19 Days until Take-off!

In 19 days, I will board a flight to Dublin and then take a bus to Belfast to begin an academic adventure about which I am geekily ecstatic.  A group of students and faculty from John Carroll involved in a Peace & Conflict Studies course organized a trip to Northern Ireland as a sort of addendum to the course, and I managed to arrange to tag along as part of an independent study I'm doing for MA credit.  The independent study is titled "Conflict and Literature in Northern Ireland;" the trip itself is titled "JCU Summer Institute in Belfast" and is sponsered by the Center for Global Education.  The research and writing that I will do (before and) during the trip is truly in preparation for my final MA Essay (the big graduation requirement besides the comp exams).  I plan to focus my work on Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and Brian Friel's Freedom of the City.  Right now I'm playing with ideas of the culture of silence and secrets represented in Deane's piece and the issues of a specifically Northern Irish identity (separate from an Irish or British identity) in Friel's piece, such as how roles, personas, and truths are forced upon the victims (dead at the start of the play) by the various outside views in order to get them to fit into the stereotypical identity of either violent rebel or heroic martyr (neither of which is accurate) so that they may serve a purpose for one cause or the other.  With Deane, I'm starting to look a bit at trauma theory, and ultimately, my goal is to somehow merge these two topics and texts, possibly turning it into some larger study of the Field Day writers and their place in the discussion of Northern Irish identity and culture.  This may involve bringing Seamus Heaney into the mix as well.   

Moving on, the trip as a whole is really focused on the peace & conflict roller coaster of Belfast and the surrounding areas, and we will spend much of our time touring areas most affected by the violence of the Troubles and meeting with various groups involved in the fighting and the peace process (ongoing as it is).  In a separate post, I will copy the tentative itineraries, as well as the reading list I'm working on.  For now, I thought it would be helpful to define a few of the common terms I may use throughout this blog, so here is a link to a site that very simply breaks down the difference between Loyalists, Republicans, Unionists, Nationalists, etc.: http://irishconflict.webs.com/terminology.htm

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!  I'll try to update as close to daily as possible once the trip begins!

Jeannie

PS - I will be spending two weeks in Belfast, and then -- after the program is complete -- I will be traveling in the Republic of Ireland for three weeks with my friend Tiffany.  There will be a separate blog for those misadventures.  If you are interested in it, please let me know, and I'll share the link.