Call For Papers - New Modalities of Irishness: Performance, Race + Inequality

The Modalities of Irishness project co-hosted by University College Dublin’s Clinton Institute and Boston University’s College of Fine Arts is now accepting submissions for its second event, following the successful first symposium in Boston in June 2023. The next symposium in the series will take place at the Clinton Institute on Friday 19th April 2024. 

In an era of heightened self-consciousness in regard to whiteness, Irishness toggles between racial positions and performs complex mediations.  Accordingly, this category may present itself as newly in flux, increasingly divorced from seemingly stable definitions of “heritage,” and available to support new assertions of identity along a racial spectrum. 

This symposium will consider distinctive modalities and mediations of Irishness, particularly as these are inflected with racial identifications and displacements and encoded across media, including theatre/performance, film/television, and myriad forms of communication. As Irishness increasingly flows through key digital channels in forms such as emigration blogs, Instagram posts and TikTok dance videos it is timely to consider the characteristics and effects of such manifestations of Irishness and the research protocols suited to studying them. 

The first seminar in this series focused closely on the United States and while we will maintain this focus, we also encourage the submission of papers from/focused on other regions. 

Please send a 300-word paper or panel proposal (for a 20-30 minute presentation) and short bio paragraph by December 15 to Professor Liam Kennedy (liam.kennedy@ucd.ie), Professor Diane Negra (diane.negra@ucd.ie) and Professor Harvey Young (cfadean@bu.edu).