August 2015 Major International Conference Examines Issues of Migration and Displacement

Conference to take place at NUI Galway and Dublin City University

Migration, exile and displacement are crucial international issues in our time. Topics of relevance to these issues, as well as wider questions of longing and belonging, will be addressed at a major conference taking place jointly in two venues, at NUI Galway and Dublin City University, on 24-28 August.

This is the Biennial Congress of the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies, which will attract some 250 delegates from over 40 countries, including countries in the Middle East.

Presentations will include papers on how the themes of ‘longing and belonging’ are expressed in literature, film and a wide range of cultural and artistic forms. The material studied will range from Irish novels centred on emigration, to Colombian indigenous poetry, from French and German narratives of displacement, to Lithuanian, Scottish, Polish, Portuguese and American interpretations of exile and ‘otherness’. Issues of language, identity and nomadism will feature in several of the talks, in studies centred on literature and art from these and numerous other countries around the world. Besides the work of Irish writers such as John Banville, W.B. Yeats, Emma Donoghue and Hugo Hamilton, the conference will include discussions of many major and not so major writers, such as the German W.G. Sebald, the Spanish poet José Ángel Valente, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust and George Sand.

Keynote speakers at the conference will include: French expert on Geocriticism, Professor Bertrand Westphal of Limoges University, who examines the relationship between place and literature and an expert in Children’s Literature; and Irishwoman Emer O’Sullivan, Professor of English Literature at Leuphana University in Germany and author of eight bilingual children’s books.

On the opening day of the conference, in DCU, a poetry reading will take place, sponsored by Poetry Ireland and the Spanish Embassy, at which the Irish poet, Ciaran Carson, and the Spanish poet, Beatriz Villacañas, will read from their work.

The Congress is jointly organised by NUI Galway and DCU, under the auspices of the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies and the Comparative Literature Association of Ireland.

The event is organised by NUI Galway’s Professor Hans Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Professor Paolo Bartoloni and Professor Bill Richardson, and DCU’s Dr Brigitte Lejuez, Dr Áine McGillicuddy and Dr Nina Shiel.

For more information on the Congress visit https://encls2015.wordpress.com

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