This one-day symposium invites research papers that explore the relationship between the Irish writer and ‘Little England’. How have Irish writers, dramatists, poets, artists, academics, thinkers, activists, performers, and other cultural producers worked to undermine, or indeed, support, an impoverished cultural imaginary of ‘Little England’?
According to Christopher Bryant, ‘Little England’ denotes ‘… “a present-home” national community defined by a sense of place’. If ‘Little England’ is defined by its own sense of place, where might this place be? How have Irish writers inhabited it? What role, if any, have shifting Irish identities and cultural traditions played in defining ‘Little England’?
Whilst we welcome papers on any Irish writer (broadly conceived) from any period, given the location of our conference in Kent, we are particularly interested in receiving proposals on Kate O’Brien and Elizabeth Bowen, which explore their respective connections to Canterbury and Hythe. Other potential paper topics include but are by no means limited to:
• Irishness, class, and whiteness
• Irish women in transit: gendering ‘Little England’
• Writing anti-Irishness in ‘Little England’
• The Troubles and ‘Little England’
• Mapping ‘Little England’ in Irish writing
• Brexit and the Irish writer
Please submit short proposals of no more than 250 words for individual 15-minute research papers to D.kavanagh@kent.ac.uk by November 15th 2017.