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Intersectional Irelands: Background
Irish studies scholarship has recently begun to draw on critical race and anti-colonial theory, migration and diaspora studies, disability studies, feminist and queer theory, and class studies, among other critical perspectives, to broaden the critical discourse beyond the somewhat static literary-historical categories of the past and forge new understandings of Irish literary cultures. Understandings of what Diane Negra terms “transnationalized Irishness” have further unsettled the fixed points on the charts of Irish culture; recent research raises challenging questions about Irish complicity in the Atlantic slave trade and exploitation of indigenous populations.
With this context in mind, our conference theme for 2022 is premised on Kimberle Crenshaw’s term “intersectionality”, coined in 1989 to define a framework that encourages scholars to conceptualise how larger systems of power, privilege, and oppression intersect with social categories like race, class, gender, and sexuality. Patricia Hill Collins (2019) developed the concept of intersectionality further by describing it as part of a move to “build participatory, democratic interpretive communities across differences of experience, expertise, and resources”. Recent efforts to decolonise the literary canon are a case in point, as scholars address historical imbalances in classroom and research practice. As Irish society becomes increasingly multicultural and multilingual, it is timely for us to address the construction and representation of intersectionality in our literary culture.
As IASIL moves beyond our 50th anniversary year, we will also consider the legacies of Irish studies during our conference, by hosting round-table sessions focusing on key writers, scholars, and educators whose innovative ideas and radical praxis energised our research field in the past. We envisage these retrospectives as a tribute to those we have learned from but they also have a generative impetus, as our research community devises new ways of seeing, teaching, learning, and re-presenting Irish culture.
Please note that we regret to say that Dolan's is not wheelchair accessible for the Spoken Word and Traditional Music event on Wednesday July 27th.
Contact Us : IASIL2022@ul.ie
For More Details: IASIL 2022 | University of Limerick (ul.ie)