http://hdl.handle.net/1893/821 Electronic copies of Literature and Languages conference papers and proceedings. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:50:14 GMT 2026-09-25T11:50:14Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37508 Title: Dementia, bilingualism and the insights of performance-based research Author(s): Birnie, Ingeborg; Ni Loingsigh, Aedin Abstract: First paragraph: As memories unravel and disappear with the onset of dementia, what the arts often do best is preserve some sense of an irreducible self. From Shakespeare’s King Lear, to the 2014 award winning film Still Alice, and later this year the much-anticipated film adaptation of Florian Zeller’s play, The Father, creative, performance-based forms offer a compelling means of imagining the fate of individuals as they live with this condition. And yet, although loss of language skills is understood as a common effect of dementia, there have been few arts-based approaches to understanding the specific challenges that arise in the context of bi- and multi-lingualism Fri, 20 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37508 2020-11-20T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37507 Title: FAFarming lives: The microscopic and the immersive in Contemporary Agrarian Writings Author(s): Ni Loingsigh, Aedin Abstract: First paragraph: The task this paper tentatively stakes out is whether the idea of the small scale, the microscopic, the local in the agrarian novels I read by contemporary Irish and French writers are relevant to the dizzyingly incomprehensible large scale of the global ecological crisis we face. Are the small worlds these novels textualise reactionary, closed off places that feel threatened by or disconnected from the bigger world? Are they about holding uncritically onto so-called authentic traditions for n other reason that this is what we have ‘always done here’? Or are these small scale places repositories of beliefs, practices and value systems that could be useful? In other words, might the small world of the fictional smallholding provide us with a progressive image of place for a more ecologically sensitive global/planetary future? Thu, 15 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37507 2023-06-15T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37472 Title: Ecological Visions in Maryse Condé's 'Moi, Tituba sorcière... Noire de Salem' Author(s): Ni Loingsigh, Aedin Abstract: The ‘plantationocene’, the concept that will inform this paper’s discussion of botanical knowledge and and healing in Maryse Condé’s 1986 fictionalised historical of Moi Tituba, sorcière, evokes the history of enslaved-dependent growing practices, the global scale of the economy these supported, and their enduring impact on social, cultural and environmental realities. Although the concept is still in the early stages of refinement, defining the plantationocene begins with an acknowledgement that the environmental crisis we now face cannot be disentangled from the historical relationship imperialism established with the environment. At the same time, the plantationocene’s history of extraction and violence demands a renewed emphasis on decolonising ecological knowledge. It requires bringing into focus the resistance represented by the small-scale subsistence practices of the enslaved and shining a light on the nature of the specific ecological knowledge and skills that they possessed. Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37472 2024-07-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37047 Title: Hedged in? Branching out? The hedge as symbol of transition in Jean-Loup Trassard's L'Homme des haies Author(s): Ni Loingsigh, Aedin Abstract: First paragraph: For Doreen Massey (2018: 154), Heidegger-derived understandings of ‘place’ are problematic because ‘[they] rel[y] on an introverted, inward-looking history’ and seem ‘to require the drawing of boundaries’ to support their definition. Consequently, one of the ways Massey begins to work through a more progressive sense of place is by refusing to ‘[draw] its enclosing boundaries’ (2018: 155). A study that focuses on hedges might, therefore, imply a starting point that is in contraposition to Massey. After all, hedges, as vegetative boundaries, are not just fixed and emplaced — literally rooted — but, in histories of agrarian reform, for example, they have served as a means for defining the places they enclose and the ways they are owned, managed and used. Wed, 30 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37047 2023-08-30T00:00:00Z