Nordic Journal of English Studies : Irish Studies in the Nordic Countries

This special issue of Nordic Journal of English Studies is devoted to the research in Irish Studies being carried out in Scandinavia by a group of scholars based in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as scholars associated—in one way or another—with Scandinavia. Denmark is represented by the University of Aalborg; Norway, by scholars affiliated to the Universities of Agder, the Artic University of Norway, Bergen, and Stavanger; and Sweden is represented by scholars from the universities of Dalarna, Göteborg, Stockholm, Södertörn and Umeå. Included also in this special issue is the work of two former students, who completed their Masters’ degree in Irish literature at DUCIS (Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies), Sweden—from Norway and China respectively. The collection also contains an article by Dara Waldron, Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland, whof recently presented his research at the Higher Seminar in Dalarna. Contributions by the Irish poet, Mary O’Donnell, who participated in the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN) conference, hosted by DUCIS in December 2012, are also included.

Samuel Beckett, the Gate Theatre Dublin, and the contemporary Irish independent theater sector: fragments of performance history

From 1991, when the Dublin Gate Theatre launched their Samuel Beckett Festival featuring nineteen of Beckett’s stage plays, to more recent years, the Gate dominated Irish productions of Beckett’s theater. The Gate Beckett Festival was remounted in 1996 at the Lincoln Center, New York, and at the Barbican Centre, London, in 1999, and individual or grouped productions have toured regularly since then in Ireland and internationally. However, since the Irish premiere of Waiting of Godot at the Pike Theatre in 1955, in addition to several Beckett plays mounted by the National Theatre, many independent Irish theater companies, such as Focus Theatre, Druid Theatre, and more recently Pan Pan Theatre, Blue Raincoat Theatre, The Corn Exchange, and Company SJ (under director Sarah Jane Scaife), have produced Beckett’s drama. While acknowledging earlier Irish productions, this essay will consider the role of the Dublin Gate Beckett Festival and the Beckett Centenary celebrations in Dublin in 2006 in greatly enhancing the marketability of Beckett’s work, and will discuss the proliferation of productions of Beckett’s stage plays (as opposed to stage adaptations of the prose work, which is a topic for another essay) in the independent theater sector in the Republic of Ireland since 2006. In addition to giving an overview of these recent productions, the essay will consider some issues at stake in creating or constructing performance histories

Caribbean Irish connections

There has been an Irish presence within the Caribbean since at least the 1620s and yet the historical and cultural dimensions of this encounter remain relatively under-researched and are often conceived of in reductive terms by crude markers such as redlegs or poor whites. While there are some striking reminders of this hitory throughout the region, this collection explores how the complications and contradictions of Irish Caribbean relations are much richer and deeper than previously recognized. Caribbean Irish Connections makes an important contribution to Irish studies by challenging the dominance of a US diasporic history and a disciplinary focus on cultural continuity and ancestry. Likewise, within Caribbean studies, the Irish presence troubles the orthodox historical models for understanding race and the plantation, race and class structures, as well as questions of ethnic and religious minorities. The contributors emphasize the importance of understanding the transatlantic nexus between Ireland and the Caribbean in terms of the shared historical experiences of dislocation, diaspora and colonization, as well as of direct encounter. This collection pays tribute to the extraordinarily rich tradition of cultural expression that informs both cultures and their imagination of each other.

Evaluating the additionality of public sector assistance to Irish firms: a question of ownership?

This article presents an innovative approach to estimating the additionality of financial assistance awarded to firms by an Irish regional development agency. The 'self assessment approach' is used to derive estimates of deadweight and displacement for firms in the Shannon region of Ireland. Irish studies have derived high estimates of deadweight by international standards. In light of this, and the fact that successive Irish governments have placed emphasis on Foreign Direct Investment as an engine for growth, the primary objective here is to address the question of whether the type of firm ownership matters with respect to resulting deadweight and/or displacement estimates. The latter question is addressed using logistic regression analysis to test whether, ceteris paribus, firm ownership is a key-determining factor for estimates of deadweight and/or displacement. The results show that ownership does not matter in the case of deadweight, but regarding displacement there are differences between indigenous and foreign-owned firms albeit at very low levels. More precisely, as expected, indigenously owned firms are more likely to lead to higher estimates of displacement.

Elderly Return Migration from Britain to Ireland - A Preliminary Study

The National Council for the Elderly commissioned the Institute of Irish Studies at the University of Liverpool, in 1994, to undertake research and prepare a preliminary report for the Council, exploring the recent scale of, and background to, return migration to the Republic of Ireland amongst elderly Irish-born people living in Britain Download the Report here

IRELAND AND LATIN AMERICA: A CULTURAL HISTORY

According to Declan Kiberd, “postcolonial writing does not begin only when the occupier withdraws: rather it is initiated at that very moment when a native writer formulates a text committed to cultural resistance.” The Irish in Latin America – a continent emerging from indigenous cultures, colonisation, and migrations – may be regarded as colonised in Ireland and as colonisers in their new home. They are a counterexample to the standard pattern of identities in the major English-speaking destinations of the Irish Diaspora. Using literary sources, the press, correspondence, music, sports, and other cultural representations, in this thesis I search the attitudes and shared values signifying identities among the immigrants and their families. Their fragmentary and wide-ranging cultures provide a rich context to study the protean process of adaptation to, or rejection of, the new countries. Evolving from oppressed to oppressors, the Irish in Latin America swiftly became ingleses. Subsequently, in order to join the local middle classes they became vaqueros, llaneros, huasos, and gauchos so they could show signs of their effective integration to the native culture, as seen by the Latin American elites. Eventually, some Irish groups separated from the English mainstream culture and shaped their own community negotiating among Irishness, Englishness, and local identities in Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Cuba, and other places in the region. These identities were not only unmoored in the emigrants’ minds but also manoeuvred by the political needs of community and religious leaders. After reviewing the major steps and patterns of Irish migration to Latin America, the thesis analyses texts from selected works, offers a version of how the settlers became Latin Americans or not, and elucidates the processes by which a new Irish-Latin American hybrid was created.

Análisis del Espacio Schengen en materia de seguridad como base para la implementación del Protocolo sobre la Facilitación del Movimiento de Personas de la Comunidad para el Desarrollo de África Austral (SADC)

El fin de la Guerra Fría supuso no sólo el triunfo del capitalismo y de la democracia liberal, sino un cambio significativo en el Sistema Internacional; siendo menos centralizado y más regionalizado, como consecuencia de la proximidad y relaciones de interdependencia entre sus actores (no sólo Estados) y permitiendo la formación de Complejos Regionales de Seguridad (CRS). Los CRS son una forma efectiva de relacionarse y aproximarse a la arena internacional pues a través de sus procesos de securitización y desecuritización consiguen lograr objetivos específicos. Partiendo de ello, tanto la Unión Europea (UE) como la Comunidad para el Desarrollo de África Austral (SADC) iniciaron varios procesos de securitización relacionados con la integración regional; siendo un ejemplo de ello la eliminación de los controles en sus fronteras interiores o libre circulación de personas; pues consideraron que de no hacerse realidad, ello generaría amenazas políticas (su influencia y capacidad de actuación estaban amenazadas), económicas (en cuanto a su competitividad y niveles básicos de bienestar) y societales (en cuanto a la identidad de la comunidad como indispensable para la integración) que pondrían en riesgo la existencia misma de sus CRS. En esta medida, la UE creó el Espacio Schengen, que fue producto de un proceso de securitización desde inicios de la década de los 80 hasta mediados de la década de los 90; y la SADC se encuentra inmersa en tal proceso de securitización desde 1992 hasta la actualidad y espera la ratificación del Protocolo para la Facilitación del Movimiento de personas como primer paso para lograr la eliminación de controles en sus fronteras interiores. Si bien tanto la UE como la SADC consideraron que de no permitir la libre circulación de personas, su integración y por lo tanto, sus CRS estaban en riesgo; la SADC no lo ha logrado. Ello hace indispensable hacer un análisis más profundo de sus procesos de securitización para así encontrar sus falencias con respecto al éxito de la UE. El análisis está basado en la Teoría de los Complejos de Seguridad de Barry Buzan, plasmada en la obra Security a New Framework for Analysis (1998) de Barry Buzan, Ole Waever y Jaap de Wilde y será dividido en cada una de las etapas del proceso de securitización: la identificación de una amenaza existencial a un objeto referente a través de un acto discursivo, la aceptación de una amenaza por parte de una audiencia relevante y las acciones de emergencia para hacer frente a las amenazas existenciales; reconociendo las diferencias y similitudes de un proceso de securitización exitoso frente a otro que aún no lo ha sido.

Children’s literature: sexual identity, gender and childhood

On the twenty-third of May 2015, Ireland became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote. This event reversed a large part, if not all, of Ireland’s reputation for a Catholic-led conservatism concerning sexual and gender identities. I argue in this article that we can see a parallel-in-miniature to this momentous shift in something of a reversal of children’s literature’s views in this respect too, and I will concentrate on exploring what is at stake in the ways that childhood, sexual and gender identities are constructed in some recent children’s literature criticism in the light of these shifts. My interest is to consider: what is the ever-burgeoning interest in the gay, queer, cross-dressing, transsexual or transgender child precisely about? I ask this question on the grounds of not assuming that this interest in these identities arises necessarily simply out of a self-evident, progressive, liberatory impulse, and, alongside this, I also do not assume that ‘identities’ are essential, self-organised traits awaiting revelation and liberation.

Produktion av marknadsförings- och korrespondensmaterial för DUCIS

The report describes the production of graphic correspondence and marketing material for DUCIS(Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies).A logotype symbol is created on the basis of an element from the Celtic art, and a graphic material thatharmonies with this ideal of style is built around the symbol. A unique visiting card, correspondence cardand letterhead is produced to strengthen the identity of DUCIS outwards.The work proceeds with an international education folder which is an important element in the marketingwork for the MA-education which starts in the autumn of 2003. Two posters, one for the opening ofDUCIS in may 2003 and one for a conference in 2004, are produced. Finally, a redesign of the book coverfor NIS, Nordic Irish Studies, is carried out.The report describes the working process consisting of meetings, practical work and other elementswithin the process. The conclusion is that the work has been quite successful and that this, to a largeextent, depended on an engaged and supporting commissioner. The commissioner also is very satisfi edwith the results.The in-depth studies of the project is about the art and design of the Celtic culture throughout history.The text gives an account for the history and expressions of Celtic art from its birth, 2800 years ago, untilits death in 13th century Ireland and Scotland. Special attention is payed to the golden age of ChristianCeltic art on the british islands, the era from which the pattern of the DUCIS logotype originates.