Written in the land

[dolorosa_12]

While I'm very glad I left academia after receiving my PhD, I do like to dip my toe back in from time to time. Most of my 'real-life' friends are people I met during my postgraduate studies (the majority of whom are still in academia, scattered around the world), and I'm still on a couple of mailing lists in order to keep vaguely aware of scholarly developments.

This is how I found out about a freely available recording of a presentation by my former PhD supervisor, on dindshenchas — place-name literature (a genre of medieval Irish literature which provides pseudohistorical explanations for the etymology of Irish placenames). I worked on dindshenchas for my PhD — my thesis was about authority, exile and dispossession, and the ways history, and etymology were used to claim authority over land, and dispossess others from their claims. My supervisor has taken these ideas further, and has just embarked on a four-year project on dindshenchas, and mapping the literary, imaginative, and physical landscape of medieval Ireland. (More pleasingly, one of my other friends, someone I met when we were both PhD students on a summer course at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies together, is also attached to the project.)

All this by way of preamble to link to my supervisor Máire's recorded presentation. I find it very accessible — she provides explanation and context for those who are not specialists. The video is embedded below. (Note that the person introducing the presentation speaks briefly in Irish, but the talk itself is in English.)

Watch on YouTube

I love thinking about the intersection of land, memory, landscape, belonging and dispossession, in medieval Irish literature, and more broadly.

That is why I'm so happy to have discovered (thanks to a link via notasapleasure), 'the Roma futurist play where cyber witches stop Brexit'.

Romancen is described as a Roma futurist play about radical feminists that fight xenophobic governments through hacking, [and] mixes incantations, hip hop music, and a futuristic aesthetic, with costumes inspired by both sci-fi and traditional Roma motifs.

It's up on Youtube here, with English subtitles:

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[kore]

the Roma futurist play where cyber witches stop Brexit

OH YES

[dolorosa_12]

Isn't it just perfect?

[lirazel]

Does your icon indicate that you're a Rebecca Solnit fan? I loooove her.

[kore]

Yes! I LOVE her and have all her books. I started rereading Hope in the Dark in 2015 I think, and I've reread it several times since then. She has absolutely saved my sanity these past 4-5 years.

[lirazel]

I still haven't gotten to that one yet, but I've read a bunch of her essay collections and articles and I think she's just the greatest.

[adifferentstory]

That presentation sounds incredibly interesting - I'm going to bookmark it for later. Thank you for sharing

[dolorosa_12]

That's great to hear! I hope you enjoy it.

[lirazel]

my thesis was about authority, exile and dispossession, and the ways history, and etymology were used to claim authority over land, and dispossess others from their claims

Oh how interesting!

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad I'm not in academia any more, but I'm still very glad I did the PhD, and really loved working on that topic. Long before I began my postgraduate studies I had an interest in those concepts (and how they're explored in literature, across languages and cultures), and they're still probably my favourite theme to read about, think about, and encounter in literature of all eras, languages, regions, and genres.