The Easter 1916 Proclamation promised to ‘cherish all of the children of the nation equally’. With the Easter Rising now over a century old, we invite researchers and writers to Aotearoa New Zealand to consider all the varied resonances and implications of the phrase ‘children of the nation’. How has our sense of the nation and its children changed since 1916, or even since the decade of centenaries? What are the new approaches to the expansion of the nation, with its diasporic identities including, but also moving far beyond, the ‘exiled children’ that the Proclamation locates in America? 

 

In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen inscribes ‘himself, his name and where he was’ on his geography book: ‘Stephen Dedalus / Class of Elements / Clongowes Wood College / Sallins / County Kildare / Ireland / Europe / The World / The Universe’. What do we learn about identity, be it of the child, the adult that the child becomes, or the nation itself, when we trace it through various geographical and temporal scales? How does the phrase ‘children of the nation’ appear when viewed from the vantage point of one of Ireland’s furthest diasporic extremities, where the children of the colonised became enmeshed in settler-colonial projects? 

 

When considering children, we think of ancestors and legacies, tradition and change, youth activism and youthful rebellion. The children of the nation need schooling and sports, recreation and protection. They also need adult care – to think of the children of the nation is also to reflect on adult actions and their perceptions of youth. The expansive reach of the phrase calls viscerally to the pages condemning – and those that condoned – the abandonment and abuse of children since the formation of the Free State. How, with the rise of anti-migrant politics in Ireland and the ‘Ireland is full’ slogan, are we to grapple with the failures to cherish all children equally? Or to consider the ways groups, communities and nations have been infantilised by discourses that present them as childlike? 

 

The phrase also invites examinations of the context in which it was made. The rousing language of the Proclamation urges engagement with the many valences of Irish writing, while the deliberate theatricality of the context in which it was read calls for attention to the performance of politics. Its operation as a call to bring a new nation into being asks us to think about modes of creation, as well as writings of futurity, be they the imaginings of new constitutions, the meditations of philosophical thought or the dreams of science fiction.

 

We welcome reflections ranging broadly, from depictions of Setanta to young Ireland in William Butler Yeats’ Cathleen ni Houlihan, from childhood among the ashes in Myles na gCopaleen’s An Béal Bocht to youth in small towns in Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, from the ill and ghostly teenagers that haunt the pre-Good Friday Agreement North in Jan Carson’s The Raptures to the disaffected, post-Celtic Tiger young women of Nicole Flattery’s short stories. The conference builds on a new interest in engagements with the child in Irish writing, most notably the special issue on ‘Children and the Youth in Ireland’ in Études Irlandaises, but we also encourage speakers to think beyond direct representations of childhood to reflect on the concept of birth, youth, and the nation figuratively. What can we learn from a focus on new beginnings as well as enduring legacies, from evoking the rapidity of change associated with childhood, the liminality of positions between youth and adulthood, to feminist discourses of emancipation by avoiding birth and child-raising altogether?

 

We invite abstracts of 250-300 words, with 100-word speaker bios, for proposed 20-minute papers in English, nó as Gaeilge, on topics including, but not limited to, the themes below. 

 

• New nations and new diasporas

• Intermarriages and new identities

• Children’s and YA literature 

• Literary techniques associated with youth – child narrators, fragmented speech, partial comprehension

• New forms, emerging genres

• Futurity and traditionalism

• Narratives of identity, authenticity, immigration

• Indigeneity, colonisation and settlement 

• Origins and rejuvenation

• Youth organisations and youthful insurgency 

• Infantilisation, paternalism 

• Representations of family and domesticity 

• Schools and institutions

• Eugenics and degeneration

• Mother and Baby homes

• Discourses of reproduction, from pregnancy to child loss, abortion to adoption 

• Social reproduction and invisible labour

• The construction of categories of childhood and teenagers 

• Anxieties of immigration and emigration

• The discourse of revolutions and politics

 

In keeping with IASIL’s general practice, papers are also warmly welcomed in areas engaging with Irish literary studies but unrelated to the theme.

 

Proposals can be for individual talks, panels (3 speakers) or roundtables (3-5 speakers). We strongly recommend that panel and roundtable proposals should include scholars at different points in their career and from a range of institutions.

 

Creative responses and non-traditional engagements with the themes are also warmly encouraged. 

 

Keynote speakers include Professor Kate Costello-Sullivan (Le Moyne College), Associate Professor Catherine Flynn (University of California, Berkeley), Dr Matthew Hayward (Waikato University) and Hēmi Kelly (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Tahu, Ngāti Whaoa, Irish, Dutch; Tautika). Guest writers include New Zealand’s poet laureate, Associate Professor Robert Sullivan (Ngāpuhi, Kāi Tahu, Irish; Massey University).

 

Cultural and evening events will include a welcome reception, readings from poets and novelists, time to tour the excellent galleries and museums of Dunedin, and a trip on the Saturday after the conference.

 

When submitting your abstract, please indicate if you are interested in a Saturday trip around Dunedin and the beautiful peninsula, including guided tours of Olveston Homestead and Larnach Castle, as well as Lover’s Leap walk and the Royal Albatross Centre. The price for the full day trip will be circa NZD150.

 

IASIL Postgraduate Conference Scholarship: Application details and deadline will become available shortly. 

 

Deadlines: In order to facilitate financial planning and, for those not in the 60 visa waiver countries, visa applications, we will have:

 

1. An early deadline of 31 October, with notifications by 30 November. 

2. A second deadline of 28 February, with notifications by 31 March. 

3. We will then move to rolling deadlines, where we will accept submissions and respond within two weeks of submission, until 1st April.   

 

The email for questions and submissions is: [email protected]

 

Conference organisers:

 

Professor Maebh Long

Professor Liam McIlvanney

Dr Neil Vallelly