Éire-Ireland: Call For Papers
Special Issue: URBAN IRELAND

CALL FOR PAPERS - Spring/Summer 2010 Issue

 Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies welcomes submissions for a Spring/Summer 2010 special issue.  From 1596, when Edmund Spenser advised that the Irish repair to towns to "learn civil manners of the better sort," to the recent, unremitting rise of urbanism throughout the island, city life has been a contentious issue in Irish Studies.  The guest editors of a special issue of Éire-Ireland invite essays on the subject of Urban Ireland from the early modern through the contemporary period.  We are especially interested in essays that offer interdisciplinary perspectives from history, literature, geography, sociology, cartography, archaeology, fine arts, music, photography and film studies.  We encourage submissions informed by newly available archival sources in all disciplines, as well as essays that explore new methods and theoretical paradigms for investigating urban issues.

Below is a list of suggested (but not inclusive) areas for exploration:

  • City iconography/the city as icon

  • Urban planning and renewal

  • The city as space/place

  • Urban leadership and governance

  • The city versus the country

  • The colonial city as theatre for political resistance and reaction

  • Metropole/Metropolis: impact of the European Union on urban life and culture

  • Comparative development of Irish urban centers across partition

  • Labor movements and the city

  • New methods of researching the urban past as opened up the Irish Historic Towns Atlas

  • The city as setting for non-traditional life styles

  • The changing face of urban nightlife: from music hall to rock-and-roll

  • Representations of the city in poetry, visual art and monuments, drama, fiction, graphic novels, graffiti

  • A New Gaeltacht:  Urbanization of the Irish Language

  • Internal Migrations:  Changed Demographics of the Irish City

The deadline for receipt of proposals (two pages) is October 1, 2008.  Completed articles (6,000-8,000 words) will be due by
April 1, 2009.  Send proposals to Dr. Jacinta Prunty at jacinta.prunty@nuim.ie and Professor Joe Valente at jvalente@uiuc.edu.