Dear all

Please find below details of a conference at Stirling University on Tuesday 24 - Wednesday 25 June 2008: Caribbean-Scottish Passages: History, Language, Literature. This will be the first conference of its kind, bringing together research from Caribbean, Scottish and Postcolonial Studies.

 

For further information and to register please visit http://www.english.stir.ac.uk/research/conferences/passages.php <http://www.english.stir.ac.uk/research/conferences/passages.php> . 

 

The full registration cost is £20 (£10 reduced fee for students, unwaged, over-60s), payable to 'University of Stirling'. Registration forms and payment should be emailed/sent to Gemma Robinson ([log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> ), Department of English Studies, Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA by Monday 16 June at the latest. I have pasted the programme at the bottom of this email.

 

As part of the conference we are also holding an evening poetry reading. This event is free of charge and all are welcome (details below). 

 

We hope to see some of you on the 24th.

 

with best wishes

Gemma Robinson

Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland

 

Tuesday 24 June 2008

University of Stirling

B2 Pathfoot Building

18.00-19.30

Poetry Reading

*	Joan Anim-Addo
*	Kei Miller
*	Tom Leonard
*	Velma Pollard

Free of charge - All Welcome

 

Joan Anim-Addo is the founder-editor of Mango Season, the journal on Caribbean Women's writing. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Haunted by History (2004) and Janie Cricketing Lady (2006). Her libretto, Imoinda (2001), is available in a bilingual edition, English and Italian. Her other publications include Touching the Body: History, Language and African-Caribbean Women's Writing (2007).

 

Kei Miller's first collection of short fiction, The Fear of Stones, was short-listed in 2007 for a Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize. He has written two poetry collections - Kingdom of Empty Bellies and There Is an Anger that Moves - and is also editor of Carcanet's New Caribbean Poetry Anthology. His first novel, The Same Earth, was published in 2008. 

 

Tom Leonard is the author of Intimate Voices (1984), access to the silence (Poems 1984-2004); Places of the Mind: The Life and Works of James Thomson (1993); Reports from the Present: Essays, Political Satires and Poems 1982-1994 (1995). He edited Radical Renfrew: Poetry from the French Revolution to the First World War (1990). His chronological selection of Thomson's work (including for the first time in one volume his poetry, prose and translations) is forthcoming.

 

Velma Pollard is the author of Crown Point and Other Poems (1988), Shame Trees Don't Grow Here (1992). From Jamaican Creole to Standard English-a handbook for teachers (1994, 2003) and Dread Talk - the language of Rastafari (1994, 2000). Considering Woman, a collection of prose pieces was published by The Women's Press in 1989. Her novella Karl won the Casa de las Americas in 1992. Her most recent collection of poetry is Leaving Traces (2008). 

 

Caribbean-Scottish Passages: History, Language, Literature

Tuesday 24 - Wednesday 25 June 2008

University of Stirling

 

Participants include:

*	Joan Anim-Addo (Goldsmiths, University of London) 
*	Giovanna Covi (University of Trento) 
*	Douglas Hamilton (University of Hull) 
*	Kei Miller (University of Glasgow) 
*	Velma Pollard (Mona, University of the West Indies) 
*	Alan Riach (University of Glasgow) 
*	Carla Sassi (University of Verona) 

 

This 2-day conference will provide a forum for debate on historical, literary and linguistic interconnections between the Caribbean and Scotland. Studies of imperialism have only recently begun to investigate Scotland's role in the making of the Atlantic world, and the Caribbean's role in Scottish life. To date, research has focused on remapping colonial history. A central aim of the conference is to assess past work, including a project funded by the University of Trento that resulted in Caribbean-Scottish Relations (2007), a co-authored book by four of our speakers: Anim-Addo, Covi, Pollard and Sassi. We believe that it is now necessary to reflect on past and current work that links the Caribbean and Scotland. This will be the first conference to present research in the combined fields of Scottish, Postcolonial and Caribbean Studies.

The conference will focus on the complex cultural, social and political relationships between the Caribbean and Scotland, including discussions of Caribbean peoples/the Caribbean in Scotland; Scots/Scotland in the Caribbean; reparation and memorialisation across the Caribbean and Scotland; diasporic identities; Wilson Harris; Caribbean and Scottish literary traditions; the Caribbean, Scotland and the Enlightenment; slavery, the Caribbean, Scotland and visual culture; Scottish and Caribbean song traditions; aspects of language: Caribbean Creoles, Scots and Gaelic.

 

 

Tuesday 24 June

B2, Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling

 

10.00 Welcome/introduction: Gemma Robinson/Carla Sassi

 

10.30-11.15

Encounters and Creolizations

·          Joan Anim-Addo (Goldsmiths, University of London) 'A Scottish Legacy in Grenada'

 

11.15-12.15

·          Karina Williamson (University of Edinburgh) 'Scots in the Caribbean 1764-1834: social identities and self-images'

·         Sheila Kidd (University of Glasgow) 'Turtles and Dictionaries: Cultural Exchanges between Gaels in the Caribbean and Scotland'

 

12.15-13.30 Lunch

 

13.30-14.15

Re-Mapping Caribbean-Scottish Passages

·          Giovanna Covi (University of Trento) 'Caribbean-Scottish Relations as Chimerical Vision from the Discomfort Zone to the Contact Zone'

 

14.15-15.15

·         David Howard (University of Edinburgh) 'Scaling recollections of cities, cane and class: Philo Scotus' views of Scottish and Jamaican living in the early nineteenth century'

·         Isobel Anderson (University of Stirling) 'Havana and Glasgow: twinned cities'

 

15.15-15.45 break

 

15.45-16.30

Colonial and Postcolonial Legacies

·          Velma Pollard (University of the West Indies) 'The Scots in Jamaica: Language and Culture'

 

16.30-17.30

·        Tom Leonard (University of Glasgow) 'Claude McKay (1889-1948) and the Two Languages'

·        Geoff Palmer (Heriot Watt University) 'Enlightenment Abolished: slavery and race relations in Scotland'

 

17.30-18.00 drinks

 

18.00-19.30

Poets' evening reading: Joan Anim-Addo, Kei Miller, Tom Leonard and Velma Pollard

 

20.00 Dinner at Athena, Bridge of Allan 

 

 

Wednesday 25 June 2008

B2 Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling

 

9.30-10.15

Re-Thinking Caribbean and Scottish Literatures

·          Alan Riach (University of Glasgow) 'Other than Realism: Magic and Violence in Modern Scottish Fiction and the Recent Work of Wilson Harris'

 

10.15-11.15

·          Kei Miller (University of Glasgow) 'But In Glasgow, There Are Plantains: a few first impressions from a Caribbean immigrant'

·          Michael Gardiner (University of Warwick) 'Surrealism as Late Modernist Aesthetic in the Caribbean and Scotland'

 

11.15-11.30 break

 

11.30-12.30

Representing the Irrecoverable: The Visual Arts and Slavery

·          Murdo MacDonald (University of Dundee) in conversation with Beth Forde (Artist), Graham Fagen (Artist) and Michael Visocchi  (Artist).

 

12.30-13.30 Lunch

 

13.30-14.15

Remembering the Caribbean: History and Mnemonic Fictions

·          Carla Sassi (University of Verona and Royal Society of Edinburgh Visiting Fellow at University of Stirling) 'Personal narratives and diary fictions: concealed selves, shifting meanings and memory gaps in Scotland's figurations of the Caribbean'

 

14.15-15.15

·          Douglas Hamilton (University of Hull) '"It wisnae us"? Making and breaking Scottish-Caribbean connections'

·          Gary Cape (University of Stirling) 'Sovereignty, Subjectivity and the Question of Ownership: Bio-Politics in the Narratives of Joseph Knight'

 

15.15-15.45 break

 

15.45-17.00

Cultural Forms in Transition

·          Keely Fisher (Independent scholar) 'The Scottish Brute Abroad; or, The Poetry and Prose of Cyrus Francis Perkins'

·          Suzanne Gilbert (University of Stirling) 'Scottish ballads and the Caribbean'

Followed by closing discussion

 

 

This conference is funded by the British Academy, the Dipartimento di Anglistica of the University of Verona, Stirling University's Centre for Commonwealth Studies, Centre for Scottish Studies and Department of English Studies.


-- 
Academic Excellence at the Heart of Scotland.
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, 
 number SC 011159.