Thursday, 4 June
09:30 Registration and Coffee
10:00 Welcome Address
10:30-11:00 Panel I: History and Nostalgia
STEPHEN O’NEILL (Trinity College Dublin)
Nostalgia and Narrative in Polly Devlin’s All of Us There (1983) and Ciaran Carson’s
The Star Factory (1997)
CHRISTOPH REINFANDT (University of Tübingen)
Historical Landmarks and Social Transformations: Reconfiguring the Easter Rising in Mary O'Donnell's Empire (2018)
COFFEE
12:00-13:00 Panel II: Twentieth Century Narratives
SEÁN CROSSON (University of Galway)
"Ar son an Náisiúin": Examining the Role of Depictions of Gaelic Games on Film in the
Articulation and Deconstruction of Irish Identity in the Mid-20th Century
MICHELLE WITEN (Europa Universität Flensburg)
"Always looking for a master": Transformations in Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head
LUNCH
14:30-16:00 Panel III: Narratives of the 2020s
DEIRDRE FLYNN (MIC Limerick)
The Irish Campus Novel and Social Transformation in the Twenty-First Century
KATHARINA RENNHAK (University of Wuppertal)
Narrating Social Transformation and Individual Development in the Contemporary Irish Family Novel
ANNE FOGARTY (University College Dublin)
"All we are is a boundary event" Political and Psychosocial Change in the Contemporary Irish
Sibling Novel
18:00-19:30 Author Reading and Conversation
Chair: Loic Wright
20:00 Dinner in town (self-pay)
Friday, 5 June
10:30-11:00 Panel IV: Coming of Age across Different Genres
JESSICA BUNDSCHUH (University of Stuttgart)
Coming of Age Queer in Ireland in Rosamund Taylor's Verse Novel of Tactility
SARAH L. TOWNSEND (University of New Mexico)
Perpetual Children: Celtic Tiger Irish Drama and the Refusal to Grow Up
LOIC WRIGHT (Visiting Professor at the University of Wuppertal)
Technology, Narrative Voice, and the Stunted Bildungsroman of Modernity
COFFEE
11:30-13:00 Panel V: Subgenres of the Novel
JOACHIM FRENK (Universität des Saarlandes)
Darker Green: Gothic Visions of Ireland Since the 1990s
MICHAEL CRONIN (Maynooth University)
Coming-out Romance: Resistance and Complicity in Neoliberal Ireland
CAROLINE LUSIN (University of Mannheim)
The Connected Vulnerability of Being: Post-Celtic Tiger Identities in Sheila Armstrong’s Falling Animals (2023)
LUNCH
14:00-15:00 Panel VI: Writing against Patriarchy
RALF HAEKEL
"I want you to know that she was": Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat
STEFANIE LEHNER (Queen's University Belfast)
Rejecting Traditional Depictions of Female Victimhood in Two Recent Northern Fictions
15:00-16:00 Panel VII: Onscreen Irishness
TONY TRACY (University of Galway)
Familiar Faces: Character Actors, Lalor Roddy and Irish Cinema
DIANE NEGRA (University College Dublin)
Expository Irishness, Garron Noone and the Politics of Irish Differentiation in the 2020s
COFFEE
16:15-17:00 Narrating Ireland and the Future of Irish Studies in Germany:
Concluding Roundtable Discussion
Chair: Birgit Spengler
Jessica Bundschuh (University of Stuttgart), Eamonn O Ciardha (Ulster University), Katharina Rennhak (University of Wuppertal), Michelle Witen (University of Flensburg), Loic Wright (Visiting Professor at the University of Wuppertal)
