THE NORTH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF WELSH CULTURE AND HISTORY
2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WELSH STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 
    

Draft program as of 17 June 2008
Thursday, July 31st


10:00am-3pm Registration Open

10:00am-12:00pm Executive Committee and Program Committee Planning Meeting

1:00pm-1:15pm Opening and Welcome

1:15-2:45pm First Concurrent Sessions

1.) Panel: Identity, Creative Industries and Small Nations
Steven Blandford , CCI, University of Glamorgan
The Identity of Wales and the "Creative Industries"

David Barlow, CCI, University of Glamorgan
“Creative Industry Strategy in a Small Nation:‘Tailor Made’ or ‘Off the Peg’?

Chair:

2.) Panel: Poetry Readings with Commentary by Contributors to Other Land: Contemporary Poems on Wales and the Welsh-American Experience
Margaret Lloyd, Springfield College

Sarah Kennedy, Mary Baldwin College

William Greenway, Youngstown State University

Chair: David Lloyd

3:00-4:30pm Second Concurrent Sessions

3) Welsh Cinema
Daryl Perrins, CCI, University of Glamorgan
The Gwerin at Ealing: the role of the Welsh in the post-war British national project of Michael Balcon

Mark Woods, CCI, University of Glamorgan
An Evaluation of the National Cinema of Wales and whether this Cinema Constructs or Represents a National Identity

Chair: Steve Blandford, CCI, University of Glamorgan

4) Welsh Women Writers I
Kirsti Bohata, CREW, Swansea University
The New Woman in Wales, 1880-1914

Bill Jones, Cardiff University
Language, Religion, Science and Feminism in the Writings of Margaret E. Roberts (1833-c. 1911)

Katie Gramich, Cardiff University
Home and homelessness in fin-de-siecle Welsh women's writing

Chair: David Lloyd, LeMoyne University

5) Opportunity and Controversy in Welsh Higher Education
Claire Syder, University of Wales, Newport
Voices from the South Wales Valleys

Ioan Williams, Aberystwyth University
Welsh Medium in Higher Education

Harrison Solow, University of Wales, Lampeter
The St. David's Institute for Wales and the World

Chair: Katharine Anderson, Ohio Dominican University

4:45-5:45pm First Keynote Address

Catherine McKenna, Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic Studies, Harvard University
Stones Not of This Building and the Architecture of the Future: A Perspective on the Mabinogi

5:45-6:30pm Opening Reception

6:30pm dinner on your own

8:00pm Screening of A Run for Your Money

Friday, August 1st

8:00am-9:00am breakfast

9:00-10:30 am Third Concurrent Sessions

6) Medieval Wales
Michael Faletra, Reed College
Reading Between the Lines: The Earliest Version of Gerald of Wales's Itinerarium Kambriae

Katharine Anderson, Ohio Dominican University
Merely a Refuge for the Weak? The Place of Princely Sons in the Medieval Welsh Church

Stuart Rutten, University of Manchester
The Anglo-Cornish Vocabulary of Clothing terms in Manuscript Vespasian A14, a late version of Ælfric's Glossary

Chair: David Klausner, University of Toronto

7) Panel: Wales and Socialism
Martin Wright, Cardiff University
Robert Jones Derfel

Paul Ward, University of Huddersfield
Contriving to be Huw T.: Wales and Socialism in the Mid-Twentieth Century

Chair: Roderic Owen, Mary Baldwin College

8) Welsh Museums and Libraries in the 21st Century
Martin Locock, National Library of Wales
A nation talking to itself: Wales and its journals in the 19th and 20th centuries

Kenneth Brassil, National Museum Wales
New Archaeology Galleries at the National Museum

Chair: Osian Rhys-Jones, National Library of Wales

10:30-10:45am break

10:45am-11:45am Second Keynote Address

Pawl Birt, Chair of Celtic Studies, University of Ottawa
Title: TBA

11:45-12:45pm lunch
Brown Bag lunch in Victoria Senior Common Room with a reading by John Sam Jones

1:15-2:45pm Fourth Concurrent Sessions

9) Panel: Queer Wales
John Sam Jones
Coming Out of the Welsh Dresser (Closet) - The politics of being out and proud since devolution in 1997

Alys Henley-Einion, University of the West of England
The experience of lesbian motherhood in the South Wales Valleys and Cardiff - Trends and Current Realities

Mark L. Woods, CCI, University of Glamorgan
Cinematic Queer Cymru

Chair: Huw Osborne, Royal Canadian Military College

10) The Place of Landscape in Welsh Writing
C.A. Prettiman, Cedar Crest College
"Countrysides of Anguish": Jean Rhys and the Semiotics of the Caribbean Landscape

Pete Davis, University of Wales, Newport
"Into the Wildwood": Representations of the Welsh Landscape and its History in Relation to Ancient Forests

Chair: Megan Lloyd, King’s College

2:45-3:00pm break

3:00pm-4:45pm Fifth Concurrent Sessions

11) Welsh Writers
Hannah Dettinger, University of Minnesota, Duluth
David Jones and Prydeindod

Tony Brown, Bangor University
The Uncanny Wales of Dylan Thomas's Short Stories

David Paddy, Whittier College
At Home in the Dark: R. S. Thomas and Samuel Beckett

Chair: Sarah Kennedy, Mary Baldwin College

12) Early Modern Wales
Sally Harper, Bangor University
Border Crossings: Welsh-English Musical Interchange c. 1450-1600

Karen Mura, Susquehanna University
Texts and Contexts: Edward Jones and The Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1794): An Anglo-Welsh Anthology

Megan Lloyd, King's College
Patient Gwenllian and Intolerant Sir Owen: The Problems of Translating Welsh in Early Modern English Texts

Chair: David Klausner, University of Toronto

13) Panel: Welsh Devolution
W.P. Griffith, Bangor University
Whither the devolutionary imperative? Wales from war to the age of affluence, 1940-1965

Andrew Edwards, Bangor University
Squaring the circle: Plaid Cymru and the devolution dilemma, 1945-1968

Chair: Roderic Owen, Mary Baldwin College

4:45pm-6:30 free time

6:30pm Banquet at Victoria College

Saturday, August 2nd



8:00am-9:00am breakfast

9:00am-10:15am Sixth Concurrent Sessions

14) Welsh Cultural Identity
Mari Elin Wiliam, Bangor University
Welsh dolls in "Sunny Rhyl": beauty pageants and nationhood in the 1950s

Michelle Walker, Bangor University
English In-migrants in North Wales, 1970-2008: Colonisers or "Elective Belongers"?

John Harris, Kent State University
Wales and the Ryder Cup

Chair: Andrew Edwards, Bangor University

15) Panel: Location, Locution: Articulating the Meaning of Place in Modern Welsh Writing in English
Sarah Morse, CREW, Swansea Unviersity
Y Blaenau and Y Fro/The Valleys and the Vale: Contested National Symbolics in the work of Gwyn Thomas (Rhondda)

Tomos Owen, Cardiff University
Behind, Between and Beyond: Constructing Wales from London in The London Kelt

Laura Wainwright , Cardiff University
The Transnational Space of Welsh Modernism

Chair: Katie Gramich, Cardiff University

16) Welsh in North America I
Osian Rhys-Jones, National Library of Wales
The Cambrian: From Cincinnati to Utica, Becoming Americans

D. Douglas Caulkins, Grinnell College
Cultural Hybridity in the Welsh and Irish Diasporas

Matt Carter, Cardiff University
Country Welsh, City Welsh: Welsh Immigrants in Rural Ohio and Urban Pennsylvania, 1850-1930

Chair: Bill Jones, Cardiff University

10:15-10:30 break

10:45-11:45 Third Keynote Address
Ralph Griffiths, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Swansea
William Rees and the modern study of medieval Wales

12-1:15pm lunch on your own

12:30-1:30pm NAASWCH business meeting

1:15-2:45 pm Seventh Concurrent Sessions

17) Twentieth-Century Wales
Mark J. Crowley, Institute of Historical Research
"Return to Sender?" The Post Office's Response to the Welsh Language during the Second World War

Chris Hill, Independent Scholar
Ernest Jones (1879 - 1958) and Freud's mission to the English-speaking world

Chair: John Harris, Kent State University

18) New Research on Early Wales
Steffany Campbell, University of Toronto
By whose authority? Legal theory and Cyfraith Hywel

Dan Brielmaier, University of Toronto
Title: TBA

Kristen Mills, University of Toronto
The Uses of Enchantment: Gwydion and Gilfaethwy's Transformations in Math

Chair: David Klausner, University of Toronto

19) Welsh Women Writers II
Mary Nicholas
"She who would valiant be . . ." The life and times of Cranogwen

Claire Flay, University of Glamorgan
Dorothy Edwards

John L. Murphy, DeVry University
Menna Gallie's "You're Welcome to Ulster": a Welshwoman enters the Troubles

Chair: Tony Brown, Bangor University

2:45-3:00pm break

3:00-4:45pm Eighth Concurrent Sessions

20) Welsh in North America II
Gethin Matthews, Cardiff University
"The most harmless men in the whole of creation"—Welsh reports of the native peoples of British Columbia

Mike Benbough-Jackson, Liverpool John Moores University
Scripting St. David's Day in the USA, 1880-1914

Lloyd Johnson, Campbell University
A Profile of the founders of St. David's Society in Eighteenth Century South Carolina

Chair: Bill Jones, Cardiff University

21) Open Panel Discussion: Teaching about Wales and the Welsh (in North America)
Discussion Leaders: Sarah Kennedy, Mary Baldwin College
Roderic Owen, Mary Baldwin College
Katharine Anderson, Ohio Dominican University

4:45-? evening free

Ffarwel!