New Romantics: Performing Ireland and Cosmopolitanism on the Anniversary of Human Rights

Please find below  the programme of the conference on « New Romantics: Performing Ireland and Cosmopolitanism on the Anniversary of Human Rights », to take place on July 4th and 5th at  The Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen’s University Belfast (with the support of by the QUB AHSS Faculty Research Initiatives Fund and the GIS EIRE, France).


Keynotes: Professor Stephen Wilmer, Professor Emeritus of Drama (Trinity College Dublin)Dr Drew Milne, Judith E. Wilson Reader in Poetics (University of Cambridge)Paula McFetridge, Artistic Director (Kabosh Theatre Company, Belfast).


4 July, Brian Friel Theatre, 20 University Square, QUB

13:00 Tea, Coffee, Registration

13:15 Conference Opening: Dr Lisa FitzGerald and Dr Eva Urban-Devereux

13:30 The Performative Cosmopolitanism of Irish Literature and Drama:

13:30: Dr Eva Urban: Bards, Saints, and Cosmopolitan Vagabonds in Breton and Irish Drama


13:50: Dr Matthieu Kolb: From Ballybeg to Buncrana: Brian Friel and Frank McGuinness’s Donegal Plays and the search for cosmopolitan Ireland


14:20: Prof Dr Caroline Lusin: Renouncers, Rumours and ‘Beyond-the-Pales’: Literature, Empathy and Cosmopolitanism in Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018)

14:40: Prof Sunghyun Jang: Yeats’ Influence on Modern Korean Poetry: The Case of Kim So-Wol

15:15 Keynote 1 Professor Stephen Wilmer: »Yael Ronen’s Post-Migrant Dramaturgy of Dissensus (including short film screening) »

16:30: Tea, coffee

16:50: Entangled, Embodied, Embedded: New Materialist Encounters in Irish Culture and Politics Prof Anne Goarzin, Dr Maria Parsons, Sinead McDonald, Dr Lisa FitzGerald, Dr Eva Urban

18:00 Keynote 2 Dr Drew Milne: « Anthropocene Intersectionality: performing human rights and human wrongs »

19:00 Drinks Reception
David Torrans (No Alibis Bookshop): Book stall

19:20 Drew Milne: Poetry Reading

5 July, Brian Friel Theatre, 20 University Square, QUB

10.00 Tea, Coffee, Registration

10:15 Human Rights and Theatre Panel

10:20 Dr Natasha Remoundou: Human Rights Theatre in Education: Performing Refugeeness in “Fortress Europe”

10:40 Roundtable Discussion: David Grant, Dr Tom Maguire, Rosemary Jenkinson

12:00 Lunch

13:30 Dr Lisa FitzGerald: Entomological Modernism, Automata & the Nonhuman in Flann O’Brien’s Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green

14:00 Performance and the Body Panel
Dr Aoife McGrath:
Choreographing the Let Down: a danced intervention into the « quietening » of maternal corporeality
Brian Connolly: Rite, Rights & Response-abilities
Sinead O’Donnell: ‘Crossing Permissions’

15:30 Tea/Coffee

16:00: Paula McFetridge: Keynote 3: « Giving voice to the silent »
17:00 End of conference

Organizers: Dr Eva Urban (Queen’s University Belfast), Dr Lisa FitzGerald (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis)