Ulster 1718: Culture, Family and Space

This year marks the three hundredth anniversary of the migration of a number of families from the Bann Valley to a new life in North America.

In order to commemorate this, Ulster University shall host a gathering of academic and community writers who shall explore the connections between Ulster and North America. The event will examine three main shared areas of interest between the two places: culture, family and space. It is hoped that this will prompt a re-examination of the impact of literature and ideas, family and genealogy and space and landscape that have shaped the relationship between the two places then and since. This conference is a sister conference of the Maine Ulster Scots Project Ulster Diaspora Reunion and Conference which will be held August 14-16, 2018, in Brunswick Maine at Bowdoin College Campus.

Papers of 20-25 minutes would be accepted on the following themes:

• Afterlives of 1718
• Ulster Diaspora
• Family history, memoirs and correspondence
• Literatures of Migration and Diaspora
• Narratives about space, place and landscape
• Interactions with indigenous peoples
• Interactions with ‘Yankee’ English/ French on the New England/Quebec frontier.
• Built environment —skill and tools of Scotch Irish pioneer life.
• Shipbuilding and the Scotch Irish in Maine.
• New Insights, reflections on connections Scotland, Ireland and America
• Culture and memory/ forgetting
• Ulster-Scots and Scotch-Irish commemorations

Further details can be found at:@HurchinHome Twitter Account

Please send a 200 word abstract of your paper to f.ferguson@ulster.ac.uk by April 30^th 2018.