NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2000

Dear members of NISN,

I am pleased to be able to tell you that on 6 October a new Centre for Irish Studies (CISA) was opened at Aarhus University. The domicile of the centre is the Department of English, but, according to its own charter, the centre will facilitate interdisciplinary and inter-departmental research and teaching activities. This purpose was reflected in the opening day's symposium on the Belfast Agreement, which was organised jointly by CISA, the Department of Political Science and the Centre for European Cultural Studies.

We hope that you and your students will be able to benefit from this further institutionalization of Irish Studies in the Nordic countries. As director of the centre, I invite you to discuss with me possibilities of collaborating with your own institutions on the setting up of courses which may give students a supplementary degree in Irish Studies. We could offer this to students from all of our countries and also the rest of Europe.

The members list of NISN now counts 40 names. It is wonderful to see this growth in membership. But, alas, most of the new members come from only one country, Denmark. Please talk with interested graduate students, ph.d. students and colleagues. We also still miss members from Finland and Iceland. How can we reach potential members here? A third problem is that we have many members who have no e-mail address or who have not informed us about any address. They might have acquired one in the meantime. Therefore I send this out this mail also in letter form asking you to supply this information.

Let me use this opportunity to invite you to send me names of candidates for 4 guest lecturers for the big European conference next year in December. Please send me the names as soon as possible so that I might send out invitations at the end of the month.. If you have not received or read the first call for papers and panel proposals, I reprint it below:

EFACIS CONFERENCE, DECEMBER 2001 6 - 8 December 2001 "Ireland and Europe in Times of Re-Orientation and Re-Imagining". The Third Conference of EFACIS (The European Federation of Associations and Centres for Irish Studies). The conference is hosted by the Nordic Irish Studies Network (NISN) and the Centre for Irish Studies, Department of English, Aarhus University. First call for papers within or across the fields of literature, cultural studies, art, history, sociology and politics. Deadline for submission of proposals: 1 June, 2001. Deadline for abstracts: 1 September, 2001.

Further information to be announced at the second call and at the NISN website: www.hum.au.dk/engelsk/nisn/efacis2001.

If you have any information about seminars or other events that might be of interest to NISN members, please don't hesitate to mail me. Jacob, our webmaster has just informed me that many people visit the review page. We haven't really done anything about it yet; it only features two reviews by Marie Arndt. But I think we should think seriously about publishing our own reviews here. Some of us review Irish books for national reviews/journals written in our vernaculars. Why not bring them here also - whether it be in English or our own languages? So let us hear from you - also whether you think this is a good idea or not. Let me also encourage you to address the members of NISN if you have a matter to discuss which might be of interest to others.

Let me end by wishing you all the best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

Kind regards, Michael Böss