AAG Boston 1998
Call for Papers
IRISH GEOGRAPHIES
The nature of the revisionism debate within Irish historical, cultural and
political studies is now well known, at least within Ireland. Yet, the
relationship between geography and the construction and renegotiation of
Irish identities in the past and the present is less widely acknowledged.
This conference session seeks to explore the ways in which dominant and
alternative versions of Irish identity have been constructed through the
shaping of material and symbolic landscapes in past and present, both
within and outside the island of Ireland. Claims to a particular construct
of national identity, derived from particular representations of a
collective past, necessarily involve the inclusion or exclusion of
particular kinds of places and peoples as they fit - or fail to fit -
these necessarily transient hegemonic models of society. However, the
contemporary renegotiation of Irish identities, combined with the
activities of the heritage industry, have stimulated and responded to
changes in the ways Irish identity is understood. For example, both past
and contemporary attempts to define and re-define Irish identity have
frequently deployed a geographical language of borders and boundaries, as
well as regions, interconnection, movement and dispersal. Different
concepts of nationhood have been expressed through particular kinds of
political geographies of state organisation and ideology, from political
isolationism to European federalism. As constructs of geographical
difference were formerly used to support an identity of absolute cultural
difference and insular nationalism, new spatial metaphors such as the
'Fifth Province' and ideas concerning the 'Green Diaspora' have been
proposed as ways of 'thinking otherwise' about the contested nature of
Irish identity. Exploring both the historical and contemporary making of
cultural geographies of Irishness also invokes questions of
post/colonialism, post/nationalism, class, gender and sexuality and points
to alternative versions of sovereignty and more pluralist and diverse
renditions of collective cultural identity.
The session seeks to explore some of these issues of contested identities,
past and present. Abstracts are particularly invited on the following
broad themes related to the renegotiation of Ireland and its identities:
o Symbolic landscapes and representations of Irishness at home and abroad
o Alternative constructs of Irishness and its spatial metaphors
o The dimensions of diversity and the renegotiation of parameters of
exclusion in Irish society.
Abstracts of 300 words should be sent by 22 August 1997 to
Prof. Brian Graham or Dr Catherine Nash
Department of Geography Department of Geography
University of Ulster at Coleraine University of Wales
Coleraine Lampeter
County Londonderry Ceredigion
BT52 1SA SA48 7ED
N. Ireland Wales
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