'Exile, Nostalgia and Dreams'
In September 2006, the STAR Project opened the academic year with an emphasis on 'Exile, Nostalgia and Dreams.' Within the context of cross-Atlantic exchange, STAR sought to unearth the significance of 'Exile' as academic tool, intellectual experience, and transatlantic reality. To initiate its seminar series, STAR's transatlantic reading group discussed R.L. Stevenson's 'The Beach of Falesa,' considering the methodological impact of exilic positioning upon the investigation of transatlantic, intellectual space. The seminar also welcomed Professor Philip Horne (UCL), speaking on 'Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt and American Exile'; and other speakers contemplated the issue from Canadian, Trans-Pacific, and Geographical perspectives. STAR was especially pleased to host a joint-seminar with the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, on November 20, 2006. At this event STAR introduced Christine Chivallon (Centre d'Etude d'Afrique Noire, CNRS, National Centre of Scientific Research) who presented work on transatlantic slavery and memory.
Semester 1
September 25
Introductions and meeting with the Transatlantic Reading Group
Texts for discussion:
Brooke-Rose, Christina. "Exul." Poetics Today 17.3 (Aumtumn, 1996): 289-303.
Said, Edward. "Intellectual Exile."
Stevenson, R.L. "The Beach of Falesa."
October 23
Professor Philip Horne, University College London
Henry James, Theodore Roosevelt, and 'American Exile'
November 6
Professor Colin Nicholson, University of Edinburgh
Speaking on Alistair MacLeod
November 20
Joint Session on 'Memory and Exile'
STAR and the Institute of Geography together welcome
Christine Chivallon, Chercheur CNRS
CEAN (Centre d'Etude d'Afrique Noire)
Sciences Po Bordeaux
Making Slave Past Visible or Erasing Slave Past: The Case of Martinique
December 4
Dr Michelle Keown, University of Edinburgh
Speaking on Trans-Pacific relations
Semester 2
January 15
Transatlantic Reading Group Session
Texts for discussion:
Herman Melville's 'The Encantadas; Or, Enchanted Islands' from The Piazza Tales
Priscilla Maunier: "Odyssey of a double consciousness: commonalities and disjunctions in contemporary French Caribbean and Reunionese novels." International Journal of Francophone Studies 8.2 (2005):165-81.
January 29
Dr Robert Savage, IASH Research Fellow
"A stranger among us': Edward Roth, America and the Origins of Irish Television
Abstract:
Ireland's national television service emerged in 1962 as a hybrid commercial public service in an attempt to merge the traditional Rethian philosophy with the free market dynamic represented by British and American commercial networks. The first director-general, Edward Roth, was an American who had extensive experience in commercial television in the United States. Importantly, he also had wide-ranging experience in working abroad and prior to coming to Ireland had been hired to organize television stations in Peru and Mexico. The importation of Roth and his American ideas to Ireland highlights the bias of this compromise with commerce. Roth was hired with the approval of Sean Lemass, on the advice of a search committee headed by an icon of British television, Eamonn Andrews. Andrews, perhaps the best-known Irishman in the United Kingdom, hosted one of the most popular television shows of his generation, What's My Line? He was also a successful businessman and entrepreneur who owned studios in Dublin and London. Like Lemass, Andrews was a modernizer who had little patience with those who believed television could 'save' Irish culture. Although the Lemass Government gestured towards accepting the need to uplift and educate the nation, in reality generating income to sustain the service was the priority.
Roth was an Irish-American Catholic, hired because of his technical and managerial expertise, and because of his ethnic and religious background. He arrived in Ireland in 1961 as a dynamic technocrat, fully equipped to oversee the physical establishment of a national television station but unaware of the complexities of Irish culture and politics. His term was a turbulent one as the American-made westerns and crime dramas he purchased proved tremendously popular with Irish audiences but also highly controversial. Many critics of the new station were horrified with what they perceived as a relentless diet of American programs and demanded that indigenous cultural and educational programmes be developed and broadcast. Debates about programming and the need to embrace and transmit authentic Irish material were an important part of the cultural discourse in these formative years of Irish television. This seminar will address the challenges that Roth confronted as Director-General in the early 1960s.
February 19
Professor Deborah Madsen, University of Geneva
Un-American Exceptionalism: From 'Unmeltable' Ethics to 'Flexible' Citizens
February 26
Work-in-Progress:
Ms Sarah Moore, University of Edinburgh
Shepherd's Tales and Sailor's Yarns: the emergence of voice and persona in the early prose writings of James Hogg and Herman Melville
Ms Lise Sorensen, University of Edinburgh
American Savages and Men of Real Sensibility: Race and Sentimentalism in Sarah Scott's 'The History of Sir George Ellison' and Henry Mackenzie's 'The Man of the World'
Mr R.A.M. Wright, Univeristy of Edinburgh
A Preference for Plaster: Sculpture and Scepticism in the American Renaissance
March 12
Dr Claudia Heide
George Ticknor and his History of Spanish Literature
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