Ailbhe Smyth is an activist and former academic who has been involved in feminist, LGBT, and radical politics since the 1970s. The founding director of the Women’s Education, Research and Resource Centre (WERRC), she was head of Women’s Studies at UCD from 1990 until 2006 when she left UCD to work independently. She has lectured and written extensively on feminist issues. She is Convenor of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment and a founding member of Marriage Equality.

NPPSH Conference

Ep. 27 - Keynote Lecture - Ailbhe Smyth - ‘We call this edge our home'

The aim of this paper will be to present a sequence of results obtained from i) a network-based analysis created through the 'Stylo' package (a library developed within the statistical programming language R for the quantitative analysis of literary data), and ii) a network-based visualisation generated in the open-source software package Gephi. This analysis reflects an attempt to develop a definition of literary style by the comparison of word frequencies embedded in two corpora, the first of which will be composed of just over 250 modernist novels, novellas and short story collections, and the second, which will contain 250 works written and published during the victorian era. In addition to outlining the process by which this analysis was arrived at, this paper will consider some of the methodological tensions surrounding computational methods operationalised within the context of literary studies. As a discipline, the study of literature has become increasingly indebted to analyses of broader cultural and historical trends at the expense of an attention to generic developments inculcated by particular authors or works. This has resulted in an ambivalence with regard to the sorts of categorical reasoning required in order for computational analyses such as this one to function. This paper will therefore suggest a means of productively fusing the dialectical materialism of contemporary literary studies with stylometry without doing a disservice to experimental design or seeking to re-animate a retrograde formalism. Chris Beausang is a second year doctoral student in An Foras Feasa in Maynooth University under the supervision of Professor Susan Schreibman. He completed his undergraduate degree in English Studies and his MPhil in Digital Humanities & Culture in Trinity College Dublin, and has written dissertations on Roddy Doyle's historical fiction and quantitative approaches to the prose style of Samuel Beckett. His research investigates the development of modernist literary style through computational methods.

Ep. 26 - Panel 6B - Part 2 - Digital literary criticism and the end of history - Chris Beausang (MU)

Despite her being dubbed as ‘Jane Austen of the 20th century’ by JB Priestly, Dorothy Whipple’s fame for her popular interwar domestic romance, ironically, did not last like her literary precursor until the recent republication by Persephone Books. Whipple wrote not only the courtship and the romance tale, but the post-matrimony story such as extramarital affair, divorce, and domestic violence with a profound understanding of the importance of women’s education and profession. Studying her novels as the cultural products of the middle-class and from the interwar period, a topoanalytical reading of Whipple’s domestic images finds that they represent home as a contested site to the women’s heterosexual identity, desire, and economic conundrum, and reveals the history of heterosexual femininity not as a steady and voiceless conformity to the patriarchal hegemony, but a constantly reforming effort to improve and undermine the traditional heterosexual structure in the patriarchal design of suppressive spatial division, in which home is considered as a socially and economically rightful realm for women to reside and to identify their gender with. By reading her novels following the proposed method, the researcher aims to show how Whipple’s domestic romance about the quiet disquiet from the middle ground and the mid-century deserves to be reinstalled in the feminist literary canon and protected from oblivion and neglect. Pimpawan holds an MA in English Language & Literature from Thammasat University Thailand and an MA in Contemporary Literature from the University of Liverpool. She started her PhD in English in 2016 at the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen. Her current research interests include spatial turn in literary theory, women’s literary history, women and romance writing, gendered space, and domesticity in women’s novel.

Ep. 25 - Panel 6B - Part 1 - Neglected interwar domestic romance - Pimpawan Chaipanit (U Aberdeen)

This paper will highlight the atrocity that is cultural genocide. It will offer two case studies to highlight the destruction caused by cultural genocide in varying forms by detailing acts perpetrated by the State in both Guatemala and Canada. Cultural genocide is especially applicable to the indigenous peoples of the world, who continuously face treats to their cultural survival. A topical study with the evolving nature of the indigenous identity in the contemporary world, a people, transitioning from weak and vulnerable subsections of the population to a self-actualizing entity demanding the rights and protections they deserve. This paper examines the history and continued plight of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the pursuit of their collective cultural survival. The measures, actions and inaction taken by the Guatemalan government through acts of both physical and cultural genocide. Secondly this piece will analyse the Canadian residential school system. The State and Church sponsored campaign ran with the slogan ‘don’t kill the child, kill the Indian in the child’. Over the course of more than one hundred years the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate aboriginal lifestyle and custom by forcibly weakening the traditional and cultural links that bind them as a people. This piece will then assess the lack of prosecution of the cultural element to acts of genocide at present and question the validity of this crime in the indigenous context. A shared history of violence and oppression that has scared the face of two different nations. Gerard Maguire is a second year PhD student in the Department of Law, Maynooth University. His field of research is in the area of the rights of minorities and indigenous peoples with a focus on the dangers posed by cultural genocide to vulnerable populations.

Ep. 24 - Panel 6A - Part 2 - A genocide by any other means - Gerard Maguire (MU)

This paper makes a pedagogical argument for applying studies of what Michael Rothberg terms “multidirectional memory”, a practice which stresses relation between the effects of the Holocaust and Postcolonial studies on contemporary research of trauma and historiography. By examining Rothberg’s theory alongside the documentary films Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) and States of Fear (Mary Rafferty, 1999), I intend to examine how visual testimonies of genocide, religious suppression and the psychological affects attributable to transitioning postcolonial states affect the ways in which historians discuss trauma. By bridging the major concerns of Holocaust Studies with studies of Church related suppression in postcolonial Ireland this paper investigates the similar aspects of how memory and trauma are represented. Debates concerning the methodology and historical impact of documentary approaches have resonated throughout trauma studies, and this paper demonstrates how filmed research that has generated mass public debate have simultaneously attracted significant controversies. Considering the debate established by Susan Sontag that visual evidence of trauma are a means of “making real (“or more real”) matters that the privileged or merely safe would prefer to ignore” questions surrounding documentary’s aim at producing an authentic reading of trauma, and how this relates to intellectual discourse that exists outside of historical locations of traumatic memory, frame the narrative of how postcolonial trauma and memory studies are taught in classrooms. Westley Barnes is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Department of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA), where he is currently completing his thesis which is entitled ‘American dream, American disillusionment: Forms as ideology and the discontent of cultural assimilation in Michael Chabon’s Post-2000 Fiction’. He obtained an MA in American Literature at UCD in 2012. His interests include postwar/contemporary American, British and Irish fiction, the influence of continental philosophy on contemporary fiction, trauma studies and contemporary film and documentary.

Ep. 23 - Panel 6A - Part 1 - Regarding Testimony and multidirectional memory - Westley Barnes (U EA)

The Capuchin Annual was a periodical published between 1930 and 1977 by Irish Franciscan Capuchins, a Roman Catholic order. Over 44 issues it contains various articles written by members of various Catholic orders and by authors who were not members of the Catholic Church. It is known to have held nationalist views, even at a time when the Catholic Church and the Irish state were opposed to nationalist movements. It was digitized and made available online for scholarly use in 2016. Even prior to digitization it was widely used in scholarly studies, especially its 1966 issue, but so far, no work has focused exclusively on the periodical itself and its links to nationalism. This study will use ‘history of representations’ methods, a cultural history method which analyses social representations in cultural objects and often draws on sociolinguistics. As this research draws on digitized materials, this study is also linked to digital humanities methods. As women’s participation in the revolutionary events was not always recognized, and in keeping with the conference theme, this paper will examine their representation, or lack of, in the Capuchin Annual. It will determine if their under recognition also affected their representations. Through the textual analysis of their mentions in the periodical, it will determine which criteria are used to describe nationalist women. The data will then be compared to men’s representations to see how the patterns differ. Maelle Le Roux started studying for her PhD in January 2018 at University of Limerick, in the Department of History and School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics. Her research focuses on the representations of Irish nationalist figures in the Capuchin Annual. She has a Research MA in History from Université Paris-Sorbonne (June 2016), for which she wrote two dissertations, the first on Masculinity in youth literature in France (1960s and 1980s), in 2015, and the second on the representations of the 1916 Easter Rising for children in Ireland (1923-2016), in 2016. Both used cultural history methods.

Ep. 22 - Panel 5B - Representation of Irish Nationalist Women - Maelle Le Roux (UL)

The voices of the female Irish citizen have long gone unheard and ignored. The call for comprehensive bodily autonomy for the Irish woman has, for example, been marginalised and buried beneath the ‘traditional’ roles of motherhood and childbearing. Now with the upcoming referendum on repealing the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution and prevalence of the #Repealthe8th campaign, we as a society have seen Irish women (and men) come together to canvas support for the liberalisation of Irish abortion law. The referendum results will be a strong indicator of the societal standpoint on the liberalisation of abortion law in Ireland. However, by analysing the coverage of the upcoming referendum and the Oireachtas debates it has become clear that are bilateral exchanges of stigma, in the form of reactive discourse, between ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ proponents. Encompassing the themes of gender and tradition vs modernity, the paper will therefore explore the long standing ‘traditional’ views of female bodily autonomy; and consider if they have remained firm or if a new-found tolerance has taken hold as Irish society faces of a new chapter of bodily autonomy for female citizens. Rebecca Boast is currently an MRes student at the University of Liverpool, studying with the Institute of Irish Studies. Her research is focused on stigma and shame within the abortion debate in Ireland; with a particular focus on the recent referendum. This research will be continued at PhD level, commencing in October 2018 and will introduce a comparative analysis with Malta.

Ep. 21 - Panel 5A - Part 3 - Voices of the Referendum - Rebecca Boast (Univ of Liverpool)

This innovative multi-method study addresses a significant gap in the literature by examining how the health and socio-economic conditions of working couple parents affect children’s development (Perry-Jenkins and MacDermid 2017). Irish parents’ experiences of constraints on time (McGinnity, Russell, Williams and Blackwell, 2005) and stress (Puff and Renk, 2014; Harold, 2016; Jabakhanji, 2016) have been reported. Where parents may no longer depend on previous models of behaviour with increasing experiences of family life as an act of balancing and co-ordinating (Beck-Gernshiem, 1998), it is imperative to discover what work-life balance means for dual-earner Irish families and its influences on both children and parents. This study will focus on how children development is connected to work, socio-economic environment, parental health, parental stress, couple relationship and parent-child relationship conditions. First, employing both 9-months-old and 9 years-old cohort datasets from the GUI study, “longitudinal methods utilizing multilevel modelling techniques and panel designs that address both change over time and dependent data among family members” (Perry Jenkins and MacDermid, 2017) from all waves (years 2008, 2011, 2013) will be conducted. Second, an online qualitative data collection platform informed by the experience sampling method (ESM) – a unique time diary method in collecting information on participants’ activities, thoughts, and emotional states as they occur in natural settings for a week (Hektner, Schmidt, and Csikszentmihalyi 2007), will be constructed to facilitate interview processes. It is hoped that upon interpretation of the two phases can mechanisms and any potential causation effects to be clearly established. Nadiah is a first year postgraduate student who is interested in the research field of children, families, work-life, mental health and socioeconomic well-being, technology use and methodologies. She has previously worked with children and families in a childcare setting.

Ep. 20 - Panel 5A - Part 2 - Finding balance - Nur Nadiah Binte Zailai (MU)

Over the last thirty years communities throughout Ireland have actively been engaged in reclaiming part of their past. The legacy of the cilliní, the un-baptised infant burial grounds, have over the generations cast a long shadow across the lives of many Irish families whose children lie buried in these plots. But what of the families who lost wives and mothers ‘who died in childbirth but haven’t been churched’ (Dixon 2012)? Oral history sources tell us they were also buried there along with suicides, strangers, shipwrecked sailors, murderers and their unfortunate victims, criminals, famine victims, the mentally disabled. All considered unsuitable for burial within consecrated ground. Why would a Catholic ‘woman who had died in or shortly after childbirth’ (Donnelly & Murphy 2008:213) be denied burial in consecrated ground? Apart from mention in oral history little information appears to be available regarding these women who have all but become invisible which makes one question if this invisibility is a reflection of their status in society in rural Ireland during the late 19th and mid twentieth century or is it as a result of Canon laws pertaining to women and childbirth in relation to the traditional Christian ceremony of The Churching of Women mixed with local superstitions and folk-belief concerning post-parturient women? Or possibly it is a potent concoction of all the above elements, society, church and superstition colluding to obscure the memory of these many wives and mothers. Sheena Graham-George is an Orkney based visual artist and is currently half way through her practice-based PhD at Glasgow School of Art. Her research is concerned with memory, place and community in relation to the Irish cillíní, the un-baptised infant burial grounds and disenfranchised grief. Her work as an artist looks at the role of memorializing the marginalized dead through art as a conceivable way for communities to make peace with a past which differs in attitude from the present and the ways that art might communicate universal loss and compassion whilst becoming an integral part of the healing process.

Ep. 19 - Panel 5A - Part 1 - The forgotten mothers of the Cillín - Sheena Graham-George (GSchArt)

This paper will examine institutionalisation in Ireland and its role in the attempt to silence marginalised groups. Drawing on policy, media sources and academic literature the presentation will examine ‘othering’ practices at play which serve to deliberately attempt to silence vulnerable groups and individuals. The paper will be divided into two distinct categories in an examination of the treatment of women and refugees in Ireland. It will provide contextual analysis of historic and contemporary institutionalisation in light of feminist and critical theory. The role of the church, health services and educational facilities will be analysed with respect to their role in silencing marginalised people. A number of key questions will be central to the paper including: • What are the foundations of institutional practices in Ireland? • Who can speak for whom? Who attempts to do so? • Who is silenced or unheard? • What impact has deliberately silencing women and refugees had on society as a whole? The main argument of the paper will be that institutionalisation in Ireland has and continues to be detrimental to an ethics of sexual and racial difference (Ingram, 2008) through deliberately silencing women and refugees. Aoife is a doctoral student in the Education Department at Maynooth University. She is undertaking research on the education of refugees in Ireland who have fled war and conflict. She is conducting her research through a decolonial lens using Arts-Based Research methods. She has worked as a teacher for over eleven years, including four in Australia where She returned from last July to begin my PhD. She completed her primary degree and post-graduate teacher qualification in Maynooth, while she graduated with a Master of Education from Notre Dame University Australia.

Ep. 17 - Panel 4B - Institutionalisation in Ireland - Aoife Kelly-Wixted (MU)

Children often find themselves at the centre of a variety of legal disputes and, as a result, they may enter the court system through a number of possible doors. Some of these disputes involve disagreements between parents, while others involve the possibility of state intervention due to child protection and safety concerns. What must be remembered is that children's futures are significantly impacted by the door through which their family enters the legal system. In Ireland, there are many instances where parents recognise that they are unable to care for their children and these children are received into care through a voluntary care agreement. However, the details of the parenting plan are often left vague, with the potential for future disagreement. In many instances, such voluntary care agreements result in applications to court leading to high tensions and a breakdown of trust between the parents and the child welfare agencies (section 4 of the Child Care Act, 1991). This process of reaching “agreements” may, in some circumstances, more appropriately be managed through alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation. Unfortunately, the use of mediation within child protection cases is not current practice in Ireland. Building on this existing research regarding alternative dispute resolution processes, this paper will examine child protection mediation programs operating in the USA and explore the largely uncharted potential of child protection mediation in an Irish context. This will inform policy and state actors as to the potential benefits/disadvantages of developing child-inclusive mediation at a national level. Rebecca Murphy graduated from Maynooth University with a double first-class honours degree in law and music (BCL). Since July 2015, Rebecca Murphy has been employed by the Courts Service as a judicial assistant/researcher for Her Honour, Judge Rosemary Horgan, and President of the District Court, who has extensive knowledge in all areas of family and child care law. Rebecca’s role as a judicial assistant/researcher has allowed her the opportunity to witness the realities and in some cases the distresses of family and child protection proceedings brought before the Dublin Metropolitan District (DMD) on a daily basis.

Ep. 18 - Panel 4A - An evaluation of child protection mediation programs - Rebecca Murphy (Ind.)

Fiosraíonn an páipéar seo an idirghabháil atá idir filí na gceantar Gaeltachta seo i gCiarraí agus an pobal léitheoireachta. Is gníomh imeallach é an fhilíocht in aon teanga – gan trácht ar mhionteanga a bhfuil dúshláin éagsúla roimpi. I measc an chomhthéacs dúshlánach seo, tá líon suntasach filí ag cumadh na filíochta i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí. Léiríonn na filí amhras ar leith go bhfuil aon phobal léitheoireachta acu agus deir cuid acu nach mbíonn siad ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta ina gcleachtas cruthaitheachta. In ainneoin seo, tá na filí an-ghníomhnach i bhfoilsiú saothar filíochta. Téann an dearcadh seo i gcoinne theoiricí móra na cruthaitheachta a leagann béim ar thábhacht an chomhthéacs agus ar thábhacht na hidirghabhála leis an bpobal léitheoireachta maidir le cruthú chiall an ghníomh chruthaithigh. (Ó Crualaoich 1992, Glăveanu 2016 & Sternberg 2016). Muna bhfuil na filí ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta – conas go mbeidh pobal ann dóibh? Cén ról atá ag na filí seo sna pobail Ghaeltachta mar sin? Féachann an páipéar ar cheist an easpa pobail léitheoireachta agus ar an tost indíreach a ghintear as an saothrú pearsanta seo. Mar a d’aithin an file Paddy Bushe ‘Aon ealaíontóir a dhéanann dearúd ar phobal, bíonn sé ag labhairt leis féin’. Chuige sin, díreofar ar thuairimí pearsanta na bhfilí a nochtadh in agallaimh agus déanfar anailís téacslárnach mar thaca don bplé. This paper seeks to tell the story of a group of active, contemporary Irish language poets of the south and west Kerry Gaeltacht areas of Corca Dhuibhne and Uíbh Ráthach. These poets demonstrate a meta-awareness of being a relatively unheard voice, they deem their work to be generally unread and as a result present with a sense of doubt as to whether an audience even exists for their poetry. Despite this, the poets continue to publish material and engage in public readings and performances. Marginalisation forms part of each of the poets’ lives due to several factors, from writing in a minority language, being based physically on the edge of Europe, engaging in poetry, a creative mode that tends to have a limited audience even in majority languages, along with finding refuge in isolation as an important part of the creative process. The paper will highlight a range of thoughts and ideologies pertaining to this sense of indirect silence and lack of audience, drawing on material from interviews with several of the poets. It aims to provide an interpretation of this phenomenon of writing for an audience, whom does not appear to be present, with a particular focus on the poets’ feelings and outlook to this regard. Tá Shane Grant mar mhac léinn PhD le Roinn na Gaeilge i gColáiste Mhuire Gan Smál, Luimneach. Cáilíodh é mar bhunmhúinteoir i 2016 agus bronnadh ‘Comhaltacht Taighde’ air sa bhliain 2017. Baineann a chuid taighde le filí comhaimseartha na Gaeilge i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí; Corca Dhuibhne agus Uíbh Ráthach faoi stiúir an Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. Féachann an taighde ar conas a ghintear, a chothaítear agus a chleachtaítear an chruthaitheacht sa Ghaeilge ag díriú ar na ceantair seo mar chás-staidéar. Tá spéis ar leith ag aige i bhfilíocht chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge, sa tsochtheangeolaíocht, i bhfoghlaim an tarna teanga, i bpleanáil teanga agus i bhforbairt pobail Ghaeltachta. Shane Grant is a PhD student with the Irish Department in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Shane graduated as a primary school teacher in 2016 following his completion of the Bachelor of Education (B.ED) programme. He was awarded a Departmental Assistantship with the college in 2017 to undertake his postgraduate studies under the supervision of Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. His research is concerned with the practices and fostering of a group of Irish poets linked to the West Kerry Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne and South Kerry Gaeltacht of Uíbh Ráthach.

Ep. 16 - Panel 3B - Part 3 - Irish poetry and elusive audience (as Gaeilge) - Shane Grant (MIC)

Kristin Morrison, lamenting the amnesia surrounding Ireland’s “ancient nautical heritage” (111), asks, “how does the fact that Ireland is surrounded by water manifest itself in contemporary fiction? […] how does that fiction conceive of a ‘mainland’?” (111). Critical attention towards the representation of Ireland as an island in literature has been lacking until relatively recently. Scholars from many disciplines have begun to redress this through a consideration of Irish coasts in projects such as UCC’s Deep Maps and UCD’s Cultural Value of Coastlines. This paper continues some of these conversations by turning specifically to contemporary Irish poetry and interrogating how Ireland figures as an island in the work of important poets. Using recent work published in Island Studies Journal which posits that islands are presented through sensory and spatial experiences (Graziadei et al.), this paper examines the work of Seamus Heaney and Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin within a framework which analyses the effects of these sensory and spatial cues. It provides a new perspective on two canonical writers, shifting attention from a land-based, rural outlook by situating Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry within important conversations around the study of islands. It will discuss, visual, aural and spatial conceptions of islands in the work of these two poets to come to an understanding of how Ireland’s ‘islandness’ is presented. Crucially, in asking these questions of Heaney’s and Ní Chuilleanáin’s poetry, larger questions about the island itself are implicitly addressed. Ireland is the world’s 20th largest island and in examining what its island status means, we can begin to see and hear Ireland anew. - Graziadei, Daniel et al. ‘On Sensing Island Spaces and the Spatial Practice of Island-Making: Introducing Island Poetics, Part I’. Island Studies Journal 12.2 (2017): 239–252. Print. - Morrison, Kristin. ‘Ireland and the Sea: Where Is the “Mainland”?’ Back to the Present, Forward to the Past: Irish Writing and History since 1798. Ed. Patricia A. Lynch, Joachim Fischer, and Brian Coates. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 111–123. Print. Ellen Howley is a PhD student in the School of English at Dublin City University. She has previously studied in UCD, the Sorbonne, Paris and the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on contemporary Irish and Caribbean poetry and is concentrated on the work of Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney (Ireland) and Derek Walcott (St. Lucia) as well as current Professor for Poetry Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin (Ireland) and Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison (Jamaica). She has published in the Irish Literary Supplement.

Ep. 15 - Panel 3B - Part 2 - ‘An island at the centre of the world?' - Ellen Howley (DCU)

This paper seeks to examine the haunting function of the bog in the poetry of Seamus Heaney through the theoretical lens of Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. The paper argues that the present and future are influenced by spectres of the past through what Derrida would term hauntology with Derrida himself noting that ‘a ghost never dies, it always remains to come and to come-back’ (Derrida 2006, p.123). In the bog poems Heaney uses the bog as a way of viewing contemporary violence from a wider, older, Northern European perspective. Similarities are drawn between contemporary Northern Ireland and that of Scandinavia in the poetry and it is the circular, repetitive nature of history that enables the poet to locate a plateau, outside his primary world, to view the events of his present world. The spectres voice influences and guides the unconscious of the poet and society in a manner that makes history repeat itself, albeit under a different guise with Derrida noting that ‘we inherit the very thing that allows us to bear witness to it’(Derrida 2006, p.68). The function of the bog in the poetry will be traced through the poems ‘Bogland’, ‘The Tollund Man’ and ‘Punishment’ in order to show how the spectres voices escalated to coincide with the violence during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Ian Hickey is a Ph.D research student under the supervision of Dr. Eugene O’Brien in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. His current field placement is in Mary Immaculate College as a departmental assistant in the Department of English Language and Literature. He is interested in Modern Irish poetry and fiction, Irish theatre, hauntology and literary theory.

Ep. 14 - Panel 3B - Part 1 - Digging up specters - Ian Hickey (MIC, Limerick)

#MeToo and #IBelieveHer vocalised personal traumas within the frame of a global conversation about sexual violence, and a movement to carve out space for the most disenfranchised under capitalist patriarchy. However, not every story of trauma, marginalisation and repression is suitable for a hashtag; there are some stories that society still denies mainstream attention and acceptability because of an unwillingness to engage with the difficult and complex issues they bring to the fore. The surge in writing about the complicated maternal experience in the last decade has not been paralleled by mainstream visual representation precisely because of this fact. The previously unheard voice of the mother continues to go largely unseen. This paper will outline recent developments in French art-house cinema to give this ‘seen’ dynamic to alternative stories of maternal trauma, ambivalence and rebellious transformation. Our Children (2012), 17 Girls (2011) and A Happy Event (2011) explore undersides of the maternity narrative that range from difficult pregnancies, to the weaponisation of pregnancy as a tool to dismantle capitalist patriarchy, to that most taboo of maternal traumas: infanticide. This paper will draw on the work of Rye and Chodorow, and their interrogations of motherhood narratives and stereotypes, to locate these three films within larger myths about mothering as a site of positive transformation and analyse individually their subversion of this trope. Finally, this paper will conclude with an analysis of the place of such visual representations of darker maternity narratives within the larger mainstream conversations about female liberation from patriarchy. Ciara Gorman is currently a candidate for the MA in French at Maynooth University, where she completed her undergraduate degree in French and Law. She intends to pursue a PhD in French in the near future so that she may pursue a third-level teaching career. Her areas of research include the detective novel and women’s writing. The topic of her MA thesis is Louis XIV iconology in the current French presidency.

Ep. 13 - Panel 2B - Part 3 - Black Butterfly: Maternal mutation narratives - Ciaran Gorman (MU)

This is a podcast of the proceedings of the NPPSH Conference 2018.

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NPPSH Conference

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