Conference Theme: Three Centuries of Ulster-American
History, Tradition, and Shared Experience
Wednesday, June 28 - Saturday, July 1, 2006
The East Tennessee History Center is pleased to announce that it will host
the Sixteenth Ulster-American Heritage Symposium in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Since 1976 the Symposium has met every two years at a university or museum
in Northern Ireland or the United States in order to encourage and promote
the scholarly study and public awareness of connections between Ulster and
North America in all their dimensions.
While programs in the past have provided the premier forum for historians
to discuss the colonial-era immigration from Ulster and the settlement of
the American interior and Southeast, the Ulster-American Heritage Symposium
is by tradition and design inter-disciplinary, featuring papers on history,
language and literature, folklore and folk life, archaeology, economics, religion,
social and political relations, and music. This year's Symposium seeks to
broaden the program offerings further by seeking scholarly papers on artistic
traditions of all kinds, travel and tourism, and the American GI experience
in Northern Ireland in the World War Two, among other topics. Original papers
from any field that concern relations, links, and parallels between Ulster
and North America over the past three hundred years are invited for presentation.
Knoxville promises to be an excellent venue for the Symposium. In the Scotch-Irish/Scots-Irish
heartland of the country, it lies less than an hour from the Great Smoky Mountains
National Park and other major attractions. Comprising the East Tennessee Historical
Society, the East Tennessee History Museum, and the McClung Historical Collection
(a major genealogical library), the East Tennessee History Center has recently
opened a new twenty-million-dollar facility in downtown Knoxville.
Special events planned for the Symposium will include
=> Plenary address "Ulster Immigrants and the Settlement of Tennessee,"
by Walter Durham, Tennessee State Historian
=> Tour and banquet at Ramsey House, a late-18th-century historic home
and grounds in Marbledale, Tennessee
=> Plenary address on early architecture: "Stone Houses of Bluegrass
Kentucky: Dwellings of the Ulster Gentry, 1780-1830" by Carolyn Murray-Wooley
=> Plenary session on the American GI experience in Northern Ireland in
World War Two
=> Bluegrass concert at Jubilee Community Arts Center in Knoxville
For conference updates click on Further Details
For enquiries about
the Centre For Migration Studies contact Christine Johnston on
Tel: 0044 28 8225 6315;
Fax: 0044 28 8224 2241
or by email at christine.johnston@ni-libraries.net
General enquiries: CentreMigStudies@ni-libraries.net
Centre for Migration Studies,
Ulster-American Folk Park, Omagh, Co Tyrone,
Northern Ireland, BT78 5QY,
Tel: 0044 28 8225 6315;
Fax: 0044 28 8224 2241
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