference to the 1977 conference at McMaster at which he met George Eogan, famous archaeologist of Brú na Bóinne, I paid my debt to Brian, in that a year later my children, then 10 and 11 years old, were led by Professor Eogan to the very heart of passage grave at Knowth, where they conversed with Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, a student of pre-historic art. Quite the historic privilege! The site is not yet open to the public.

Secondly, reflecting on Michael’s “He was a good man,” I wondered if it was not time to imitate the early medieval Irish tradition of naming saints by acclamation, because in this post-christian age our agnostic culture has need for agnostic saints–people of goodness rather than sanctity, people who in my life were “saints” of benevolence and beneficence, not blessèd but truly blessed—and I named three: Gioia Gaidoni of UCD, Sid Warhaft of UM, and Brian John of McMaster.

In a sense, the rest of the ceremony was a canonisation-by-acclaim: Bob Goodfellow and Roger Clark, speaking for Amnesty International, praised Brian for a life that was a model of sincerity, gave us a history of the tireless efforts of his role in Amnesty, called him a mensch and, quoting Séamus Heaney, called him an “ambassador for the Republic of Conscience.”

Gloria Nafziger, read a tribute from the Hon. Ron Hoffman, Ambassador to Myanmar, praising Brian’s inestimable moral influence on the modern history of what we used to call Burma; his commitment to principle and hope and his faith that the e-mail had greater impact than armies, the Ambassador asserted, led to recent positive changes in the life of the country. His final tribute was to recite the last stanza Yeats’s “Municipal Gallery Revisited,” the stanza that ends with the line, “And say my glory was I had such friends.”

Brian’s son Paul’s address was so affective that I dare not summarise it, but I must tell you of the ending. On what turned out to be the night before the death, Paul told his dad that he’d miss him.
Brian, honest to the end, confessed his scepticism about the afterlife and then added, “But if there is one, I’ll miss you.”

As the audience wiped their tears, James Lafferty (a student of years gone by) read one of his poems, a Celtic lament for the lost leader.

N.M.

Simon Jolivet Impresses Again

Danine Farquharson — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:58:18 +0000

Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal tiennent à féliciter chaleureusement Simon Jolivet, lauréat du 2e Prix de la Présidence de l’Assemblée nationale, pour son livre Le vert et le bleu. Identité québécoise et identité irlandaise au tournant du XXe siècle, publié en 2011.

La qualité de son travail de recherche a été soulignée lors de la remise des prix, hier à Québec, au cours du Forum des Rendez-vous de la démocratie 2012.

Monsieur Jolivet, chercheur postdoctoral au Centre de recherche en civilisation canadienne-française de l’Université d’Ottawa, était également finaliste, la semaine dernière, aux Prix du Canada 2012 en sciences sociales et humaines.

Il est possible de se procurer son livre dans toutes les bonnes librairies, ainsi que sur le site Web des PUM. http://www.pum.umontreal.ca/catalogue/le-vert-et-le-bleu

CAIS 2012: Ottawa!

Danine Farquharson — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 13:34:53 +0000

Important information about CAIS 2012 at the University of Ottawa, including registration, guest speakers, accommodations, and more will be constantly updated here. Check in often.

registration

CAIS 2012 – Cultures and Contexts in Ireland’s Diasporas

This year Ottawa is hosting for the third time the CAIS/ACEI annual conference, to be held at the University of Ottawa from June 20 to 23. Centrally located, the University is near the Byward Market with its many restaurants and pubs, and close to such major tourist attractions as Parliament Hill and the UNESCO world heritage site Rideau Canal. Thanks to the hospitality of Ambassador Ray Bassett there will be a reception at the Irish Embassy on Wednesday evening. Music and readings by local authors of Irish origin will be held on Thursday and Friday evenings and the banquet will be held on Saturday evening at the Irish Cultural Centre in the former St. Brigid’s Church. As per CAIS tradition the banquet will conclude with entertainment provided by conference attendees so anyone who can play an instrument or carry a note is welcome to participate.

Guest Speakers

Cecil Houston is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor. Well known to CAIS members, he has agreed to deliver the second annual Mariana O’Gallagher lecture, named in honour of our late colleague and friend who was a passionate pioneer of the study of the Irish in Quebec. He is the co-author with William J. Smyth of two of the seminal books on the Irish in Canada, The Sash Canada Wore: a historical geography of the Orange Order in Canada and Irish Emigration and Canadian Settlement: patterns,links, and letters.

Kerby Miller is the Curator’s Professor at the University of Missouri. He has authored a number of major works on Irish immigration to North America. Ireland and Irish America: Culture, Class, and Transatlantic Migration is a collection of essays spanning the range of his career. Irish Immigrants in the land of Canaan: Letters and Memoirs from Colonial and Revolutionary America, 1675-1815 won the James S. Donnelly Sr. prize, presented by the American Conference for Irish Studies for books on history and the social sciences. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America won awards for the best book in American social history and the best book in American immigration and ethnic history; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History.

Maria Eugenia Cruset is Chair of the Irish Lecture at the National University of La Plata in Argentina and Director of the Migration Network at Santiago de Chile University in Chile. She is an expert on the Irish diaspora in South America. She has recently edited a collection entitled Migration and New International Actors: An Old Phenomenon Seen With New Eyes, which includes two of her own papers on the Irish diaspora. Her other publications include Diplomacia de las Naciones sin Estado y de los Estados sin Nacion: Argentina e Irlanda: Una Vision Comparativa.

Accommodation

On campus – residence 90 University

$115.00 including breakfast

website: http://ottawaresidences.com/

email: reserve@uottawa.ca

phone: 613 562-5885

There are a number of hotels within a 10-15 minute walk of the campus.

Novotel – $150.00

33 Nicholas St.

1. RESERVATIONS PROCESS & BOOKING WEBSITE

Online and phone reservations will be accepted from 03/16/2012. Rooms at special conference rate MUST be booked BEFORE May 21st.

A dedicated booking website has been created for our event so CAIS guests will be able to make, modify and cancel their hotel reservations online, as well as take advantage of any room upgrades, amenities or other services offered by the hotel. Please use web link below for special CAIS rates.

To preview the website, please click the following link:

https://resweb.passkey.com/Resweb.do?mode=welcome_ei_new&eventID=9164481

phone: 613 230-3033

Les Suites – from $174.00

130 Besserer St.

website: http://les-suites.com/

phone: 613 232-2000

Quality Hotel Downtown – $169.00

290 Rideau St.

website: http://qualityinn.com/

phone: 613 789-7511

Swiss Hotel – from $128.00

89 Daly Ave.

website: http://swisshotel.ca/

phone: 1-888-663-0000

registration

READY … SET …

Danine Farquharson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:54:03 +0000

CAIS 2012 FOR PAPERS: CULTURES AND CONTEXTS IN IRELAND’S DIASPORAS

University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, 20-23 June 2012

The transposed and rediscovered aspects of Irish culture continue to thrive and renew themselves throughout the New World and elsewhere. The interaction of such cultures within a wider spectrum provide the opportunity to discover and celebrate a wider definition of those directions towards which Irish culture overseas is developing. The growing body of literature produced by writers of Irish origin or heritage helps focus attention on the many Irish communities outside of Ireland. In the same way, the social and political history of the Irish in North America provides ample material for our understanding of transposed and renewed ethnicity.

For the conference Cultures and Contexts in Ireland’s Diasporas, we invite proposals for papers concerning as widely as possible the various Irish diasporas as reflected in literature, language, history, folk culture, life-writing, gender studies, contemporary popular culture, and new media. We particularly welcome papers that will address aspects of Irish culture in the Francophone communities of Canada, as well as the rich heritage of the Canadian-Irish experience in general. Although all papers reflecting the Irish diasporas of North America are welcome, we also encourage the submission of proposals concerning the Irish in South America and beyond the Anglophone world. The Organizing Committee also welcomes proposals on other Irish-related topics as well as proposals for special panels.

Nous acceptons des soumissions en français ou en anglais.
…………………………………………
Final date for proposals: February 15TH , 2012

Contact: Paul W. Birt, PhD, Chair of Celtic Studies,
Arts Hall,
70, Laurier Avenue East
Room 134
Ottawa, ON Canada
K1N 6N5
pwbirt@uottawa.ca

CFP: Hybrid Irelands

Danine Farquharson — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:34:25 +0000

Hybrid Irelands: At Culture’s Edge (Abstracts due November 15th, 2011)

A Graduate-Student Conference Exploring the Relationship between Hybridity and Irish Literature

Place: University of Notre Dame

Date: March 29-31, 2012

Keynote Speakers: Terry Eagleton (University of Lancaster, University of Notre Dame)

David Lloyd (University of Southern California)

Clair Wills (Queen Mary, University of London)

Poetry Reading: Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Medbh McGuckian (tentative) (Queen’s University, Belfast)

In recent literary and cultural analyses, Ireland’s unique relation to various notions of hybridity has been given preliminary consideration. Whether pertaining to genres and styles, discourses and disciplines, or identities and influences, it has become apparent that a defining feature of many Irish works is their resistance to traditional, narrow categorization. In an attempt to expand upon these earlier approaches, the Keough-Naughton Institute at the University of Notre Dame will be holding a three-day graduate-student conference to address the relationship between hybridity and Irish literature, with a special focus on texts from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. Submissions might interrogate past engagements with the concept of hybridity—a term itself which has no clear definition—as well as posit possible new understandings of “the hybrid” that are specific to Ireland. We invite criticism that focuses on conventionally understood literary genres (poetry, fiction, drama, memoir) as well as work from related fields, including but not limited to history, art, theory, folklore, material culture, and film studies. Furthermore, because the nature of hybridity suggests a coming-together of different elements, one of our goals is to cultivate a critical approach that is itself hybrid; in other words, we very much encourage interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. Our hope is to facilitate a critical conversation that envisions a hybrid Ireland—or, more appropriately, hybrid Irelands—and its literature.

Fall 2011 Newsletter

Danine Farquharson — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:49:37 +0000

The Fall 2011 newsletter is now available.