The First Conference of the International Yeats Society

Scoil an Chultúir agus na Cumarsáide, Ollscoil Luimnigh

School of Culture and Communication, University of Limerick

15–18 October 2015

It has been a century and a half since the birth of W. B. Yeats. With the completion of major biographies and textual series, and in the context of technological and economic changes to global literary studies, Yeats studies finds itself at a critical juncture. This conference will gather scholars, critics, and creative artists from around the world to engage with Yeats as a figure of world literature, European and global modernisms, and Irish culture and politics; and Yeats’s work as poet, dramatist, autobiographer, and writer of fiction, critical and reflective essays, and philosophy. The larger questions to be addressed concern the field of Yeats studies itself, and the role of Yeats in literary and cultural studies. Where are we now? whence have we come? where are we going?

Topics may include:

• thematic concerns such as youth and age or aging
• formal considerations including rhythm, music, dance, drama, and the spoken word
• Yeats in contemporary politics, media, and cultural studies
• Yeats in and in relation to space, including Ireland, over time
• translation and adaptation
• history and the past, including mythology
• futurity, including prophecy time and temporality

Plenary speakers: Matthew Campbell (U of York), Marjorie Howes (Boston College), Alexandra Poulain (U of Lille)

Presentations should be no more than twenty minutes. Please submit a proposal including your title and an abstract of 250 words. Indicate your name, email, and institutional affiliation clearly.

If you would like to organize a panel, plan for three twenty-minute talks or four fifteen-minute talks. Panel proposals should be 500-600 words and should clarify what each speaker will contribute to the conversation. Provide a title for the proposed session as well as titles for each talk. Please list all panelists’ names, email addresses, and institutional affiliations at the top of the proposal. If you would like help in locating potential co-panelists for your proposal, please send a brief description of the topic to Marion Quirici at marionqu@buffalo.edu.

Please send abstracts by 1 June 2015 and any queries to:

Margaret Mills Harper at Margaret.Harper@ul.ie

Download a flyer in A4 Format or US Letter Format