Walter Macken: Histories and Stories
A Centenary Symposium (10.12.-11.12.2015)
2015 marks the centenary of the birth of Walter Macken. In celebration of the life and work of this important Irish author, actor and theatre director the English Department and the Center for Narrative Research of the University of Wuppertal are organizing a symposium which will take place 10-11 December 2015.
Walter Macken was a best-selling novelist and acclaimed playwright in his time, internationally popular with young and adult audiences, but so far he has been largely ignored by academics. This symposium will bring together for the first time experts in the various academic fields that can contribute to the scholarly analysis, appreciation, and evaluation of Macken’s manifold impulses to 20th-century Irish literature and culture. We will discuss the multiple strands of Macken’s identity as a storyteller in his various functions as a novelist, playwright, actor and theatre director, who worked both in/with the English and the Irish language and whose representations of the past and present of his nation shaped the cultural consciousness of a generation.
The significance of a Macken centenary event at the University of Wuppertal rests squarely on the foundation of the Walter Macken archive which the University of Wuppertal acquired in the late 1970s.
Speakers: Paul Delaney, Luke Gibbons, Eva Kerski, Wolfgang Lukas, Ultan Macken, Walter Macken jr., Chris Morash, Rüdiger Nutt-Kofoth, Michael Paye, Anja Platz-Schliebs, Katharina Rennhak, Shaun Richards, Ian Walsh.
Organisers: Prof. Dr. Sandra Heinen (Wuppertal), Prof. Dr. Katharina Rennhak (Wuppertal), Dr. Éamonn Ó Ciardha (Ulster).
