Conference Schedule
Friday, October 4TH
REGISTRATION and CHECK IN from 12.30pm
Location: Baruch College Vertical Campus Building, 55 Lexington Ave.
The registration table will be just beyond the turnstiles at the building entrance on 25th Street between Lexington and 3rd Ave.
SESSION A: 1:00- 2:15
PANEL CANCELED
Sally Rooney: Perspectives and Approaches (Roundtable)
Location: 9-180
Chair and Respondent: Cassidy Allen, Boston College
Ellen Scheible, Bridgewater State University, Mary McGlynn, Baruch College, CUNY, Claire Bracken, Union College
SESSION B: 2:30- 3:45
Northern Ireland: Protest and Remembrance
Location: 9-170
Chair: John Roney, Sacred Heart University
Rachael Young, Boston College, “Crime is Crime is Crime': Political Protest in Belfast and Brixton”
Sarah Mason, University of Edinburgh, “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. The Risk of Reconciliation: Lessons in Ethical Remembrance from a Community Oral History Project in West Belfast, Northern Ireland.”
Marie Hulme, Sacred Heart University, “A Model for Rising and Writing Above the Sectarian Tensions in Northern Ireland in the Age of Brexit: An Examination of the Belfast Poets of 'The Troubles.'
Women’s Writing: Risk and Challenge
Location: 9-180
Chair: Abby Bender, Sacred Heart University
James Byrne, Wheaton College. “Edna O’Brien and A Country Girl’s Lament for Pastoral Ireland”
Mary Burke, University of Connecticut, “Soldier, Sailor, Saint: The Risks of Irish Motherhood in Claire Kilroy”
Elizabeth Gilmartin-Keating, Monmouth University. “The Inevitability of Obedience: Risk in Louise Kennedy's Trespasses”
SESSION C: 4:00- 5:30
Book Launch and Reading Event: Emily Bloom, Sarah Lawrence College and Clair Wills, University of Cambridge
Location: 7-155
Chair: Tara-Harney Mahajan
Emily Bloom and Clair Wills will read from their respective books, I Cannot Control Everything Forever and Missing Persons, and discuss their work in conversation with Tara Harney-Mahajan. The event will also include a book signing by both authors (with books for sale at the event).
6:00-8:00 CONFERENCE RECEPTION, Sundays Well, 360 Third Ave
Saturday, October 5TH
8:00-10:00 CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
Location: 9th floor landing
SESSION D: 8:30-9:45
Genre and Risk: Horror, Tragedy and Life Writing
Location: 9-170
Chair: Kersti Powell, St Joseph’s University
Jessica Oyler, Boston College. Malignant Marginality: Medical Spaces & Genre in The God Squad and Unsettled
Kris Deffenbacher, Hamline University. The Devil’s Doorway, the Eighth Amendment, and the Risks of Failing to Reckon with History’s Horrors
Julian Dean, CUNY. Marina Carr and Tragedy in the Anthropocene
Politics, Violence and Risk
Location: 9-180
Chair: Sarah Mason, University of Edinburgh
Seamus O’Malley, Yeshiva University. Geoffrey Coulter and the Transatlantic Review
Rowan Bianchi. Boston College. Violence as Law, Law as Violence: An Exploration of the Rockite Insurgency
Elizabeth Redwine, Seton Hall University. “Who Can We Get to See All This?” The Women’s Prisoner’s Defense League and the Practical Performance of Risk
SESSION E: 10:00-12:00
Film Screening of Tomorrow is Saturday
Location: 7-155
Chair: Mary McGlynn, Baruch College, CUNY
Respondent: Sarah Churchill, Drew University
Screening of Tomorrow is Saturday, a 2020 documentary directed by Gillian Marsh about artist Seán Hillen, followed by a discussion of his work led by Sarah Churchill.
12:00-1:15 LUNCH AND BUSINESS MEETING
Location: First floor cafeteria
SESSION F: 1:30-2:45
Gender and Risk in Irish Writing
Location: 9-170
Chair: Tara Harney-Mahajan, Caldwell University
Kelly Sullivan, Glucksman Ireland House, NYU. “Taking Chances in Molly Keane’s Early Novels”
Abby Bender, Sacred Heart University, “Childbirth and Risk in Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars”
Lucy McDiarmid, Montclair State University, “Sexualized Risks in New Poems by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin”
Ecocritical Risk: Place, Nature, Environment
Location: 9-180
Chair: Joe Nugent, Boston College
Buckheit, Melissa, Boston College. “Narratives of Loss? Historical and Romantic Registers of Environmental Presence & Absence in "Caoine Chille Chais," "Machtnamh an Duine Dhoilgheasaig nó Caoineadh Thighe Molaga," & "Lament over the Ruins of the Abbey at Teach Molaga"
Annie Humphrey, Kean University, “Risk and Ecocriticism in Early Medieval Irish Law”
Seán Ó Cathail, Boston College. “Amhráin agus logainmneacha mar leabhrán eolais chun Éire a athdhúlrú; Songs and place names as a guide book for rewilding Ireland”
John Roney, Sacred Heart University. “Risks in Irish Fishing: deciphering different stories”
Recent Risky Ventures: Contemporary Irish Literature
Location: 9-145
Chair: Claire Bracken
Laura Barberan Reinares, Bronx Community College, CUNY. Writing Torture: Aesthetic Risks in the Fiction of Bernard MacLaverty and Paul Lynch
Tom Shea, University of Connecticut, “Kevin Barry’s Desperado Lovers: Narrative Daring in The Heart in Winter”
Kersti Powell, St Joseph’s University. “Where’s my Gogol?”: Ukraine in Recent Irish Literature
SESSION G: 3:00- 4:15
Diaspora, Immigration, and Sexuality
Location: 9-170
Chair: Annie Humphrey, Kean University
Mahoney, Brendan, Boston College. “Irish-Americanism and the Misconstruction of Whitey Bulger, The Valhalla, and NORAID”
Barmore-Pooley, Gracelyn, NYU. “‘Are You Sexually Deviant?’: ILGO, AOHA, and Paths of Queer Irish Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s.”
Liberatoscioli, Juliette. Saint Joseph’s University. “Soula Emmanuel’s Wild Geese: The Creative and Critical Contexts for the First Irish Trans Novel”
Women and Irish History
Location: 9-180
Chair: Lucy McDiarmid, Montclair State University
Emma Quinn, St John’s University, In Defense of Catherine Coll: Irish Single Motherhood in 1880s New York
Sara Barenfeld, Montclair State University, Sacrificial Mothers: Kathleen Clarke, Domesticity, and the 1916 Rising
Mary Larkin, Salem State University, A Prayer for the Dunes: Feminist Combatants, the Irish Civil War and Silence
Activism, Protest and Solidarities
Location: 9-145
Chair: Rachael Young, Boston College
Paloma Carol-Ryan, Boston College. “We’ll chant a soldier’s song”: Seditious singers and the construction of a postcolonial Irish identity in the revolutionary period
Red Washburn, CUNY, “Writing behind Walls: Comradeship, “No Wash,” Hunger Strikes, and Fecal Art in the Prison Prose of Mairéad Farrell”
Conor Donnan, University of Maryland, “Entering Free Palestine:” Irish Republican, Native American, and Palestinian Solidarity during a time of Global Unrest.
COFFEE BREAK
Location: 9th floor landing
SESSION H: 4:30- 5:45
Taking Risks: A Roundtable on Edna O’Brien (Roundtable)
Location: 7-155
Organizer: Tara Harney-Mahajan
Claire Bracken, Union College; Mary Burke, University of Connecticut; Matthew Eatough, CUNY; Tara Harney-Mahajan, Caldwell University; Ellen Scheible, Bridgewater State University; Kelly Sullivan, Glucksman House, NYU; Mary McGlynn, Baruch College, CUNY
SUNDAY, October 6TH
2pm: W.B. Yeats Walking Tour, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Pk S, New York, NY 10003
Organizer: The W.B. Yeats Society of NY
Sunday, 2 p.m. October 6th. A Walking Tour of Yeats’s New York
Yeats, his father, their patron John Quinn, and the artists John Sloan and Robert Henri, who were friends of the senior Yeats, stalked the east and west 20s, from the 69th Regiment Armory (site of the famous “Armory Show” that Quinn played a major part in) to the rooming house where Sloan painted JBY presiding at a dinner table in “Yeats at Petipas.” This free event is being offered to our members and to academics attending the American Conference for Irish Studies gathering at Baruch College Friday and Saturday. Assemble at the National Arts Club.