The North East Irish Culture Network (NEICN) in association with the Department of Culture at the University of Sunderland presents Celtic Gothic: Degeneration and Regeneration.
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James Hogg (1770-1835). Author of The
Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
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‘There is’ according to Alan Bissett, ‘something/someone/somebody that haunts the fringes of the Scottish imagination…perhaps the whisper of history, pain, feudalism, legend, all or none of these things, but undoubtedly Scotland’s is a fiction haunted by itself, one in a perpetual state of Gothicism.' As numerous scholars have argued, the same applies to Ireland,
‘a country of monsters, where human kind, like evil demons drank human blood, and lived on the marrow of dead men’s bones’ (The Nation 5th February 1848). The ‘Gothicism’ of the Celtic peripheries is symptomatic of a history of unresolved issues and unfinished business, littered with the detritus left by the colonial storm of progress; a cryptic palimpsest of ellipses and silences from which ancestral voices cry out for retribution and reprisal, and the silenced Celtic bogeyman threatens to contaminate the present with his primitive, anachronistic return.
Following the success of the previous ten international Irish and Scottish Studies conferences, this year The North East Irish Culture Network (NEICN), in association with The University of Sunderland, invites papers for an interdisciplinary conference, taking place in June 2014. The conference organisers hope to represent a wide range of approaches to Irish and Scottish (and other ‘Celtic’ cultures) from academics and non-academics alike. Performances, roundtables, collaborative projects, and other non-traditional presentations are encouraged in addition to conference papers. We welcome both individual submissions and proposals for panels. In connection with the conference theme of ‘Celtic Gothic’ we welcome submissions for panels and papers based around the interconnected ‘gothic’ histories of the Celtic peripheries. Possible themes include, (but are not limited to):
• Irish/Scottish/Celtic Gothic versus English Gothic; The Birth of Irish/Scottish Gothic ; Theorising Irish/Scottish/Celtic Gothic; The Uncanny in Irish/Scottish Literature; Victorian Irish/Scottish Gothic; Irish/Scottish Gothic Geography
• Irish/Scottish Gothic in the Media; Irish/Scottish Gothic Art; Irish/Scottish Gothic and Psychology; Irish/Scottish Gothic and Imperialism; Irish/Scottish Gothic and Science; Irish/Scottish Gothic and Technology; Irish/Scottish Gothic and Popular Culture; Irish/Scottish Gothic and History; Terror and Terrorism; Celtic ‘monsters’; Vampires; the occult; magic; Dark Fairy Tales; Werewolves, hybrids, cyborgs; bogey men, body snatchers; boogles and ghosts.
Following the interdisciplinary nature of the conference we welcome proposals from the areas of:
• Literature, Linguistics, Creative Writing, Performing Arts, History, Politics, Folklore and Mythology, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Tourism, Art and Art History, Music, Dance, Media and Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Celtic Studies and Studies of the Diaspora.
Each session will include three or four 20-minute presentations each followed by discussion. A selection of the accepted papers will be subsequently published in the conference proceedings.
Papers should not exceed 2000 words / 20 minutes’ delivery.
Enquiries and submissions (name, affiliation, title of contribution, and abstract of no more than 200 words) should be submitted to:
Mr Colin Younger (NEICN Manager)
E-mail: colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk
