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Call for Papers: “New Approaches to Irish Migration,” a Special Issue of Éire-Ireland, Spring/Summer 2012.
Guest editors: Piaras Mac Éinrí & Tina O’Toole.
The past three decades have seen a significant change in Ireland’s status as a place marked by substantial emigration to one characterized by far more fluid patterns of movement in and out of the country. This change, in addition to significant reconfigurations of the links between Ireland and its Diaspora in recent times, has effected a paradigm shift in the construction and reception of Irish migration and identity. This is not to suggest that other, more “traditional,” discourses and patterns of migration have vanished. Nonetheless, the terms we are now familiar with in discussing 21st-century migration, such as hybridity, third space, contact zones, are possibly best summed-up by Iain Chambers’ use of the term “migrancy”: suggestive of fluidity rather than fixity and multiplicity rather than notions of authenticity. That said, there can be no postmodern disavowal of the realities of power and agency; the opportunities and choices open to individuals are strongly conditioned by economic and social circumstances.
Against these backgrounds, the guest editors of a Spring/Summer 2012 special issue, “New Approaches to Irish Migration,” welcome submissions from scholars and critics in the various social sciences, history, literature, cultural studies, film studies and visual culture; contributions developing interdisciplinary perspectives are especially welcome. The issue will aim to show how recent scholarship in a range of fields addresses these changing facts, interpretations, and discourses of Irish migration and identity, whether in Ireland or transnationally.
Proposals are invited on relevant topics including, but not limited to, the following:
Imagining the Irish diaspora within political, social, historical, literary or cultural discourses
Homeland/diaspora relations in writings of various kinds (e.g. letters, memoirs, autobiography, and other kinds of texts)
Concepts of migration, diaspora and the transnational in political/social science discourses and literary/cultural texts and the links between them
Gendered writings of the Irish diaspora
Colonial diasporas
Missionary and development-related diasporas
Transnational and “expatriate” migrants: the Irish in international organizations; Irish sojourner migrants.
Constructions of and challenges to homeland hegemonies in writings emerging from the Diaspora
Encounters in third space: Irish diaspora/other diasporas and diaspora/hostland relations
Diasporic identity and alterity: social, sexual, political and other dissident migrants
Deadline for abstracts to be submitted: 1 February 2010.
Deadline for final essay submissions: 1 February 2011.
Abstracts should be sent to: Tina O’Toole, School of Language, Literature, Culture and Communication, University of Limerick, Ireland (tina.otoole@ul.ie); or to Piaras Mac Éinrí, Department of Geography, University College Cork, Ireland (p.maceinri@ucc.ie) |