Queerness, medieval Irish literature and Celtic Studies

Celtic Students Podcast

In this podcast, Nina Cnockaert-Guillou talks to Roan Runge about Queerness in Celtic Studies. Roan explains their doctoral research on medieval Irish literature using Queer and Trans theory. They also discuss what it is like to be Queer in the field of medieval Irish studies and Celtic Studies, how students react to Queer readings of medieval Irish literature and what steps we can take to ensure the field is open and welcoming both to people who identify as Queer and/or LGBTQ+, and to Queer readings.

Content warnings:

From 0:45:00 to 0:47:45: transphobia

From 0:59:30 to 1:01:12: transphobic attitudes and politics

Registration for the 2024 Celtic Students Conference (30 May - 1 June) is now open!

This year’s conference will be a hybrid event. Guests are warmly invited to attend in-person presentations at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale, in Brest, or to attend online if they prefer.

Please complete the registration form in your language of choice at the following ⁠link⁠. At the top of the registration form is a link to the Eventbrite payment form. Please note that you have until the 15th May to register for in-person attendance.

Music: “Kesh Jig, Leitrim Fancy” by Sláinte, CC BY-SA 3.0 US (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/), available from freemusicarchive.org

Links to initiatives, organisations and people mentioned in the episode:

• Bad Gays (podcast and recent book by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller; https://badgayspod.com)
• Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity – Jose Esteban Miñoz (2009)
• Emmet Taylor’s blog post: ‘Pride Month: Medieval Ireland’ (Celtic Students blog: https://celticstudents.blogspot.com/2021/06/pride-month-medieval-ireland.html)
• Stiofán Ó Briain and Eoin McEvoy, ‘LADTA+ na Gaeilge’ (Celtic Students Podcast, https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/celticstudents/episodes/LADTA-na-Gaeilge-eht2jd)
• Roan’s PhD thesis (currently under embargo; https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.106567)
• ‘species capacities’ is from Hayward, Eva, ‘Spider city sex’, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 20.3 (2010), 225–51, at p. 234.
• Tom Peete Cross, Motif-Index of Early Irish Literature (Bloomington, IN, 1952; repr. 1969); see also the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index)
• Poem on ‘Fintan and the Hawk of Achill’, ed. and trans. Roan Runge (https://www.ambf.co.uk/fintan)
• Aided Echach mac Maireda (open access translation: Standish Hayes OʼGrady, Silva Gadelica vol. 2 (1892), pp. 265–9 https://archive.org/details/silvagadelicaix00gragoog/page/264/mode/2up) (recent translation: Ranke de Vries, Two texts on Loch nEchach: De causis torchi Corc' Óche and Aided Echach maic Maireda, Irish Texts Society 65 (2012))
• ICCS Utrecht (https://celticstudiescongress.sites.uu.nl)
• One from the Vaults (podcast, https://soundcloud.com/onefromthevaultspodcast)
• Story of the Abbot of Drimnagh (translation: Tadhg Ó Siocháin, The case of the abbot of Drimnagh: a medieval Irish story of sex-change, Cork Studies in Celtic Literatures 2 (2017); reviewed by Roan in Celtica 32 (2020), pp. 274–9)
• Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt (eds.), Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (2021)
• Medieval Feminist Forum (2019), issue 55 vol. 1, ‘Visions of Medieval Trans Feminism’
• Susan Stryker, ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage’, GLQ (1994), vol. 1, nb. 3, pp. 237–254.
• Sandy Stone, ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto’ (1987). First published: Kristina Straub and Julia Epstein (eds.), Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (1991).
• Sarah Sheehan and Ann Dooley (eds.), Constructing gender in medieval Ireland (2013)
• Phillip Bernhardt-House, ‘The motif of sex metamorphosis in insular Celtic literatures and folklore’, Béascna 3 (2006), pp. 54–64.
• Phillip Bernhardt-House, ‘The werewolf as queer, the queer as werewolf, and queer werewolves’, in: Noreen Giffney and Myra Herd (eds), Queering the non-human (2008), pp. 159–183.

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