We are proud to recognize Isabel Hunt (University of New Mexico) and Eilish Brennan (University of Colorado Denver) as this year’s scholarship recipients!

Brennan’s paper, “Fallen Women: Finding Forgotten Irish Sex Workers in Leadville, Colorado,” offers a powerful recovery of overlooked Irish women in the American West, illuminating lives long erased from historical memory.

Hunt’s essay, “A Sapphic, Stray Sod in Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn,” provides a fresh and compelling reading of queer desire and disorientation in contemporary Irish fiction.

Together, their work reflects the depth, imagination, and future direction of emerging scholarship in Irish studies. Congratulations to both!

Congratulations to Graduate Student Isabel Hunt, University of New Mexico, Recipient of the Donald E. Jordan, Jr. – Willard C. Potts, Jr. Award

“I’m honored and grateful to receive this award! Every ACIS gathering I’ve been a part of is so welcoming and encouraging, and I’m already looking forward to the next one!” – Isabel Hunt 

Call for Papers ACIS West 2026

Congratulations to Graduate Student Eilish Brennan, University of Colorado Denver, Recipient of the Donald E. Jordan, Jr. – Willard C. Potts, Jr. Award

“I would like to thank ACIS WEST for all the work they have done to create a home for scholars across disciplines. I am proud to have shared the stories of working-class women in Leadville and am grateful for the work being done at ACIS WEST to amplify the silenced or underrepresented population. The West is a tapestry of stories of resilience, resistance, and survival. I am so honored to be included in this conference and to be granted this honor. I wouldn’t be the scholar I am without the support of my family, my peers at the Molly Brown House, my professors past and present, and to the women whose resilience made me who I am today, and to the women I study in molding me for the one I am becoming. May this work continue to shape the ACIS WEST for generations to come.” – Eilish Brennan

Schedule for ACIS PDX 2025

Printed versions will, of course, be available at reception.

Tentative Schedule for Portland

Time Friday	Event
8:15 AM – 9:45 AM	Diaspora and Community in the American West  • Erin Costello Wecker (University of Montana) – “Coalition & Community: Awakening the Archive After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake”  • Peggy Pollard (San José State University) – “San Francisco’s Irish, 1921–Two Births that Shook the World”  • Eilish Brennan (Independent Scholar) – “Fallen Women: Finding Forgotten Irish Sex Workers in Leadville, Colorado”
9:45 AM – 10:00 AM	Transition Break
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM	Stages & Scripts: Theatrical and Literary Forms  • Samantha Kotta (Yale University) – “A Language Not Meant to Be Spoken: Linguistic Haunting in Beckett’s Endgame and Barry McCrea’s Languages of the Night”  • Sarah Townsend (University of New Mexico) – “Multiple Roles and the Illusion of Difference in Celtic Tiger Drama”  • Carol Dell’Amico (CSU-Bakersfield) – “Banville in Bits and Parts: The Singularities”
11:30 AM – 11:45 AM	Transition Break
11:45 AM – 1:00 PM	Lunch on your own
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM	Conflict and Politics  • Timothy White (Xavier University) – “From Funding Violence to Promoting Peace: Irish America in the Northern Ireland Peace Process”  • Nick Harrington (Western Governors University) – “Conspiracy! Irish-Americans in Oregon”   • Brennan MacDonald (New York University) – “Themes of IRA Organization, Tactics, and Community Engagement in The Men Will Talk to Me Series”
2:30 PM – 2:45 PM	Transition Break
2:45 PM – 4:15 PM	Land, Language, and Belonging  • Brian Hart (Portland Community College) – “GIS agus na Gaeltachta – Teorainn, ciall, agus teanga”  • Madeline Odell (Portland Community College) – “Community and Memory in Irish Studies”  • Sarah Wagner-McCoy (Reed College) – “Pastoral Representation in Irish Studies”
4:15 PM – 4:30 PM	Transition Break
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM	Keynote Address • Charlotte Headrick, Oregon State University • “Eclipsed”
5:00 PM	Day 1 Concludes

Time Saturday	Event
9:00 AM – 9:15 AM	Day 2 Welcome
9:15 AM – 10:45 AM	Community: An Exploration via Family History: • Chair: James P. Walsh, Emeritus Professor, Founding President, ACIS-West • “Our Own Women of Substance: Kate, Margaret, Nellie, & Julianne” By Daniel P. Walsh, Founding Partner, Shephard, Author  • Margaret Walsh’s Son: Life of C.T. Beggs, San Francisco & Beyond By Thomas Beggs; son of C.T. Beggs, Retired Civil Engineer • A Casey-Mullins Story: Community & Survival by Thomas Walsh IV; Novelist, Producer
10:45 AM – 11:00 AM	Transition Break
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM	Gender, Sexuality, and the Gothic  • Maryam Tadayon (University of New Mexico) – “Urban Diaspora and the Fragile Work of Belonging in Irish and Iranian Women’s Fiction” • Isabel Hunt (University of New Mexico) – “A Sapphic, Stray Sod in Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn”  • Darian Wharton (University of New Mexico) – “The Irish/British Vampire in Byzantium: Revisiting Historical Moments of Fracture”
12:30 PM – 1:45 PM	Lunch on your own
1:45 PM – 3:15 PM	Cultural Production and the Arts  • Steven Farrell (Independent Scholar) – “Making a Beatles Movie in Ireland, Part 2”  • Kathleen Walkup (Northeastern University) – “Those Other Yeatses: Lily, Lolly, Mary & Anne and their art”  • Jacob Martin (Loyola Marymount University) – Topic TBA
3:15 PM – 3:30 PM	Transition Break
3:30 PM – 5:15 PM	New Methodologies and Regional Stories  • Cody Stanton (Washington State University) – “From Ballots to Bullets: Nationalism and Arming in Ireland 1910-1916”  • Douglas Byrd (Portland Community College) – “Reunification in Focus: The Search for a New Ireland”  • James Walsh (University of Colorado Denver) The Rocky Mountain Irish Roots Collective:  Building a Vibrant Irish Studies Network in the Remote West • Brian O’Halloran (Independent Scholar) – “Moycullen DNA Project”
5:15 PM	Business Meeting
6pm	Apps and drinks at Kells

Extending the Deadline

We are excited to announce that, since we have interest from other quarters, we are extending the deadline for papers until October 6!

October 6 is a more auspicious day anyway, being Ivy Day.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Joining and Presenting at ACIS

Hello!

For those of you that will be joining us this year, the rates are as follows:

Full-time $125 early bird, $150 after early bird (until October 1)

Grad students/adjuncts $75

One Day: General public $25 for one day, $35 after early bird

Full Conference: General public $40, $50 after early bird.

Here is the link to sign up:

https://acisweb.wildapricot.org/event-6335314

Portal

This is a portal to submit your abstracts.

And also remember that you must be a member of ACIS to participate. You can click here for more information.

Should you be a student who has difficulty with it, please let us know at ACISWest@outlook.com.

https://acisweb.org/conferences/acis-western-regional-2025/

Call for Papers: American Conference for Irish Studies West (ACIS-West) 2025 Portland, Oregon

Conference Title: Community and Memory in Irish Studies
Date: November 07-9, 2025
Location: Embassy Suites, Downtown Portland
Submission Deadline: September 16, 2025

The American Conference for Irish Studies West invites proposals for its 2025 annual conference, exploring the multifaceted theme of Community.

Community—as an idea, an ideal, a memory, and a lived reality—has been central to the Irish experience at home and across the diaspora. It is a concept that is constantly built, fractured, renegotiated, and remembered. This conference seeks to examine the myriad forms of community in Irish history, literature, and culture, from the close-knit parish and the linguistic community of the Gaeltacht, to the imagined communities of the nation and the global Irish diaspora. We are interested in how community is formed through solidarity and exclusion, how it is sustained through memory and narrative, and how it is challenged by migration, modernization, and conflict.

We welcome interdisciplinary proposals from scholars across all stages of their careers, including graduate students, independent scholars, and artists. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Historical Communities: The clan, the colony, the garrison, the rural village, the urban neighborhood, the workhouse, religious communities, and separatist societies.
• Literary Representations: The Big House and its tenants, the Irish family as a micro-community, the pub as a social hub, communities in Irish-language literature, and the role of the writer within or against their community.
• Diasporic & Transnational Communities: The Irish in North America, Australia, and Britain; the role of Irish associations (GAA, County Associations); digital communities; and the concept of a global Irish identity.
• Cultural & Linguistic Communities: The revival of the Irish language; the community of musicians and storytellers; sporting communities; and LGBTQ+ communities in Ireland.
• Challenging Community: Sectarianism and division; the Troubles and community conflict; class and social stratification; the changing community in the Celtic Tiger and post-Crash eras.
• Memory & Community: The role of commemoration, folklore, and oral history in shaping communal identity; monuments and public space; Famine memory; and the decolonization of community narratives.

Submission Guidelines:
Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biographical note (approx. 100 words) as a single PDF or Word document ACISWest@outlook.com by September 15, 2025.

Please indicate in your email if your presentation requires any audiovisual technology. We welcome proposals for:

• Individual Papers (20 minutes)
• Organized Panels (3-4 presenters)
• Roundtable Discussions (3-5 participants)
• Creative Readings or Performances

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by late September 2025.