ARCHIVED (JANUARY 2022) -- Colloquium "Breaking the Commodity Chains: Roger Casement, or How to Render Exploitation Visible" (6 ECTS)

This Master-level colloquium is open for a maximum of 20 Master students from all Swiss universities. It will be taught in four parts:

• session 1 (online): Friday, September 24, 2021, 4 to 6 p.m.
• session 2 (online): Friday, October 22, 2021, 4 to 6 p.m.
• full-day workshop: Saturday, October 30, 2021
• conclusion (online): Friday, November 26, 2021, 4 to 6 p.m.

The aim of the colloquium is for students to:

1. learn more about Casement’s life: his groundbreaking work as a humanitarian, his position as an Irish nationalist icon, and the controversy surrounding his homosexual exploits, as documented in the so-called Black Diaries;
2. read and discuss some examples from Casement’s little-known poetic oeuvre;
3. examine Casement’s cultural afterlife, as reflected in a broad range of literary texts, e.g. W. B. Yeats’s ballad “The Ghost of Roger Casement” (1937), David Rudkin’s BBC radio play Cries from Casement as His Bones Are Brought to Dublin (1973), or short stories like Martina Devlin’s “No Other Place” (2016);
4. produce educational material (mainly for Gymnasium-level students), during the full-day workshop in late October.

The material produced by the participants will be made available online and shared with schools across Switzerland.

Download the information sheet (PDF, 409 KB)for more information.

The full-day workshop will be taught with the help of three additional experts:

• Dr. Ana Sobral (Zurich; expert in Postcolonial Studies);
• Neil O’Driscoll (Dublin; visual artist, currently working on a graphic novel on
• Roger Casement)
• Kyle Greenwood (Zurich; playwright and teacher)

Many thanks to the project sponsors:

• Embassy of Ireland, Switzerland;
• Schweizerische Akademie für Geisteswissenschaften SAGW;
• UZH Alumni.

In addition to the Master-level colloquium, there will also be a public lecture entitled "Produktionsketten sprengen: Roger Casement und das Sichtbarmachen von Ausbeutung."

The lecture will be held by Dr. Martin Mühlheim (UZH English Department) and Fabienne Widmer (Solidar Suisse), and it will take place in the Grüne Saal of the Volkshaus in Zürich, on Monday, October 25, 2021, at 7.30 p.m.