AFIS, Association of Franco Irish Studies, 2012 Annual Conference

I attended the 2012 AFIS, Annual Conference of the Association of Franco Irish Studies, which took place in Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick on the 25th & 26th of May 2012.

Photo of King John's Castle on the River Shannon in Limerick.

The conference theme was France and Ireland in the Public Imagination. Speakers from universities in Ireland, Italy, Poland, Macedonia, the United Kingdom and France presented papers on various aspects of how Ireland is and was presented in the French public imagination and vice versa. These included the media, literature, food & drink, politics, music and poetry.

I presented a paper on French newspaper cartoons that I came across while researching articles written by French journalists who visited Ireland during the 20th century. The cartoons, which cast a wry look on how Ireland was being treated by Britain during the early 1920s, are unbelievable in their honesty. I'm sure I'll be talking about them again here sometime soon.

Here's the conference website: http://afislimerick2012.com/