Irish Day 2019

Guest Speakers

Her Excellency Emer O’Connell, Ambassador of Ireland

Dr Julie Bates is a lecturer in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, and co-director of the Samuel Beckett Summer School. Her first book, Beckett’s Art of Salvage, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. Essays on Beckett will soon be published in the Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett, Journal of Beckett Studies, and Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui. ‘Essayism in contemporary Ireland’, a study of contemporary Irish non-fiction, will be published soon in The New Irish Studies by Cambridge University Press. Julie’s current book project is a study of the artist and writer Erica Van Horn and Coracle press, which Van Horn runs with the poet Simon Cutts from their home in rural Tipperary. The book explores the dynamic between place, creative practice, and material form in the artists’ books published by Coracle.

Suzanne Walsh is a writer and artist from Wexford currently in residence in Fire Station Artist Studios in Dublin. She uses performative lectures, audio/musical performances, recitations and text in various manifestations to query ideas around human/non-human relationships and consensus reality. She often appropriates texts from various sources including the internet, historical poetry and scientific texts. She has published essays, reviews and poetry in various publications, in the art and literary world. Past performances include venues such as The Phoenix Institute Brighton, IMMA, The International Literature Festival, and The Artists Festival with Galeria Zacheta in Warsaw. www.suzannewalsh.ie

Dr Nathan O'Donnell writes fiction and non-fiction. He is co-editor of an Irish journal of contemporary art criticism, Paper Visual Art, and also writes for performance and exhibition. He teaches at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and is currently based at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, undertaking curatorial research on the work of Lucian Freud. His first book, on Wyndham Lewis’s art criticism, is forthcoming from Liverpool University Press, and he is also editing the critical edition of the British avant-garde journal BLAST as part of the OUP Edition of Lewis’s Collected Works. Other current projects include a non-fiction book about magazines as well as several shorter essayistic pieces, including a long experimental text about the island of Vis, off Croatia, drawing upon ideas of nationhood, propaganda, and utopian spaces in theatre.

Dr Paul McNamara

Although originally from Galway, I have been based in Poland for many years, and currently work at the Technical University of Koszalin. My principal research focuses on Poland during the 20th century. I am the author of Sean Lester, Poland and the Nazi Takeover of Danzig (2009) and Red Star over the Baltic: The Sovietisation of Poland's Baltic Recovered Territories, 1945-1956 (in press). I have also translated several Polish academic works into English, most notably Prof. Beata Halicka’s monograph The Polish Wild West: Forced Migration and Cultural Appropriation in the Oder Region, 1945-1948.

Prof. Wawrzyniec Konarski

Political Scientist (2005) – with postdoctoral degree (2002), until recently professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and currently, at the Vistula University in Warsaw; Ph. D. in political science (1985). His scientific interests concern widely understood connections – analyzed in a modern historical perspective - between ethnicity and politics, with special consideration towards European Celtic territories (independent Ireland and Northern Ireland in particular), Nordic states, Central-Eastern Europe (Visegrad countries and Ukraine in particular), selected countries in Africa, East Asia and Latin America, so called former ‘white British dominions’ as well as Irish and Polish immigrant communities in the United States of America and Australia. Apart from many higher schools in Poland he has been lecturing extensively as a visiting scholar at the universities and educational institutions in more than fifteen countries. Author of eleven monographs, including: Selected Problems of the Independent Ireland’s Political System (1988), Irreconcilables: The Story of the Irish Republican Army (1991), A Predominant Party System: The Case of Ireland (1994), Pragmatists and Idealists: Origins, Typology and Evolution of the Political Parties in the Twentieth Century Irish Nationalism (2001), The Constitutional System of Ireland (2005), The Balkans: Ethnocultural Roots of the Conflict (2006, co-author and co-editor), Germany-Poland: Coming Closer (2007, co-author and editor), The Crisis of Leadership in the Contemporary Politics (2011, co-author and co-editor), Political Scientist about Politics. Interviews, Comments, Opinions, and Expert Opinions (2008-2014) (2014), and almost 200 articles, expert appraisements, and critical reviews.

Programme

10.00 – Welcome by Professor Małgorzata Grzegorzewska, Head of the Institute of English Studies UW, followed by keynote speech by Her Excellency Emer O’Connell, Ambassador of Ireland. (Room 335)

11.00 – 11.30 – Coffee break (Room 121)

11.30 – 13.30 – “TALKS/WORKSHOPS Part One” chair: Klaudia Łączyńska, (Room 131)

Documentary film "SE Gontarski's Laboratory on Beckett's ...but the clouds..."

Julie Bates and Nathan O'Donnell The Personal Essay in Ireland Today

Conversation between Nathan O'Donnell and Julie Bates about personal essay as a form in contemporary Ireland

Questions / discussion open to the floor

13.30 – 14.30 – Lunch break (Room 121)

14.30 – 16.00 – “TALKS/WORKSHOPS Part Two” chair: Kasia Kociołek, (Room 131)

Paul McNamara From the Irish Free State to the Danzig Freie Stadt: the League of Nations career of Irish diplomat, Sean Lester.

Wawrzyniec Konarski From Uniformity towards Plurality. Historical Images of the Irish Nation.

Barry Keane Images of Ireland on the Polish Stage in the 20th Century

16.00 – 16.30 – Coffee break (Room 121)

16.30 – 17.30 – Irish dance workshop (McGahan Lees Irish Dance Company mcgahanlees.com) (Room 131)

17.30 – 18.00 – Coffee break (Room 121)

18.00 – Suzanne Walsh – poetry/audio performance (Room 335)

Readings (including introduction) of several shorter poetic pieces

Performance of a longer piece that combines poetry and audio

EXHIBITION – From Strangers to Neighbours