Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University will host a four-day conference entitled “Women and the Great Hunger in Ireland”
Keynote Speakers:
Jason King, PhD, Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, Moore Institute at NUI Galway
Ciarán Reilly, PhD, Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses & Estates, NUI Maynooth
Oonagh Walsh, PhD, Professor of Gender Studies, Glasgow Caledonian University
As Margaret Ward has demonstrated, Irish women have been systematically “excluded and silenced” in written history, thus denying them their rightful position as agents of change. In regard to Ireland’s Great Hunger, while many contemporary depictions of the Famine have been dominated by female imagery, the involvement of women in other ways (e.g., as landowners, as relief-givers or providers for the family) has received little attention. This conference asks: how did women experience—and shape—the tragedy that unfolded in Ireland between 1845 and 1852? And how does the Great Hunger compare with the experience of women in other famines?
This conference seeks to explore the diverse—and still largely unexplored—role of women during the Great Hunger. Where appropriate, a comparative approach is encouraged. Abstracts of 300 words are invited. Please include a short biography (maximum 50 words) including your institutional affiliation and contact address. Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes in length with 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Proposals for specialist panels are welcome. Postgraduates also are encouraged to submit abstracts. Selected papers may be published in a collection following the conference.
Abstracts must be submitted online by March 31st, 2015.
Suggested themes:
Philanthropy
Irish orphan emigration scheme
Relief—victims or victors?
Children
Religious orders
The Famine queen
The travellers’ gaze
Nationalist voices
The big house
Memory and memorialization
Visual representations
Historiography
Emigration
Hidden histories
Women and the workhouse
For academic queries please contact Sarah Churchill at sarah.churchill@quinnipiac.edu
For general information and to submit, please visit http://www.quinnipiac.edu/greathungerconference