Call For Papers
Conference in Irish studies
In-betweenness: interdisciplinary perspectives on Irish culture
Co-organised by EFACIS and SOFEIR members:
Bertrand Cardin, Professor at Université de Caen Normandie, France Eva Elisabeth Gallot, PhD Student at Université de Caen Normandie, France Sarah Levy-Valensi, PhD Student at Université de Caen Normandie, France Andrea Zvoníčková, PhD Student at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Guest speakers:
- Carole Jacquet, Head of Development and Heritage at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.
- Christophe Gillissen, Professor in Irish Studies at Université de Caen Normandie
To write about Ireland is often to write about being between: between past and future, myth and history, home and exile.
Ireland’s past and present have long been shaped by the experience of liminality and in-betweenness — which reflects a complex negotiation of identity across historical, cultural, and geopolitical thresholds.
In anthropology, Victor Turner defined liminality as ‘a state of transition between one stage and another, a period of ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy’ (The Ritual Process, 1969, p. 94). This notion has been extended to cultural and political contexts to describe moments when established categories — of nation, identity, or belonging — are unsettled. Closely related, the term in-betweenness as for it, is defined by historian Peter Burke as a sort of cultural hybridity ‘mixing and fusion between traditions’ that occurs when ‘individuals or groups find themselves at the intersection of different cultural systems’ (Cultural Hybridity, 2009, pp. 1- 3). This in-between position then becomes a productive means of creativity, particularly visible in numerous Irish cultural ways of expressions.
Both terms suggest not simply marginality, but a dynamic site of transformation and renewal.
Ireland’s history embodies such liminal and in-between positions: between colony and nation — from the Plantation of Ulster to the revolutionary ferment of 1798; between tradition, with the persistent transmission of Irish music and dance, and modernity, reflected in the political engagement of Irish women from the early 20th century to Catherine Connolly’s recent election as President; between local, through
the preservation and revival of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht but also across the island, and global, through centuries of transatlantic emigration right from the beginning of the 18th century. Similarly, Ireland’s identity oscillates between insular, marked by questions of sovereignty, transnational reinforced by the support of the European Union, notably during Brexit negotiations, and diasporic with an international heritage still considerably cherished across the globe.
The very texture of Irish cultural production testifies to this condition of in-betweenness. Writers, historians, linguists, and artists have long explored the thresholds between languages and identities, the layering of myth and history, and the negotiation of place and displacement. Irish literature, in particular, has made liminality a creative principle: from the spectral inheritances of Elizabeth Bowen’s modernist fiction to the autobiographical negotiations of belonging in Hugo Hamilton’s The Speckled People. The McCourt brothers’ narratives — Frank’s Angela’s Ashes and Malachy’s A Monk Swimming — dramatize this in- betweenness, tracing the relation between Ireland and America, but also of poverty and opportunity, memory and myth. Irish literature’s persistent dialogue between the real and the symbolic — from Yeats’s mythic landscapes to contemporary narratives of migration and hybridity — reveals how the Irish imagination continues to inhabit this liminal condition as a site of creativity, resistance, and renewal.
This conference invites participants to engage with the idea of in- betweenness in Irish literature, history, linguistics, and culture. In- betweenness can be understood as a liminal space or state that implies dynamics of continuity, separation, transition, overlapping, and mobility. It involves issues related to territories, practices, and representations, and can be studied through multiple disciplinary perspectives, not restricted to examples mentioned here to illustrate this notion. We therefore encourage submissions from a wide range of domains.
The reading committee already looks forward to receiving papers that reflect the diversity of themes within Irish studies, and to meeting scholars — whether PhD students, lecturers, assistant professors, or established researchers.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Borderlands and border identities: historical, political, and cultural representations of the Irish border
- Migration, diaspora, and exile: circulation, transnational practices, transatlantic history and heritage, and hybrid identities in Irish culture
- Language and hybridity: bilingualism, translation (with a particular emphasis on Gaelic/English), code-switching
- Literature and liminality: representations of thresholds, ruins, haunted spaces, or transitional figures
- History and myth: the negotiation of collective memory and narrative(s)
- Cross- and/or trans-disciplinary in Irish studies: methods, challenges, and innovations
- Artistic representations of in-betweenness: visual arts such as dance, theatre, film or even music
—
The conference will take place on April 3rd 2026 at the Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines, Université de Caen Normandie, Campus 1 (France). Participants will write and speak in English, and must submit their abstracts of 250-300 words, along with a short biobibliography of 100 words, to bertrand.cardin@unicaen.fr , eva-elisabeth.gallot@unicaen.fr, sarah.levy-valensi@unicaen.fr, and andrea.zvonickova@ff.cuni.cz before January 19, 2026.
—
Additional and suggested bibliography:
- Bartlett, Thomas. Ireland, A History. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
- Brennan, Maeve. The Long-Winded Lady: Notes from the New Yorker. Mariner Books, 1998.
- Burns, Anna. Milkman. Faber & Faber, 2018.
- Coogan, Tim Pat. Wherever Green Is Worn, The Story of the Irish Diaspora. Arrow Books, 2002.
- Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994.
- Dickson, Robert J. Ulster Emigration to Colonial America, 1718-1775. Ulster Historical Foundation, 2016.
- Dolan, Naoise. Exciting Times. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020.
- Doyle, David N. Ireland, Irishmen and Revolutionary America, 1760-1820. The Mercier Press, 1981.
- Foster, Roy F. Modern Ireland 1600-1972. Penguin, 1990.
- Gilsenan Nordin, Irene, and Elin Holmsten, editors. Liminal Borderlands in Irish Literature and Culture. Peter Lang, 2009.
- Hamilton, Thomas. History of Presbyterianism in Ireland. Ambassador Productions Ltd, 1992.
- Hutchinson, Wesley. Tracing the Ulster-Scots Imagination. Ulster University, 2018.
- Ikeda, Hiroko. Sweeney’s Revival: Translating and Transcending the Liminal. Peter Lang, 2004.
- McBride, Eimear. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. Faber, 2013.
- McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin. Random House, 2009.
- McCann, Colum. Songdogs. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2021.
- McCann, Colum. TransAtlantic. Bloomsbury, 2013.
- McCourt, Frank. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir of a Childhood. Flamingo, 1999.
- Miller, Kerby A. Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Oxford University Press, 1985.
- Moody, Timothy, and F. X. Martin (editors). The Course of Irish History. Taylor Trade Publishing, 2001.
- Moore, George. “Home Sickness” in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories. Penguin Books, 1981.
- Muldoon, Paul. Maggot. Faber & Faber, 2010.
- Noonan, Gillman, “Dear Parents, I’m working for the EEC!” in The Penguin Book of Irish Short Stories. Penguin Books, 1981.
- O’Connor, Maureen, editor. “Irish Studies Around the World – 2023”. Estudios Irlandeses, Issue 19, 2024, pp. 217-271.
- O’Flaherty, Liam. “Going Into Exile” in Classic Irish Short Stories (ed. Franck O’Connor). Oxford University press, 1985.
- O’Kelly, Charles. The Jacobite War in Ireland From 1688 to 1691. Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1894.
- Said, Edward. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Harvard University Press, 2000.
- Soja, Edward W. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Wiley-Blackwell, 1996.
- Tóibín, Colm. Brooklyn. Scribner, 2015.
- Tonge, Jonathan. The New Northern Irish Politics? Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.