Freedom Proclaimed - Irish Association for American Studies Conference

Wednesday April 24, 2013

All are welcome to attend “Freedom Proclaimed,” the IAAS Irish Association for American Studies conference, in Plassey House at the University of Limerick, 26-27 April 2013.

The conference includes papers and panels on African American studies, architecture, history, literature, migration studies, politics, and visual culture, and concludes with a roundtable discussion on “Emancipations.”

The conference fee is €10 for students and the unwaged, €20 for IAAS members, and €30 for IAAS non-members. The full programme is attached and given below:

FREEDOM PROCLAIMED

26-27 April 2013

Programme

Friday 26 April

9.00-9.45 Registration (Plassey House hall)

9.45-10.00 Welcome (Board Room)

Conference opened by Glucksman Professor Emeritus Tom Moylan, University of Limerick

10.00-11.30 Panel Session 1 (Board Room): The Horrors of Freedom

Chaired by Clair Sheehan, University of Limerick

Jack Fennell, University of Limerick

Huddled Masses in Wide Open Spaces: ‘Prairie Madness’ in American Horror Narratives

Dara Downey, Trinity College Dublin

Wandering Mediums and Absent Spectres in the Ghost Stories of Emma Frances Dawson

Rosemary Gallagher, NUI Galway

“Jeopardizing [the] traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them”: The Catch-22 of Liberating Yossarian from the Liberators

11.30-12.00 nCoffee

12.00-1.00 Panel Session 2A (Board Room): Architects of Freedom

Chaired by Dr Patricia Moran, University of Limerick

Jan Frohburg, University of Limerick

Of Liberty and Happiness

Miriam Fitzpatrick, Waterford Institute of Technology

A Chair to Move; the Value of Freedom of Choice to the Social Life of the City

Panel Session 2B (Wood Room): Race, Diaspora, Identity

Chaired by Robert O’Keeffe, University of Limerick

Angeline O’Neill, University of Notre Dame Australia

Irish American and Irish Australian Women’s Writing: an ongoing exploration of freedom and oppression

Lisa Bogert, Queen’s University Belfast

Transatlantic Tastes: Irish American foodways and nationalism within the American dialogue of freedom, 1909-1921

1.00-2.00 Lunch

2.00-3.00

Alan Graham Memorial Lecture (Board Room)

Chaired by Glucksman Prof. Margaret Harper, University of Limerick

Prof. Barbara Ladd, Emory University

Beyond the Plantation: Race and Class at the Edge of the Swamp

3.00-4.30 Panel Session 3A (Board Room): Rights to be Free

Chaired by Dr Stanley van der Ziel, St Patrick's College

Rebecca Isaacs, University of Birmingham

A Zeal for American Democracy? Academic Freedom in the Cold War, 1947-1957

Colm Whelan, NUI Galway

The Occupy Wall Street Movement and Freedoms of the First Amendment

Peter G. Cornett, King’s College London

A Social Propagandist – Christopher Hitchens and the Rhetoric of Freedom

Panel Session 3B (Wood Room): Proclaiming Freedoms

Chaired by Dr Louise Sheridan, University of Limerick

Elisa Joy White, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

“It’s a Free Country” and Other Contemporary Tales of American Freedom

Neil Brooks, University of Western Ontario

“A Blanket, A Glass of Water, and Nobody But Me to Tell My Life Story:” Freedom and Necessity in The Book of Negroes

Marta Werbanowska, University of Warsaw

“All we want is make us free” – Kevin Young’s Ardency

4.30-5.00 Coffee

5.00-6.30 IAAS AGM 2013 (Board Room)

Irish Association for American Studies Annual General Meeting (all welcome)

7.00 Conference Dinner and Awards Ceremony (East Room, Plassey House)

Saturday 27 April

9.30-10.00 Registration (Plassey House hall)

10.00-11.30 Panel Session 4 (Board Room): Literary Landscapes and Liberties

Chaired by Dr José Ruiz Mas, University of Granada

Michael Griffin, University of Limerick

Freneau’s American Auburn: Landscape and Liberty in Eighteenth-Century American Poetry

Joan Dargan, St Lawrence University

“Sweetest Curves” and “Magic Descents”: The Romance of the Road in Edith Wharton’s A Motor-Flight Through France

Stanley van der Ziel, St Patrick’s College

Fun and Games: The Self-Conscious Art of Netherland

11.30-12.00 Coffee

12.00-1.30 Panel Session 5A (Board Room): Constituting Freedom

Chaired by Dr Michael Griffin, University of Limerick

Mário Alves, Portugal

Jefferson’s Paradox – Antecedents of the Emancipation Proclamation

Bryce Hal Taylor, Heidelberg University

“A Devil’s Pact”: Resurrecting Biblical Criticism Against Constitutional Piety

Bart Verhoeven, University of Nottingham

Brushfires of Freedom: Robert Welch, Business Nationalism and the Founding of the John Birch Society

Panel Session 5B (Wood Room): After Slavery

Chaired by Dr Yianna Liatsos, University of Limerick

Laura Sarnelli, University of Naples L’Orientale

Melancholic Freedom and Forms of Agency in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

Parisa Vaziri, University of California, Irvine

Uptight!: legibility of loss in the racial impasse film

Rachel Wallace, Queen’s University Belfast

‘The Emancipation Approximation’: Kara Walker’s artistic ambivalence regarding the Emancipation Proclamation

1.30-2.30 Lunch

2.30-3.30 Plenary Session (Board Room)

Chaired by IAAS Chair Dr Philip McGowan, Queen’s University Belfast

Dr Peggy O’Brien, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Telling the Time with Emily Dickinson

3.30-4.45

Roundtable Session on “Emancipations” (Board Room)

Prof. Catherine Clinton, Queen’s University Belfast (Chair)

Prof. Tom Moylan, University of Limerick

Rachel Wallace, Queen’s University Belfast

Clair Sheehan, University of Limerick

4.45-5.00 Conference Closing (Board Room)

Conference organised by:

Dr David Coughlan and Clair Sheehan,

School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication