Call for Book Chapters: ‘Reimaging Ireland’

“Memory and action find articulation in images, … ideas are structured as images, and … what is at stake is therefore a praxis that can operate with images—a politics of images, not a figurative or metaphorical politics.” Sigrid Weigel on Walter Benjamin.

Contemporary Ireland is in a moment of negotiation: negotiation of national identity, of geopolitical status, of the conditions of daily life. In studying the “reimaging” of Ireland, we are not simply conducting historical analyses of iconic images. Rather, we aim to study the material effects of images, images as reality-building agents in the world. In what ways have moments and movements like Repeal the 8^th, Brexit, the murder of Lyra McKee, and more, refigured Ireland through images? How have representations of the Troubles, the War of Independence, internment, etc. prefigured those images in play today? In what ways do images bring the past in dialogue with the present?

This volume seeks innovative work from established and emerging scholars on topics including but not limited to:

• Commemorations and reenactments of 20^th century Irish political events, particularly in film and television
• Visuality and contemporary Irish screen culture
• Hibernofuturism in the visual arts
• The effect on visual culture of emigration of young people from Ireland
• The role of the North in Ireland as figured through images

Please submit an abstract or chapter proposal of 500 words for the editor’s consideration by December 31, 2020. You may submit via email to brigidmarykennedy@gmail.com; please include “Reimaging Ireland” in the subject line. Final chapters will be 4,000 to 9,000 words in length and should be completed no later than April 12, 2021.