Call for Papers
Annual Conference of
the Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
11-12 June 2015
National University of Ireland, Galway
The National University of Ireland, Galway is running a two-day international inter-disciplinary conference exploring the nature and extent of Literacy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Taking a broad view of the nineteenth century, panels will be constituted from a wide range of disciplines.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
- The acquisition of literacy (literacy and schooling, literacy and education acts)
- Reading practices: agents, experiences, spaces
- The effects of literacy (literacy and language shift, literacy and economic development, commercialisation, emigration, literacy and politicisation)
- Literacy and the material forms of print: ballads, books, ephemera, pamphlets, popular literature, and newspapers (national and regional)
- The nature and measurement of literacy (reading only versus reading and writing, use of census material)
- The geography of literacy: rural and urban approaches
- The economics of literacy: cultural capital, social mobility
- Practical literacy, writing, identity and nation – e.g. emigrant correspondence
- Literacy and gender
- Literacy and orality
- Reading images: text and visual culture
The conference organisers welcome proposals for panels and individual papers. Proposals for roundtable discussions and poster sessions are equally welcome. The deadline for submissions is 16 January 2014. Proposals should include a 250 word abstract and a brief curriculum vitae as well as contact details, for each contributor.
Conference organising committee: Rebecca Barr, Sarah-Anne Buckley, Muireann O’Cinnéide
Conference email address: ssnciconference15@gmail.com
The Society for the Study of Nineteenth-Century Ireland began its annual conferences in the early 1990s — firstly in Ireland, and then rotating between Ireland, Britain and America. From these conferences more than a dozen volumes have already been published, helping to place this Society at the cutting edge of Irish studies. It is anticipated that a volume of papers from the Galway conference will be published with Liverpool University Press.
Details of registration fees to follow. See http://ssnciconference2015.wordpress.com for updates.