NPPSH Conference

The aim of this paper will be to present a sequence of results obtained from i) a network-based analysis created through the 'Stylo' package (a library developed within the statistical programming language R for the quantitative analysis of literary data), and ii) a network-based visualisation generated in the open-source software package Gephi. This analysis reflects an attempt to develop a definition of literary style by the comparison of word frequencies embedded in two corpora, the first of which will be composed of just over 250 modernist novels, novellas and short story collections, and the second, which will contain 250 works written and published during the victorian era. In addition to outlining the process by which this analysis was arrived at, this paper will consider some of the methodological tensions surrounding computational methods operationalised within the context of literary studies. As a discipline, the study of literature has become increasingly indebted to analyses of broader cultural and historical trends at the expense of an attention to generic developments inculcated by particular authors or works. This has resulted in an ambivalence with regard to the sorts of categorical reasoning required in order for computational analyses such as this one to function. This paper will therefore suggest a means of productively fusing the dialectical materialism of contemporary literary studies with stylometry without doing a disservice to experimental design or seeking to re-animate a retrograde formalism. Chris Beausang is a second year doctoral student in An Foras Feasa in Maynooth University under the supervision of Professor Susan Schreibman. He completed his undergraduate degree in English Studies and his MPhil in Digital Humanities & Culture in Trinity College Dublin, and has written dissertations on Roddy Doyle's historical fiction and quantitative approaches to the prose style of Samuel Beckett. His research investigates the development of modernist literary style through computational methods.

Despite her being dubbed as ‘Jane Austen of the 20th century’ by JB Priestly, Dorothy Whipple’s fame for her popular interwar domestic romance, ironically, did not last like her literary precursor until the recent republication by Persephone Books. Whipple wrote not only the courtship and the romance tale, but the post-matrimony story such as extramarital affair, divorce, and domestic violence with a profound understanding of the importance of women’s education and profession. Studying her novels as the cultural products of the middle-class and from the interwar period, a topoanalytical reading of Whipple’s domestic images finds that they represent home as a contested site to the women’s heterosexual identity, desire, and economic conundrum, and reveals the history of heterosexual femininity not as a steady and voiceless conformity to the patriarchal hegemony, but a constantly reforming effort to improve and undermine the traditional heterosexual structure in the patriarchal design of suppressive spatial division, in which home is considered as a socially and economically rightful realm for women to reside and to identify their gender with. By reading her novels following the proposed method, the researcher aims to show how Whipple’s domestic romance about the quiet disquiet from the middle ground and the mid-century deserves to be reinstalled in the feminist literary canon and protected from oblivion and neglect. Pimpawan holds an MA in English Language & Literature from Thammasat University Thailand and an MA in Contemporary Literature from the University of Liverpool. She started her PhD in English in 2016 at the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen. Her current research interests include spatial turn in literary theory, women’s literary history, women and romance writing, gendered space, and domesticity in women’s novel.

Over the last thirty years communities throughout Ireland have actively been engaged in reclaiming part of their past. The legacy of the cilliní, the un-baptised infant burial grounds, have over the generations cast a long shadow across the lives of many Irish families whose children lie buried in these plots. But what of the families who lost wives and mothers ‘who died in childbirth but haven’t been churched’ (Dixon 2012)? Oral history sources tell us they were also buried there along with suicides, strangers, shipwrecked sailors, murderers and their unfortunate victims, criminals, famine victims, the mentally disabled. All considered unsuitable for burial within consecrated ground. Why would a Catholic ‘woman who had died in or shortly after childbirth’ (Donnelly & Murphy 2008:213) be denied burial in consecrated ground? Apart from mention in oral history little information appears to be available regarding these women who have all but become invisible which makes one question if this invisibility is a reflection of their status in society in rural Ireland during the late 19th and mid twentieth century or is it as a result of Canon laws pertaining to women and childbirth in relation to the traditional Christian ceremony of The Churching of Women mixed with local superstitions and folk-belief concerning post-parturient women? Or possibly it is a potent concoction of all the above elements, society, church and superstition colluding to obscure the memory of these many wives and mothers. Sheena Graham-George is an Orkney based visual artist and is currently half way through her practice-based PhD at Glasgow School of Art. Her research is concerned with memory, place and community in relation to the Irish cillíní, the un-baptised infant burial grounds and disenfranchised grief. Her work as an artist looks at the role of memorializing the marginalized dead through art as a conceivable way for communities to make peace with a past which differs in attitude from the present and the ways that art might communicate universal loss and compassion whilst becoming an integral part of the healing process.

Fiosraíonn an páipéar seo an idirghabháil atá idir filí na gceantar Gaeltachta seo i gCiarraí agus an pobal léitheoireachta. Is gníomh imeallach é an fhilíocht in aon teanga – gan trácht ar mhionteanga a bhfuil dúshláin éagsúla roimpi. I measc an chomhthéacs dúshlánach seo, tá líon suntasach filí ag cumadh na filíochta i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí. Léiríonn na filí amhras ar leith go bhfuil aon phobal léitheoireachta acu agus deir cuid acu nach mbíonn siad ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta ina gcleachtas cruthaitheachta. In ainneoin seo, tá na filí an-ghníomhnach i bhfoilsiú saothar filíochta. Téann an dearcadh seo i gcoinne theoiricí móra na cruthaitheachta a leagann béim ar thábhacht an chomhthéacs agus ar thábhacht na hidirghabhála leis an bpobal léitheoireachta maidir le cruthú chiall an ghníomh chruthaithigh. (Ó Crualaoich 1992, Glăveanu 2016 & Sternberg 2016). Muna bhfuil na filí ag cuimhneamh ar an bpobal léitheoireachta – conas go mbeidh pobal ann dóibh? Cén ról atá ag na filí seo sna pobail Ghaeltachta mar sin? Féachann an páipéar ar cheist an easpa pobail léitheoireachta agus ar an tost indíreach a ghintear as an saothrú pearsanta seo. Mar a d’aithin an file Paddy Bushe ‘Aon ealaíontóir a dhéanann dearúd ar phobal, bíonn sé ag labhairt leis féin’. Chuige sin, díreofar ar thuairimí pearsanta na bhfilí a nochtadh in agallaimh agus déanfar anailís téacslárnach mar thaca don bplé. This paper seeks to tell the story of a group of active, contemporary Irish language poets of the south and west Kerry Gaeltacht areas of Corca Dhuibhne and Uíbh Ráthach. These poets demonstrate a meta-awareness of being a relatively unheard voice, they deem their work to be generally unread and as a result present with a sense of doubt as to whether an audience even exists for their poetry. Despite this, the poets continue to publish material and engage in public readings and performances. Marginalisation forms part of each of the poets’ lives due to several factors, from writing in a minority language, being based physically on the edge of Europe, engaging in poetry, a creative mode that tends to have a limited audience even in majority languages, along with finding refuge in isolation as an important part of the creative process. The paper will highlight a range of thoughts and ideologies pertaining to this sense of indirect silence and lack of audience, drawing on material from interviews with several of the poets. It aims to provide an interpretation of this phenomenon of writing for an audience, whom does not appear to be present, with a particular focus on the poets’ feelings and outlook to this regard. Tá Shane Grant mar mhac léinn PhD le Roinn na Gaeilge i gColáiste Mhuire Gan Smál, Luimneach. Cáilíodh é mar bhunmhúinteoir i 2016 agus bronnadh ‘Comhaltacht Taighde’ air sa bhliain 2017. Baineann a chuid taighde le filí comhaimseartha na Gaeilge i ndá cheantar Gaeltachta i gCiarraí; Corca Dhuibhne agus Uíbh Ráthach faoi stiúir an Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. Féachann an taighde ar conas a ghintear, a chothaítear agus a chleachtaítear an chruthaitheacht sa Ghaeilge ag díriú ar na ceantair seo mar chás-staidéar. Tá spéis ar leith ag aige i bhfilíocht chomhaimseartha na Gaeilge, sa tsochtheangeolaíocht, i bhfoghlaim an tarna teanga, i bpleanáil teanga agus i bhforbairt pobail Ghaeltachta. Shane Grant is a PhD student with the Irish Department in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick. Shane graduated as a primary school teacher in 2016 following his completion of the Bachelor of Education (B.ED) programme. He was awarded a Departmental Assistantship with the college in 2017 to undertake his postgraduate studies under the supervision of Dr. Róisín Ní Ghairbhí. His research is concerned with the practices and fostering of a group of Irish poets linked to the West Kerry Gaeltacht of Corca Dhuibhne and South Kerry Gaeltacht of Uíbh Ráthach.

This paper explores the insights provided by the old media of novels, to informatic strategies implementable through AR technologies, using Invisible Cities (2010) by Italo Calvino. The social systems that must be traversed in basic everyday life can be labyrinthine and opaque to all but the most indoctrinated. The individual’s experience of the world is guided our by memories and communications with others. Society attempts to create collective actions strategies through which to communicate information, but all too often systems are set up for a normative level of intellect and ability. Managed subjectivity is a vital aspect of literature, as books act as partnerships between authors and readers. There are lessons to be learned from this developed medium which have huge value in guiding good design in new frontiers. Using Critical Disability Theory (Pothier and Devlin, 2006) and concepts such as emotional design (Norman, 2004), and civilising processes/habitus (Bourdieu, 1977; Elias, 2012) the paper argues for inclusive design approaches. The paper attempts to bring lessons from traditional mediums’ narratives to inform the design of informatic strategies for AR/VR/MR. Invisible Cities follows Kublai Khan and Marco Polo as they discuss 55 distinct cities all of which are Venice, all discovered through the consideration of different fundamental aspects of perceptions and human life. These all co-exist layered on top of and intertwined with each other. Every individual experiences the world through their own lens, influenced by their physical and emotional condition, and their context in the world. Phil J. Ryan is a PhD student in Inclusive Design & Creative Technology Innovation candidate based in SMARTlab, University College Dublin. He works on sociologically informed technological solutions to problems of population movement. He researches migration, bureaucracy, user experience, and inclusive design. His dissertation is titled ‘Bureaucracy Map: An inclusively designed dynamic informatics system for institutional navigation.’

The digital divide has been discussed as a limiting factor in social cohesion, since the early 2000s (Korupp & Szydlik, 2005). Authors suggested that the digital divide was a new form of social inequality, and therefore the term digital exclusion would better reflect the unequal access to digital resources among low socio-economic and ethnic minority groups (Cushman & Klecun, 2006). With the emergence of the smartphone as a relatively cheap and ubiquitous gateway to the digital world, access has somewhat widened for many people. However, a recent study (2018) by OFCOM in the UK reveals that there still is a distinct digital divide: non-users of the internet are more likely to be aged over 65 than users. Knowles & Hanson (2018) propose that despite being more proficient than previous generations, some older people may be rejecting digital technology in protest of an increasingly digital society that they do not trust. Whether rejection, digital exclusion or a myriad of factors, low participation in digital technology may be contributing to social isolation and exclusion among this age group in Ireland, especially in rural areas. Ethnographic methods have the potential to reveal how older people interact with digital technology, and socially, in their everyday lives and thus illuminate any issues of social isolation and exclusion. This paper explores digital exclusion as a social process and discusses preliminary findings from my research into the social lives of older people in the rural South East of Ireland, and their daily use of technology. Jessica Douglas is a first year PhD student at Waterford Institute of Technology and part of the Research Group of Design and Social Innovation (DASI). Her research is an interdisciplinary study of the social lives of older people in rural South East Ireland and their interaction with technology. She is also Assistant Digital Editor of the Irish Journal of Anthropology. She gained her MA Public Cultures & Society, First Class Honours, from IADT in 2016 and she previously graduated from the University of Liverpool and The University of Sheffield with a BSc and MSc.