American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS)

Call for Papers

Ireland in 2024 is experiencing change like never before. Political contexts like Brexit, the Northern Irish situation, economic uncertainty, war in Europe and the climate crisis have all combined to make the present and future ever more uncertain. Similarly, inflation and homelessness are at crisis point as Ireland struggles to provide homes for all its citizens. Technological change is occurring at bewildering speed.

In this conference, we hope to examine how academic disciplines and scholarship from across the academy, including inter-multi and trans-disciplinary researchers, are responding to these conditions in a proactive and positive manner. We hope to examine how academic disciplines in Irish Studies are looking to embrace the changes and how they are navigating paths towards new beginnings.

This is true of our relationship with Europe; our relationship with the UK; new modes of writing, film and performance; the use of social media as a public forum as well as a new performative space; the flourishing in women’s writing especially in poetry and the novel; new beginnings in historicising all aspects of the Irish past; new beginnings in voicing what was hitherto unvoiced in Irish political social, cultural and religious life; new beginnings in reinventing the Irish language and culture; the overall embrace of a 21st century sense of Irishness, and what it means to be Irish.

Papers across any and all of these areas, in both English and Irish, will be welcomed and more information will soon be available on a dedicated conference website and across social media platforms. We particularly welcome papers from underrepresented groups within Irish studies.

To submit papers please email: ACIS2024@mic.ul.ie.

Closing date for submissions: 25 November 2023.