Call for Papers
IRELAND AND TRANSNATIONAL SOLIDARITIES
Société Française d’Études Irlandaises (SOFEIR) et University College Cork, Irlande
French Society of Irish Studies (SOFEIR) and University College Cork
21-22 March 2025
The conference will be held at University College Cork
Following Ireland’s formal recognition of Palestine as a sovereign and independent state in May 2024, the 2025 SOFEIR-University College Cork Conference aims to bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds to consider transnational solidarities in the Irish context. Thinking critically about transnational solidarities in relation to Ireland may involve reflecting on how Ireland’s international interactions over time were shaped, and continue to be shaped, by Ireland’s changing position in the global capitalist system and by the country’s particular experiences of imperialism and of settler colonial dispossession. Historically and culturally, the anti-colonial struggle against British rule in Ireland involved the support of cultural, political and military solidarities as expressed by a wide variety of nations and political groupings including, for example, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain as well as North American first nations such as the Choctaw and Cherokee, and Indigenous Australians. Today, Ireland’s position in the global capitalist system is one of alignment with a neoliberal economic vision predicated on eradicating any form of (trans)national solidarity. Thus, in May 2024 the Irish government could interpret its formal recognition of the state of Palestine as an act that both signalled the country’s ambition for a stronger influence amongst former colonial powers in Europe and flagged its bonds to countries in the Global South formerly under colonial occupation.
The topic may also entail reflecting on the influence of transnational solidarities, whether expressed formally or thematically, in Irish and literary texts as well as consideration of how such texts imagine and represent political and ethical solidarity. How do Irish writers, artists, performers instigate, explore and give expression to international solidarity? How do print, visual and material cultures contribute to the establishment of networks of solidarities?
Thinking critically about transnational solidarity in an Irish context may prompt papers focused on particular case studies, but also exploratory papers arguing for solidarities across space and time that have not yet been articulated. Papers concerned with theorising international solidarities would also be most welcome, as would papers exploring connections of solidarity between Ireland and France.
Abstracts of 250 words (or 750-word panel submissions) are invited on themes that include, but are not limited to:
- Conceptualising transnational solidarity
- Forgotten histories of transnational solidarity
- Transnational solidarity with, and across, anticolonial and anti-imperial liberation struggles
- Empire and transnational solidarity
- Decoloniality and transnational praxis
- Transnational feminist solidarity
- Art and transnational militancy
- The representation of transnational solidarity (fiction, art, poetry, drama, music)
- Transnational solidarity and capitalism
- Transnational solidarity in the world of work
- The trade union movement and transnational solidarity
- Transnational solidarity and race
- Irish language activism in a transnational context
- Ways in which transnational solidarity is imagined and enacted
- Building transnational solidarity
- The limitations and challenges of transnational solidarity
- Transnational grassroots activism/transnational activist networks
- Transnational solidarities and contemporary politics
- Student transnational activism
- Irish solidarity with the Palestinian cause
- The Irish anti-apartheid movement
Please email a 250-word abstract (and 50-word bio) to both Heather Laird (H.Laird@ucc.ie) and Hélène Lecossois (helene.lecossois@univ-lille.fr) for consideration no later than 16 December 2024.