Summer Program in Irish Studies in Dublin

Each summer, the Univeristy of Notre Dame offers a three-week Irish Studies Seminar in Dublin that has a very strong national reputation. Tuition and housing are usually around $4,000 per student. This year, the seminar has offered a special "two students for the price of one" deal to our students. One student has already expressed interest in the program. If you are interested in participating, please contact Dr. Heather Hicks! Here is some more information regarding the program:

The IRISH SEMINAR 2011: Irish Modernisms

20 June – 8 July 2011
THEME

Modernism, marked by a strongly self-conscious rupture with tradition and a formal and conceptual inventiveness, is often understood as a vigorous reaction against established religious, social and political views. Informed on one hand by the horrors of the Great War (1914-18) and governed on the other by a belief that our world is created in the very act of perceiving it, no absolute truth existed to provide guidance or solace. Dominated by a relativistic aesthetic, Modernists turned inward to examine the sub-conscious, advocating individuality and celebrating interiority. The crisis of representation, the rise of the cosmopolitan, cultural dislocation, the subconscious, memory and sexuality all found expression in European modernism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Modernism exerted, and still exerts, a profound pressure on contemporary culture, literature, cinema, art and scholarship.
The Irish Seminar 2011 convenes a stellar cast of international scholars to examine Irish Modernism in its varied manifestations, as well as their interrelationships with Western and global Modernism. The contribution of Ireland’s English-language authors to Modernism is unparalleled: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Bowen, and O’Brien. Recent criticism has engaged with issues of national, regional and local origin to construct a ‘Modernism of the Margins’. A three-week series of seminars, lectures and events probes the paradoxical and opposed trends of revolution and reaction (1916, War of Independence, Civil War), the struggles of nascent political parties in their clashes with established forces and older vested interests, the attrition of traditional elites and the emergence of new states north and south.
Yet Modernism, no less than Ireland itself, cannot be reduced to a caricature or stereotype. A key concern of the Irish Seminar 2011 is the interrogation of the standard account. In addition to exploring Modernism of the margins, the Seminar examines minority languages, vernacular culture, the local and the national, and gendered identities in the Irish Modernist experience.
As well as concentrating on historical and theoretical issues, the Seminar will focus on modernism as a mode of creativity that emphasizes disruption and fracture, questioning expressiveness, originality, tradition, revolution, gender, sexuality, language and identity. Exploring the constant tension between nihilism and enthusiasm, energy and ennui that emerged in Ireland between 1880 and 1940, and which sparked this efflorescence of modernist works, the Irish Seminar 2011 will provide challenging perspectives on Irish modernism in its multi-faceted dimensions.

Full Information is available at: http://irishseminar.nd.edu

2011 FACULTY

Executive Director: Brian Ó Conchubhair (Notre Dame)

The 2011 IRISH SEMINAR faculty includes: Joe Cleary (Yale), Seamus Deane (Notre Dame), Wes Hamrick (Notre Dame), John Kelly (Oxford), Declan Kiberd (Notre Dame), José Lanters (Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Joseph Lennon (Villanova), David Lloyd (Southern California), Barry McCrea (Yale), Bríona Nic Dhiarmada (Notre Dame), Emer Nolan (NUI Maynooth), Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh (NUI Galway), Kevin Whelan (Notre Dame).

ACCOMMODATION

Participants will stay at UCD Summer Residence, Roebuck Hall, located close to Dublin’s city centre and within easy reach of the city’s many amenities. UCD is just a short 10 minute bus ride to the city centre via a direct route. Its superb location, just on the edge of town on an attractive green-field campus, provides easy access to an abundance of restaurants, as well as Dublin’s attractive coastline and the Wicklow mountains. Onsite facilities include a pharmacy, medical centre, banks, post office, delicatessens, newsagent, gym, launderette and mini-markets. The apartments are spacious and fully furnished to a high standard. There are 6 single en-suite bedrooms in each apartment. All accommodation has self-catering facilities, including kitchen, laundry and a living room. Guests have the option of being totally self-sufficient during their stay, although it is comforting to know that there are extensive catering facilities on campus and close-by. The residences at UCD are carefully integrated into their setting. Maintained to a high standard, they are an ideal home away from home. Features include: modern furnished apartments with en-suite toilet and shower in each bedroom – generous sized living area, including a fitted kitchen/dining area – free wifi – secure controlled access to each apartment.



FURTHER INFORMATION AND PROGRAM UPDATES

Website: http://irishseminar.nd.edu

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