Conference of Irish Geographers, May 2nd-4th 2003 Trinity College Dublin
Session on:
Irish Geographies and the Contested Spaces of the Atlantic
The contested circuits and networks that make up the Atlantic world have
acquired renewed prominence in debates in geography, history and social and
cultural theory (Gilroy, 1993, Linebaugh and Rediker, 2000, Ogborn, 2000,
Roach, 1996). These debates have a particular relevance for engagements
with the geographies of both Ireland and the Irish (Rogers, 1996, Whelan,
1996, Wilson, 1998). Linebaugh and Rediker's work has situated the Irish as
part of motley alliances of a multi-ethnic Atlantic Working Class in the
early modern period. Noel Ignatiev's work by contrast has focused on how
the Irish 'became white' through adopting particular exclusionary ways of
negotiating their location within trans-Atlantic networks (Ignatiev, 1995).
This session seeks to bring together both theoretical and empirical
engagements with these debates. It seeks to consider what geography can
gain from an engagement with current work on the spaces of the Atlantic,
particularly from an insistence on viewing Ireland as bound up with
cultural and political networks that traverse the Atlantic. The session
seeks to explore what thinking geographically can add to these debates. It
also seeks to consider how detailed contextual work on the geographies of
Ireland and the Irish might reconfigure debates on the cultural and
political spaces of the Atlantic.
Themes that could be addressed include:
· What are the shifting geographies of multi-ethnic co-operation and
antagonism?
· How were trans-Atlantic networks negotiated and produced through official
or subaltern political activity?
· What do these debates mean for contemporary Irish identities?
· What can thinking geographically add to debates about contested Atlantic
political and cultural networks?
· What kind of gendered dynamics are produced through these networks?
· How does this work revision existing imaginative geographies of Ireland?
Those interested in submitting a paper should send an abstract of up to 300
words by 28th February 2003 to:
Dave Featherstone, Department of Geography, University of Liverpool.
[log in to unmask]
Department of Geography, Roxby Building, Liverpool University, Liverpool
L69 7ZT.
0(0 44) 151 7942845.
See also conference website at http://www.tcd.ie/Geography/CIG/
|