This special issue will focus on the status of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora at century's end. We welcome papers concerned with any aspect of Irish and Irish Diaspora politics, economics, culture, religion and/or history, especially those working within anti-colonial or post-colonial theories and practices.
We are particularly interested in essays, reviews, and interviews that take advantage of the journal's multimedia capabilities.
Maria Pramaggiore: maria_p@unity.ncsu.edu
The aim of this multidisciplinary conference is to explore the meanings of the contemporary and historical entities which are categorised under the rubric of colony. Historically, colonies were defined in a wide variety of ways, with varying relationships to the imperial centre, and with a number of widely differing forms of colonial or imperial government. In like manner, there have been different kinds of colonizing and decolonizing processes. The modern discourse of colonialism is not equivalent to the earlier discourse of colonization and terms such as empire, charter colonies, crown colonies, dependencies, provinces, dominions, and commonwealths need careful discrimination. Papers would address the question of how colonies have been defined, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Are there any sure signs of coloniality, postcoloniality? What are the roles of ethnicity, race, gender, and social class in different colonial dispensations? Papers might consider the ever-present danger of generating colonial theory from the specific experience of certain kinds of colonies and then conferring on it the dignity of universality.
A central strand of the conference will address the question, "Was Ireland a Colony"? After the Act of Union in 1800, Ireland was constitutionally an imperial power, but in many other respects was a colony in all but name. Many nationalists refused to see Ireland as a colony and remained enthusiastic imperialists. Ireland was widely seen as "anomalous", resisting definition as either colony or empire. The wider theme of this conference should illuminate this discussion, while the specificity of Ireland's experience might test the validity of colonial theories generated from different colonial situations.
The Conference Organisers
Department of English, NUI
Galway, Ireland
before 1 February 1999. There is a special conference email address: colony@bodkin.ucg.ie.
Details of the conference, which will be updated regularly, are available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.ucg.ie/enl/colony/conference.htm.
Conference Organisers:
Fiona Bateman, Tadhg Foley, Lionel Pilkington, Seán Ryder, and
Elizabeth Tilley, Department of English, and Terry McDonough,
Department of Economics, National University of Ireland, Galway,
Ireland
Tel: 353 [0]91 524411
Fax: 353 [0]91 524102
colony@bodkin.ucg.ie