NORTH AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF WELSH CULTURE AND HISTORY
CYMDEITHAS GOGLEDD AMERICA AR GYFER ASTUDIO HANES A DIWYLLIANT CYMRU
BIENNIAL CONFERENCE /CYNHADLEDD DDWYFLYNYDDOL
NAASWCH 2016
20-22 July/ Gorffennaf 2016
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
TREFN Y GYNHADLEDD
PRIMARY ORGANISERS/ TREFNWYR:
Daniel G. Williams, President of NAASWCH, Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe
Melinda Gray, NAASWCH Treasurer and Secretary
CONFERENCE SPONSORS / NODDWYR:
The Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
Yr Adran Geltaidd, Prifysgol Harvard
DYDD MERCHER GORFFENNAF 20 / WEDNESDAY JULY 20
Registration table will be open 9.15 - 16.00
Barker 107
07:30 – 8:30
Executive Committee Meeting
TBD
10:00 – 10:30
Opening and Welcome
Coffee and Refreshments
Thompson Room (Barker 110)
10:30 – 12:00
SESSION 1
Panel 1a:
Thompson Room
The Human Rights of Children and Young People: Making and Implementing the World’s
First Domestic Law on the Rights of Children
 Chair: Roderick Evans
 Jane Williams (Swansea), Mike Sullivan (Swansea), Helen Mary Jones (Youth Cymru)
Panel 1b:
Dana-Palmer 102
Returns and Entrances: Welsh Writing in English
 Chair: Andrew Webb (Bangor)
 Catriona Coutts (Bangor), ‘Ni Allaf Ddianc Rhag Hon’: Returns, Ties and Constraints in
the Literature of Wales
 Katie Gramich (Cardiff), The Dragon’s Two Tongues in Contemporary Literature
 Daniel Hughes (Bangor), The Soldier’s Return: Nigel Heseltine’s War-Haunted
Writings
Panel 1c:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
War, Writing and Memory
 Chair: John Ellis (University of Michigan, Flint)
 Jonathan Morgan, Remembering the Welsh War Poets and those in Welsh
Regiments
 Meilyr Powell (Swansea), Creating a Casus Belli: The Welsh Press and the July Crisis
of 1914
 Andrew Edwards (Bangor), The National Gallery, Wales and War: The Letters of
Martin Davies, 1939-41
12.15 - 13.15
SESSION 2 (One Hour)
Panel 2a:


Thompson Room
Chair: Melinda Gray
Menna Elfyn (Trinity Saint David), Eluned Phillips: the Prifardd against the ‘Society of
Lies'
13:15 – 14:00
Lunch: Bagged lunches to be collected from the back of the Thompson Room
14:00 – 15:30
SESSION 3
Panel 3a:
Thompson Room
Travel Writing and Wales (A panel organised by the AHRC-funded European Travelers in
Wales Project)
 Chair: Katie Gramich (Cardiff)
 Carol Tully (Bangor), ‘Hidden Between England and Ireland’: The Nineteenth Century
German Discovery of Wales and the Search for Self and Other
 Anna-Lou Dijkstra (Swansea), Representations of Wales in Travel Guidebooks: A
Country on the "Imaginative Periphery" of Europe
Panel 3b:
Dana-Palmer 102
Politics: After Devolution
 Chair: Andrew Edwards (Bangor)
 Einion Dafydd (Cardiff), Rebels or Poodles? Legislative Voting in the National
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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
Assembly for Wales
Sian Powell (Cardiff), Mediating Elections in Post-Devolution Wales
Panel 3c:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Defining and Deconstructing Welsh Culture
 Chair: Daniel Williams (Swansea)
 Anwen Jones (Aberystwyth), The Turn of a Civilisation: Hywel Teifi Edwards, the
National Pageant of Wales (1909) and Excluded Minorities
 Clare Davies (Swansea), Cultural Contributionism? T. S. Eliot, David Jones and Welsh
Culture
 Huw Williams (Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol), Articulating Afallon? Sketching a Welsh
Intellectual History
Panel 3d:
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
Transatlantic Connections
 Chair: Melinda Gray
 Colin Thomas, Emigrants and Immigrants - Past and Present
 Calista Williams (Open University), ‘Hateful the Man who Loves Not the Country that
Nurtured Him’: the Aberystwyth University College’s Fundraising Expedition to North
America, 1890
 Reuben Knutson (Aberystwyth), The Welsh Preseli Hills and American Dreaming
15:30 – 15:45
Afternoon Tea
15:45 – 17:15
SESSION 4
Panel 4a:
Thompson Room
Thompson Room
Nonconformist Wales: Creation, Representation and Collapse
 Chair: Huw Williams (Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol)
 Cynan Llwyd (Cardiff), ‘Seduced, Ignorant People’: The Educational Endeavours of
the Welsh Puritans
 E. Wyn James (Cardiff), Illustrating Welsh Broadside Ballads, 1620 - 1840
 Ioan Williams (Aberystwyth), Lewis Edwards and the ‘Chwalfa Fawr’
Panel 4b:
Dana-Palmer 102
Writers and Intellectuals: Iorwerth Peate, R. S. Thomas and Raymond Williams
 Chair: Kirsti Bohata (Swansea)
 Martin Andrew Hanks (Bangor), The National Museum of Wales: The Wartime
Dismissal of Iorwerth Peate
 Nathan Munday (Aberystwyth), R. S. Thomas and Pantycelyn: An Unexpected
Relationship
 Catherine Beard (Swansea), Nesta’s Scream: Representations of Working-Class
Women in Raymond Williams’s Loyalties
Panel 4c:
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
Language Matters
 Chair: Anwen Jones (Aberystwyth)
 Karolina Rosiak (Poznań, Poland), The Welsh Language and Social Integration from
the Point of View of the New Polish Emigration to Wales
 Iwan Wyn Rees (Cardiff), ‘Are there “Dialects” in Mid-Wales?’
 Rhian Siân Hodges (Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, Bangor)and Cynog Prys (Bangor)
“It's Cool to be a Welsh Person but that Doesn't Necessarily Mean You Speak
Welsh”: Assessing Welsh Language Use Patterns in Six Welsh Communities
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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Panel 4d:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Culture, Economy and Consciousness
 Chair: Sam Blaxland (Swansea)
 Sophie Williams (Swansea), ‘That’s Not Bloody True, I’m as Welsh as Anybody’: The
Continuum of Welshness and Basqueness and its Implications for the Development
of a National Consciousness
 Russell Deacon (University of South Wales), When Welsh Politics Meant Business Some of Wales’ Forgotten Political Businessmen of the Early to Mid-Twentieth
Century
17:30 – 19:00
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Richard Burton Annual Lecture
Thompson Room
From House of America to The Americans
Matthew Rhys ( in conversation with Daniel Williams)
Sponsored by the Richard Burton Centre for the Study of Wales, Swansea University
19:00
Opening Reception
Barker Center Café
DYDD IAU GORFFENNAF 21 / THURSDAY JULY 21
09:00 – 10:30
SESSION 5
Panel 5a:
Thompson Room
Human Rights for Children in Wales and the USA: different approaches, same intentions?
 Chair: Jane Williams (Swansea)
 Wendy Murphy (New England Law School, Boston), Yvonne Vissing (Salem State
University), Ellen Marrus (University of Houston)
Panel 5b:
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
From The Mabinogion to Torchwood: Myth in Contemporary Culture
 Chair: David Lloyd (Le Moyne College)
 Melissa Beattie, My Hero: National Identity and Discourses of Torchwood
 Bethan Coombs (University of South Wales), New Stories from The Mabinogion:
Hybrid Identities and Parasitic Assimilation in Gwyneth Lewis’s The Meat Tree
 Audrey Becker (Marygrove College, Detroit), Welsh Mythology and the
Contemporary Novel: The ‘double drive’ in Seren Books’ New Stories from the
Mabinogion
Panel 5c:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Wales in America (Sponsored by Welsh Government)
 Chair: Gareth Morgan, Head of Welsh Government North America, Washington DC
 Mari Morgan (University of Wales), A Nation’s History is in its Songs: Welsh Music in
America
 James P. Cassarino (Green Mountain College), The Eisteddfod in America
 Rhiannon Heledd Williams (University of South Wales), ‘Llon Heddy yw Llenyddiaeth’:
Language, Culture and Literature in 19th Century Welsh America
Panel 5d:
Dana-Palmer 102
Media and Culture: From Wales to India (A panel organised by The Centre for the Study
of Media and Culture in Small Nations, University of South Wales)
 Chair: Adrian Osbourne (Swansea)
 Rhiannon Williams (University of South Wales), ‘You Can’t Print a Thunderstorm and
Reproduce a Lightning Flash’: Performing the Welsh Repertoire
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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

Lisa Lewis (University of South Wales), ‘Welsh and Khasi Cultural Dialogues’: Mapping
Methods of Performance
Aparna Sharma (University of California, Los Angeles), Welsh and Khasi Cultural
Dialogues: A Short Film
10:30 – 10:45
Coffee and Refreshments
Thompson Room
10:45 – 11:45
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Thompson Room
Language Wars
Marc Shell (Harvard University)
Chair: Daniel Williams
Sponsored by the Learned Society of Wales
12:00 – 13:00
Lunch: Bagged lunches to be collected from the back of the Thompson Room
13.00 - 14.00
SESSION 6 (One Hour)
Panel 6a:
Thompson Room
A Welshman, a Duel and the American War of Independence
14:00 – 16:00

Chair: Rhodri Morgan

Roderick Evans
SESSION 7 (Two Hours)
Panel 7a:
Thompson Room
Dylan Thomas

Chair: Robert Walton (Cardiff)

David Lloyd (Le Moyne College), Dylan Thomas and Kenneth Rexroth: “Something
Terribly Unbritish”

Adrian Osbourne (Swansea), ‘Twice Spring Chimed’: Hybridity, Innovation and Ritual
in the Poetry of Dylan Thomas

Andrew Webb (Bangor), Dylan Thomas and Rural-Urban Modernity
Panel 7b:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Welsh Pasts

Chair: Steve Thompson (Aberystwyth)

Janet Kay (Boston College), Being ‘Welsh’ in the Fifth Century: Reconsidering our
Archaeological Perspective

Sue Johns (Bangor), Queenship in Wales in the High Middle Ages

Tim Thornton (Huddersfield), Wales and the Crisis of the Fifteenth-Century

Lowri Ann Rees (Bangor), ‘He is More Fickle than I can Describe’: The Relationship
Between Landlord and Agent, a South-West Wales Case Study, 1841-47
Panel 7c:
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
Exploring Musical Traditions
16:00 – 16.30

Chair: E. Wyn James (Cardiff)

Kent F. Williams (Rio Grande, Ohio), ‘For the Grave has Extinguish’d its Light’:
Countering Stasis in Felicia Hemans’ Welsh Melodies

Rhiannon Ifans (Trinity Saint David),'Carols at Cockcrow’: Indigenous Welsh Carols in
Privately-Held Songbooks

Helen Barlow (Open University of Wales), Welsh Airs and Triple Harps: The Musical
Life of a Celtic Renaissance Circle
Afternoon Tea
Thompson Room
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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16:30 – 18:00
SESSION 8
Panel 8a:
Thompson Room
Presenting Gender in Early Modern and Modern Wales (Organised by the History
Department, Cardiff University)
 Chair: Anwen Jones (Aberystwyth)
 Lloyd Bowen (Cardiff), Masculinity, Welshness and the Early Modern Duel
 Beth Jenkins (Cardiff), ‘In the Interest of the Progress and Development of the
Country’: Professional Women Late Nineteenth Century Wales
 Stephanie Ward (Cardiff), ‘Men Cannot Long Remain Idle and Still Remain Men’:
Miners’ Bodies and Masculine Identity in Interwar South Wales
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
Panel 8b:
Revising Literary Traditions
 Chair: Ioan Williams (Aberystwyth)
 Jayne Bowden (University of South Wales), ‘Those Things for which Women are
Created’: Otherness in the Fiction of Elisabeth Inglis-Jones
 Robert Walton (Cardiff), How Macho is My Valley: Contemporary Welsh Women
Novelists Re-Writing the Valleys
Panel 8c:
Dana-Palmer 102
Visual and Literary Cartographies
 Chair: Brian Roper (Swansea)
 Mari Elin Wiliam (Bangor), Shifting Sands: Postcards and the Visual Identity of North
Wales Seaside Resorts during the Twentieth Century
 Jane Fraser (Swansea), Real Gower: A Conversation Between Texts
 Ellie Rees, Deep Mapping the Welsh Coastline
Panel 8d:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Wales and the Longfellow Institute 20 years on: Welsh-American Literature
 Chair: Marc Shell (Harvard)
 Esther Whitfield (Brown), “Untranslatables” and the Translation of Welsh-American
Writing
 Daniel Williams (Swansea), Samuel Roberts, Abolition and Assimilation
 Melinda Gray, Family Histories: Elegy in the Early Years of the Welsh American
Journals
18:00 – 19:00
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Thompson Room
Is the UK Breaking Up and Does it Matter to Wales?
Rt. Hon. Rhodri Morgan
Chair: Mike Sullivan
Sponsored by Swansea University
20.00 – 23.00
Conference Dinner
Beat Brasserie
13 Brattle St. Harvard Square
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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DYDD GWENER GORFFENNAF 22 / FRIDAY JULY 22
10:00 – 10:15
Coffee and Refreshments
10:15 – 11:45
SESSION 9
`
Panel 9a:
Thompson Room
Dana-Palmer 102
Women’s Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Scotland and Wales (A panel organised by
the Leverhulme Trust funded project ‘Women’s Poetry in Eighteenth Century Ireland,
Scotland and Wales’)
 Chair: Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth)
 Wes Hamrick (NUI, Galway), The National and the Domestic in Eighteenth Century
Irish Elegy
 Sarah Dunnigan (Edinburgh), ‘I Maun Hear and I Maun Grieve’: the Poetics of
Mourning in Eighteenth Century Scottish Women's Poetry
 Cathryn A. Charnell-White (Aberystwyth), Pious and Loyal: Welsh-Language Elegy by
Women
Panel 9b:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Politics: Since 1945
 Chair: Rob Humphreys (Open University Wales)
 Keith Gildart (Wolverhampton), ‘Guardians of the Public Interest’ and the ‘New
Order’: Reflections on Industrial Leadership in the Welsh Coalfields, 1945 - 1985
 Marc David Collinson (Bangor), Roy Jenkins, the Tolerant Tradition and the Campaign
for Racial Equality
 Sam Blaxland (Swansea), All Else is Embellishment and Detail: The Conservative Party
and the Significance of Social Class in Post-War Welsh Politics
Panel 9c:
Thompson Room
Transatlantic Lives and Movements
 Chair: Daniel Williams (Swansea)
 Tony Kendrew, A Poet Responds to the Life of Williams Jones Richards (1844-1892)
 Proal Heartwell (Charlottesville, Virginia), Goronwy Owen: A Welsh Poet Exiled in
Virginia
 Robert Humphries (Wisconsin), A Son of the Rhondda’s ‘Entrepreneurial Society’ in
the Deep South: The Life and Career of William Herbert (1850 - 1933)
Panel 9d:
Kates Room, Warren House, 2nd
Floor
Disability and Industrial Society (A panel organised by the Wellcome Trust funded project
‘Disability and Industrial Society’)
 Chair: Catherine Beard (Swansea)
 Steve Thompson (Aberystwyth), ‘Gwnewch Sylw o’m Sefyllfa: Dyn Cripil Ydwyf Fi’:
Ballads and Disability in Nineteenth Century Wales
 Kirsti Bohata (Swansea), Sites of Struggle: Disability in Coalfields Literature
 Alexandra Jones (Swansea), Embodied Disability: Gender, Sexuality and Race 18801948
12:00 – 13:00
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Thompson Room
Archipelagic Elegy: Eighteenth Century Women's Poetry from Ireland, Scotland and Wales
Sarah Prescott (Aberystwyth)
Chair: Huw Osbourne
Sponsored by Aberystwyth University
13:00 – 14:00
Lunch: Bagged lunches to be collected from the back of the Thompson Room
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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14:00 – 15:30
SESSION 10
Panel 10a:
Thompson Room
Literature and Identity
 Chair: Melinda Gray
 Christine James (Swansea), ‘Taffy Was a Welshman’: Welsh National Identity in
English Broadside Ballads
 Rhiannon Marks (Cardiff), ‘Kate Roberts a’r Ystlum’: intertextuality and ‘rewriting’
 Brian Roper (Swansea), Gwerin, Cymrodyr, Hiraeth and Bodlon: Who is Wales?
Panel 10b:
Plimpton Room (Barker 133)
Transatlantic Wales
 Chair: Clare Davies (Swansea)
 Huw Osbourne (Royal Military College of Canada), Ivor Novello, Wales and the
Celebrity Bachelor
 Robin Griffiths (University of Gloucestershire), ‘Kick[ing] Aagainst the System’:
Queer(y)ing Masculinity, Stardom and ‘Welshness’ in the Films of Richard Burton
 Mark Rhodes (Kent State), Memorializing Wales: Paul Robeson, The Spanish Civil
War, and the Politics of Welsh Commemoration
Panel 10c:
Dana-Palmer 102
Forms of ‘Popular’ Culture
 Chair: Daniel Williams (Swansea)
 John S. Ellis, The Welsh Imperial Fiction of Owen Rhoscomyl
 Chris Gardiner, ‘Admiring the Pugilistic Art?’: Newspaper Reports on Boxing in
Nineteenth Century South Wales
15.30 - 16.00
Farewell
Thompson Room
19.00
Post-Conference Event: Menna Elfyn reads from her work at the historic Grolier
Bookshop, Harvard Square: www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org
THROUGHOUT THE CONFERENCE:
There will be a Welsh Studies display in the window of the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave
THE CONFERENCE ORGANISERS WOULD LIKE TO THANK:
The Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University for their generosity and their willingness
to host NAASWCH 2016. Particular thanks go to Professor Catherine McKenna and departmental administrator
Mary Violette.
We are also grateful to Dr Caroline Coleman-Davies, Professor Mike Sullivan, and the Research Institute for Arts and
Humanities (RIAH), Swansea University, for all their help.
THANKS ALSO TO THE CONFERENCE SPONSORS:
The Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University
NAASWCH 2016 CONFERENCE SCHEDULE | @NAASWCH16
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