Join the CLCS Celtic Forum at the MLA Convention in Seattle, Jan. 9-12, 2020!

Panel: Migration and the Diaspora

From our vantage point in Seattle in 2020, far adrift from the Celtic ‘homelands’, CLCS Celtic invites papers that consider the concept of migration and the place of the diaspora in Celtic-language texts and in Celtic Studies more broadly.

Historical or fictional, migration is a regularly occurring theme in Celtic texts from the medieval to the modern periods. In recent history, migrations have carried Celtic languages and narrative traditions far afield. Scholars, moreover, have advanced the study of Celtic languages and literatures from diasporic outposts since the founding of the discipline.

Papers could consider shifting relationships to and perspectives of the homeland/region; shifting perspectives of the self as Gael/Welsh/Breton/Celt; loss of home, exile, and/or renewal; Celts on the continent, in the Americas, or elsewhere; indigenous peoples’ experience of the Celtic diaspora; Celtic peoples and colonization/post-colonial studies; the immigrant experience in the early modern and modern eras; the exportation and adaptation of popular ‘Celtic’ culture; Celticism and Celticists in the diaspora; or the place of diaspora studies within Celtic Studies.

Submit 250-word abstracts for 15-minute papers to Natasha Sumner (nsumner@g.harvard.edu) and Melissa Ridley Elmes (MElmes@lindenwood.edu) by March 15.