It featured contributions making innovative use of non-textual sources/methods, as well as research on various cultural practices (visual, material, aural, emotional/sensory, embodied, multi-medial, etc.) which themselves disrupt assumptions about the nation and the epistemologies of ‘Irishness’
The issue invited contributors to ‘make a mess’ of the boundaries of Irish Studies, seeking new work/perspectives that go ‘beyond the text’.
The IUR's May 2025 special issue was dedicated to ‘Irish Studies beyond the Text’ (guest editors Emily Mark-FitzGerald & Emma Radley). Check out the link below to Radley & contributor Daithí Kearney's discussion of this interdisciplinary issue at Queen's last Autumn!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fN1...
For more on this article and issue of the IUR, see the following link: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...
Themes of class & starvation in Godot are recontextualised within the barren performance site, creating allusions to the Irish Potato Famine. This use of site, as audience questionnaires attest, invites audiences to bring their own memories, knowledge & feelings to the meaning-making process
Focusing on the case study of Druid's Unusual Rural Tour of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (2016), Chloé Duane explores how Druid use site-responsive scenography to engage the histories and cultural legacies of the Inis Meáin landscape.
For more on this article and the newest issue of the IUR, see the following link: www.euppublishing.com/journal/iur
Curran traces the archival presences of these photographs, which documented Sullivan's interventions into abandoned cottages on Great Blasket & argues for their historical, material & affective dimensions, foregrounding the complex & distributed dynamics of affect that circulate around/through them
According to Curran, Sullivan (1923– ) is relatively unknown outside of her native Québec and Canada, but in an exceptionally long and experimental career, has made work as a painter, dancer, sculptor, performance artist and conceptual artist.
Ann Curran explores Québécoise artist Françoise Sullivan's 1978 visit to the Blasket Islands, the series of performances for camera she developed during her time there & the complex relationship between photography & performances.
For more on this article and the newest issue of the IUR, see the following link: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...
The essay explores how choreographic movements & the dancers’ embodiment foster a kinaesthetically empathetic co-presence between the performers and audience, and injects liveness into the archive.
Yang examines how the narrative episodes create contact zones between the historical and the contemporary. Motifs of gender, religion, emigration/immigration & social class, among others, oscillate intersectionally via the dancers’ bodies, which disturb cultural inscriptions & generate new meanings
Huayu Yang argues that Palimpsest, CoisCéim Dance Theatre's performance that took place during Dublin's 2024 St Patrick's Day celebration, stages the 'iterative' contemporaneity of Ireland, where the past continues to frame present experiences and the present is incessantly conflated with the past
For more on this article and issue of the IUR, see the following link: www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3...
Gillett also points to one of the currach's current places in ecocritical art practice: as a mediator between human and sea, and a locus for an embodied experience – not of heroism, but of powerlessness.
Gillett considers the currach's transition from a symbol of 'authentic' Irish identity and masculine heroism to a tool for the critique of essentialised Irish identity as well as gendered and environmental issues in the Irish context
In the latest issue of the IUR, Molly-Claire Gillett charts the symbol of the 'currach', a small boat traditionally made of skin or canvas and stretched over wood ribs, in Irish art practice, from the early-twentieth century to the present day.
For more on this article and issue of the IUR, see the following link: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...
Torres-Fernández analyses the role of intimacy in the company's dance theatre piece, Party Scene: Chemsex, Community & Crisis (2022), created by Philip Connaughton & Phillip McMahon, arguing that it plays a fundamental role in the production's reconceptualisation of social norms
In the latest issue of the IUR, J. Javier Torres-Fernández explores the contemporary landscape of Irish queer theatre and performance, focusing particularly on the landmark theatre company THISISPOPBABY, who have won awards for their
productions RIOT (2016), Wake (2022), more
Churchill's essay ‘Domestic Documents: Contemporary Photography and the Irish Housing Crisis’ is part of the special issue of Irish University Review published in May 2025: Irish Studies – Beyond the Text.
Follow the link for more info on this issue: www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/...
Sarah Churchill's blog post "Will the Housing Crisis Kill the Irish Art Scene?" is now live on EUP's website. Churchill asks contemporary Irish artists Aideen Barry and Spicebag for their thoughts on how Ireland's housing crisis is shaping Irish art today.
euppublishingblog.com/2025/07/31/w...
Today's keynote at #IASIL2025 was provided by Prof Breandán Mac Suibhne, who produced a 'micro history', exploring the real-life people and Marconi radio (which, he notes, is almost a character in its own right) that inspired Brian Friel’s 'Dancing at Lughnasa'.
Morales-Ladrón argues that Emma Donoghue's Haven explores a colonial appropriation of mind & land in the name of God, with characters ultimately disturbing the 'haven' of biodiversity on Skellig Michael. She argues that Haven critiques the Anthropocene & anticipates a post-Anthropocene Earth
Lonergan conceptualises the Covid-19 pandemic as an allegory for future ecological crises, with Irish drama acting as a dress rehearsal for climate change. He points to how artistic responses accelerated their thematic preoccupations during this period, focusing on the non-human #IASIL2025
One of the final panels today, titled 'Ecology, History, and
Historiography', is currently kicking off at the University of Galway, with Patrick Lonergan & Marisol Morales-Ladrón as speakers #IASIL2025
Little interrogates carceral memory, tracing efforts to screen coercive confinement in Ireland (1971–1999) & arguing that historical accounts must consider its remediation across technologies. He ends by noting the importance of accounting for this history to prevent modern Irish carceral abuses
Haughton spoke about performance as technology, with her paper exploring how 'Anu', the production company, told stories that were previously side-lined or overlooked during the Decade of Centenaries by 'unfolding the body' and peeling back layers of sedimented signification in the Irish context
Looking forward to presenting at IASIL 2025 in Galway, Ireland, this week!
#DigitalHumanities #IASIL #IASIL2025
