Carla Sassi | Università di Verona (original) (raw)
Books by Carla Sassi
![Research paper thumbnail of Empires and Revolutions: Cunninghame Graham and his Contemporaries [co-edited essay collection]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/54358342/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the ... more The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the present day. It is also inextricably linked with the spread of revolutionary discourses, in terms of race, nation, or social class: the quest for emancipation, political independence, and economic equality. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex
interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Throughout his life he was an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing. These essays explore the expression of these ideas in the works of Cunninghame Graham and of other Scottish
writers of the period.
The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the ... more The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the present day. It is also inextricably linked with the spread of revolutionary discourses (in terms of race, nation or social class): the quest for emancipation, political independence, and economic equality. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Throughout his life he was an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing. These essays explore the expression of these ideas in the works of Cunninghame Graham and of other Scottish writers of the period.
A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible ... more A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the extraordinary richness and diversity of Scotland’s poetry. Addressing Languages and Chronologies, Poetic Forms, and Topics and Themes, this International Companion covers the entire subject from from the early Middle Ages to the modern day, and explores the connections, influences and interrelations between English, Gaelic, Latin, Old Norse and Scots verse.
This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottis... more This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottish literature, from the Romantic grand narratives of the 18th and 19th century to post-modernist deconstructions of national myths. The essays collected here examine fundamental questions about nationalism and canon formation from a range of critical perspectives and distinct contextualisations: writers discussed include, among others. Re-Visioning Scotland not only contributes to the contemporary, lively national debate about issues of Scottish identity and writing but also offers a rich and fascinating case-study, which will reveal to scholars, even beyond the disciplinary borders of Scottish studies, new and stimulating paths of investigation and understanding.
Collana Hesperides. Letture e culture occidentali, 2002
Collana: Biblioteca di cultura, 1995
Edited Journal Special Issues by Carla Sassi
Humanities , 2020
This Special Issue invites interested scholars to explore expressions and registrations of enviro... more This Special Issue invites interested scholars to explore expressions and registrations of environmental culture and the eco-critical imagination in 21st century Scottish literature and culture. A broad and distinctive environmental consciousness can be traced in the field since at least the 19th century. Yet, despite some notable exceptions, critical academic engagements remain somewhat sporadic.[1] The development of modern environmentalism since the 1970s and the consequent greening of the Humanities in the subsequent decades have opened significant new critical and theoretical fronts, with prolific attention to environmental perspectives and reading strategies across the discipline of literary studies. These continue to develop in response to a number of emergent environmental concerns, such as the ongoing climate crisis and the recently declared shift into the Anthropocene epoch.
The wider context of contemporary Scottish environmentalism appears vibrant. NGOs, cultural and civic institutions, academic networks, political initiatives and policy mechanisms have sought to respond with ambition and purpose to a spectrum of environmental challenges. In places (as for example in the growing commitment to renewable energy research and development and to emissions targeting) there is a case for seeing Scotland as a radical and leading responder to climate change and to a range of other sustainability issues. There is, however, also evidence that Scotland is mired in environmentally problematic entanglements. Despite being arguably more conscious of the finitude of fossil-fuelled life than other petrocultural regions, for example, contemporary Scottish society remains very much reliant on high-carbon production processes, while a range of environmental issues, from waste disposal to fracking and land management, continue to pose questions.
How do these and other related environmental and ecological issues feature in contemporary Scottish literature and culture? Eco-spatial co-ordinates demand a range of territories, perspectives and scales: local/national/(bio)regional/‘global’/‘planetary’. They may also imply a critical repurposing; a transgressing and transcending of conventional ‘Scottish’ boundaries, temporalities, places and objects of focus—e.g. ‘nation’; ‘landscape’; ‘community’; ‘resource’—for a more environmentally and ecologically bound perspective. A host of potential examples lie across the various genres and constituencies of 21st century Scottish literature, broadly conceived (i.e. not necessarily produced by Scottish-born or Scottish-identified writers).
There is no such thing as an academic discipline that represents a stable field of knowledge -on ... more There is no such thing as an academic discipline that represents a stable field of knowledge -on the contrary, academic disciplines always are, and arguably have to be, contested domains. To argue on similar lines, there is no such thing as an academic discipline (or indeed, an epistemological practice) that can exist in even relative isolation from the global horizon of cultural production and knowledge formation. Scottish Studies, a relatively young discipline, whose field directly intersects and partly overlaps, among others, with English, Celtic and Nordic Studies (and, through its involvement in the British Empire, with postcolonial scholarship) is no exception. And yet, it is important to acknowledge here, at the very beginning of this special issue, the specific history of this discipline, both as a contested territory, and in its changing relationship with other established or emergent disciplines -it is in fact only through an awareness of its shifting borders, and of its many fissures and tensions, and also with a memory of its past that we can gauge our present concerns and look forward. It is indeed this double intent -to engage with a critical analysis of the discipline's history and to evaluate new paths and approaches -that underlies the present collection of articles.
In Scotland you can reach Guyana by taking the A81 north from Glasgow, or the A84 then A81 from t... more In Scotland you can reach Guyana by taking the A81 north from Glasgow, or the A84 then A81 from the Crianlarich turnoff on the M80 Motorway at Stirling. Either way you'll find Guyana -a garden centre in Aberfoyle, specialising in plants, garden arts and crafts sourced from around the world.
Articles/Book chapters by Carla Sassi
Scottish Devolution Writing British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000. Accelerated Times , Cambridge university Press , 2018 , pp. 192-208, 2018
This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resis... more This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resistance to globalization and global culture, in the light of Scotland’s changing nationalism and on the backdrop of a rapidly transforming world scene. It contends that Scottish writers’ work, far from being ‘provincial’, thoughtfully engages with contemporary global concerns and with wider political and theoretical issues. Their firm critique of Britishness, for example, subtly connects, in the same period, with the postcolonial and archipelagic projects. Finally, by considering the work of some of the most prominent writers of the devolutionary decade (Alisdair Gray, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Iain Crichton Smith, Robert Alan Jamieson, Jackie Kay), the chapter aims at showing how their work radically redefines Scottish nationalism and, at a more general level, the relationship between the local and the global.
Complutense Journal of English Studies, 2021
The present article investigates two recently published essayistic memoirs, Ellie Harrison's The ... more The present article investigates two recently published essayistic memoirs, Ellie Harrison's The Glasgow Effect (2019) and Darren McGarvey's Poverty Safari (2017), and the debate between the two writers/artists within the wider framework of the Glasgow discourse, a manneristic imagination of the city shaped by the Glasgow novel in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on issues of representation of traumatic historical memory, it relies especially on Myriam Jimeno's idea of emotional community and presents the Glasgow novel as an example of such community, originally designed to make the predicament of the working classes visible. The article contends that many contemporary novels posit deviance from the genre's original function of voicing the subaltern, exploiting instead a popular literary cliché. It also argues that both texts, by representing their authors' emotions and life stories as embedded in the city's social and cultural landscape, dis/place the borders of the city's imagination, simultaneously stumbling upon and pushing back the limits of the Glasgow discourse. Keywords. Glasgow novel; emotional communities; contemporary Scottish literature; cities in literature; Scottish national identity.
[es] ¿Más allá del 'discurso de Glasgow'? emociones y afectos en The Glasgow Effect, de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari, de Darren McGarvey Resumen. El presente artículo investiga dos memorias ensayísticas publicadas recientemente, The Glasgow Effect (2019), de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari (2017), de Darren McGarvey, así como el debate entre los dos artistas/escritores en el marco más amplio del discurso de Glasgow, un modo de imaginación manierista de la ciudad que toma forma a través de la novela de Glasgow a lo largo del siglo XX. Se centra en cuestiones relacionadas con la representación de la memoria histórica traumática, especialmente la idea de comunidad emocional desarrollada por Myriam Jimeno (2018), y presenta la novela de Glasgow como ejemplo de este tipo de comunidades, originalmente concebidas para denunciar y hacer visibles las dificultades de las clases trabajadoras. El artículo defiende que muchas novelas contemporáneas se desvían de la función original del género, que era dar voz al subalterno, para explotar en cambio un cliché literario popular. También argumenta que ambos textos, al representar las emociones y las historias vitales de sus autores arraigadas en el paisaje social y cultural de la ciudad, desplazan los límites de la imaginación de la ciudad, al mismo tiempo tropezando con los límites del discurso de Glasgow y ampliándolos. Palabras clave. la novela de Glasgow; comunidades emocionales; literatura escocesa contemporánea; ciudades en la literatura; identidad nacional escocesa.
Humanities, 2021
Introduction to Special Issue: "Environment, Ecology, Climate and ‘Nature’ in 21st Century Scotti... more Introduction to Special Issue: "Environment, Ecology, Climate and ‘Nature’ in 21st Century Scottish Literature"This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution.
Humanities 2021, 10(1), 34, 2021
In lieu of an abstract, this is an excerpt from the first page: "A pivotal scene in the 2019 rein... more In lieu of an abstract, this is an excerpt from the first page: "A pivotal scene in the 2019 reinvention of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film Local Hero into musical theatre1 involves a hangover. The cast collectively suffer the adverse effects of the previous night’s raucous ceilidh, a celebration electrified by the drunken promissory of a community windfall. Knox Oil, a US oil company seeking to raze the sleepy Highland village of Ferness and its surrounding area for petro‐development, has proposed a buy‐ off. The scene, which opens the second half, is a deliberate mood‐killer. As it develops, it platforms the environmental reckoning at the core of the plot. A comically entitled song, “Never Felt Better” establishes a performative contrast between heady prospects and sharp sobriety, further conveyed by distinct dramaturgical transitions between tenor, movement, lighting, tone, volume and lyric. The film uses similar ironic contrasts to build its general atmosphere of whimsical hope, anticipated loss and wistful regret in the face of the social tumult and terraforming that oil would bring. This transformation, experienced unevenly by different constituencies in Scotland, is registered somewhat archetypally by the various characters in Local Hero, in their predicaments and in the dashing of their prospects. We need not be familiar with the original to recognise familiar contradictions. [...]"
JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES (9:1), 2019
This article discusses how contemporary Scottish literature often unsettles the binary logic of n... more This article discusses how contemporary Scottish literature often unsettles the binary logic of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It provides a historical/theoretical premise on how and why such questioning of this deeply-ingrained binary is a much needed turn. ‘Strangers’ have had a very central role in devolutionary and post- devolutionary Scottish literature, which has accounted for a wide variety of attitudes and relations between them and the national community: from outsiders whose irreconcilable alien-ness is beyond what is knowable and assimilable, and represents a downright threat, to strangers, or ‘outsiders inside,’ that closely border on ‘Scotland’ and slowly alter its definition.Arguing for an ‘ethics of strangers’, the article then focuses on a number of texts, grouped around three constructions of the stranger: the stranger as outsider, the familiar stranger, the stranger caught between homes.
The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the ... more The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the present day. It is also inextricably linked with the spread of revolutionary discourses, in terms of race, nation, or social class: the quest for emancipation, political independence, and economic equality. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex
interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Throughout his life he was an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing. These essays explore the expression of these ideas in the works of Cunninghame Graham and of other Scottish
writers of the period.
The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the ... more The European age of empires launched a process of capitalist globalisation that continues to the present day. It is also inextricably linked with the spread of revolutionary discourses (in terms of race, nation or social class): the quest for emancipation, political independence, and economic equality. Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Throughout his life he was an outspoken critic of injustice and inequality, and his appreciation of the demands and customs of diverse territories and contrasting cultures were hallmarks of his life, his political ideas, and his writing. These essays explore the expression of these ideas in the works of Cunninghame Graham and of other Scottish writers of the period.
A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible ... more A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the extraordinary richness and diversity of Scotland’s poetry. Addressing Languages and Chronologies, Poetic Forms, and Topics and Themes, this International Companion covers the entire subject from from the early Middle Ages to the modern day, and explores the connections, influences and interrelations between English, Gaelic, Latin, Old Norse and Scots verse.
This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottis... more This volume offers new research and thoughtful reflection on the subject of canonicity in Scottish literature, from the Romantic grand narratives of the 18th and 19th century to post-modernist deconstructions of national myths. The essays collected here examine fundamental questions about nationalism and canon formation from a range of critical perspectives and distinct contextualisations: writers discussed include, among others. Re-Visioning Scotland not only contributes to the contemporary, lively national debate about issues of Scottish identity and writing but also offers a rich and fascinating case-study, which will reveal to scholars, even beyond the disciplinary borders of Scottish studies, new and stimulating paths of investigation and understanding.
Collana Hesperides. Letture e culture occidentali, 2002
Collana: Biblioteca di cultura, 1995
Humanities , 2020
This Special Issue invites interested scholars to explore expressions and registrations of enviro... more This Special Issue invites interested scholars to explore expressions and registrations of environmental culture and the eco-critical imagination in 21st century Scottish literature and culture. A broad and distinctive environmental consciousness can be traced in the field since at least the 19th century. Yet, despite some notable exceptions, critical academic engagements remain somewhat sporadic.[1] The development of modern environmentalism since the 1970s and the consequent greening of the Humanities in the subsequent decades have opened significant new critical and theoretical fronts, with prolific attention to environmental perspectives and reading strategies across the discipline of literary studies. These continue to develop in response to a number of emergent environmental concerns, such as the ongoing climate crisis and the recently declared shift into the Anthropocene epoch.
The wider context of contemporary Scottish environmentalism appears vibrant. NGOs, cultural and civic institutions, academic networks, political initiatives and policy mechanisms have sought to respond with ambition and purpose to a spectrum of environmental challenges. In places (as for example in the growing commitment to renewable energy research and development and to emissions targeting) there is a case for seeing Scotland as a radical and leading responder to climate change and to a range of other sustainability issues. There is, however, also evidence that Scotland is mired in environmentally problematic entanglements. Despite being arguably more conscious of the finitude of fossil-fuelled life than other petrocultural regions, for example, contemporary Scottish society remains very much reliant on high-carbon production processes, while a range of environmental issues, from waste disposal to fracking and land management, continue to pose questions.
How do these and other related environmental and ecological issues feature in contemporary Scottish literature and culture? Eco-spatial co-ordinates demand a range of territories, perspectives and scales: local/national/(bio)regional/‘global’/‘planetary’. They may also imply a critical repurposing; a transgressing and transcending of conventional ‘Scottish’ boundaries, temporalities, places and objects of focus—e.g. ‘nation’; ‘landscape’; ‘community’; ‘resource’—for a more environmentally and ecologically bound perspective. A host of potential examples lie across the various genres and constituencies of 21st century Scottish literature, broadly conceived (i.e. not necessarily produced by Scottish-born or Scottish-identified writers).
There is no such thing as an academic discipline that represents a stable field of knowledge -on ... more There is no such thing as an academic discipline that represents a stable field of knowledge -on the contrary, academic disciplines always are, and arguably have to be, contested domains. To argue on similar lines, there is no such thing as an academic discipline (or indeed, an epistemological practice) that can exist in even relative isolation from the global horizon of cultural production and knowledge formation. Scottish Studies, a relatively young discipline, whose field directly intersects and partly overlaps, among others, with English, Celtic and Nordic Studies (and, through its involvement in the British Empire, with postcolonial scholarship) is no exception. And yet, it is important to acknowledge here, at the very beginning of this special issue, the specific history of this discipline, both as a contested territory, and in its changing relationship with other established or emergent disciplines -it is in fact only through an awareness of its shifting borders, and of its many fissures and tensions, and also with a memory of its past that we can gauge our present concerns and look forward. It is indeed this double intent -to engage with a critical analysis of the discipline's history and to evaluate new paths and approaches -that underlies the present collection of articles.
In Scotland you can reach Guyana by taking the A81 north from Glasgow, or the A84 then A81 from t... more In Scotland you can reach Guyana by taking the A81 north from Glasgow, or the A84 then A81 from the Crianlarich turnoff on the M80 Motorway at Stirling. Either way you'll find Guyana -a garden centre in Aberfoyle, specialising in plants, garden arts and crafts sourced from around the world.
Scottish Devolution Writing British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000. Accelerated Times , Cambridge university Press , 2018 , pp. 192-208, 2018
This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resis... more This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resistance to globalization and global culture, in the light of Scotland’s changing nationalism and on the backdrop of a rapidly transforming world scene. It contends that Scottish writers’ work, far from being ‘provincial’, thoughtfully engages with contemporary global concerns and with wider political and theoretical issues. Their firm critique of Britishness, for example, subtly connects, in the same period, with the postcolonial and archipelagic projects. Finally, by considering the work of some of the most prominent writers of the devolutionary decade (Alisdair Gray, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Iain Crichton Smith, Robert Alan Jamieson, Jackie Kay), the chapter aims at showing how their work radically redefines Scottish nationalism and, at a more general level, the relationship between the local and the global.
Complutense Journal of English Studies, 2021
The present article investigates two recently published essayistic memoirs, Ellie Harrison's The ... more The present article investigates two recently published essayistic memoirs, Ellie Harrison's The Glasgow Effect (2019) and Darren McGarvey's Poverty Safari (2017), and the debate between the two writers/artists within the wider framework of the Glasgow discourse, a manneristic imagination of the city shaped by the Glasgow novel in the course of the twentieth century. Focusing on issues of representation of traumatic historical memory, it relies especially on Myriam Jimeno's idea of emotional community and presents the Glasgow novel as an example of such community, originally designed to make the predicament of the working classes visible. The article contends that many contemporary novels posit deviance from the genre's original function of voicing the subaltern, exploiting instead a popular literary cliché. It also argues that both texts, by representing their authors' emotions and life stories as embedded in the city's social and cultural landscape, dis/place the borders of the city's imagination, simultaneously stumbling upon and pushing back the limits of the Glasgow discourse. Keywords. Glasgow novel; emotional communities; contemporary Scottish literature; cities in literature; Scottish national identity.
[es] ¿Más allá del 'discurso de Glasgow'? emociones y afectos en The Glasgow Effect, de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari, de Darren McGarvey Resumen. El presente artículo investiga dos memorias ensayísticas publicadas recientemente, The Glasgow Effect (2019), de Ellie Harrison, y Poverty Safari (2017), de Darren McGarvey, así como el debate entre los dos artistas/escritores en el marco más amplio del discurso de Glasgow, un modo de imaginación manierista de la ciudad que toma forma a través de la novela de Glasgow a lo largo del siglo XX. Se centra en cuestiones relacionadas con la representación de la memoria histórica traumática, especialmente la idea de comunidad emocional desarrollada por Myriam Jimeno (2018), y presenta la novela de Glasgow como ejemplo de este tipo de comunidades, originalmente concebidas para denunciar y hacer visibles las dificultades de las clases trabajadoras. El artículo defiende que muchas novelas contemporáneas se desvían de la función original del género, que era dar voz al subalterno, para explotar en cambio un cliché literario popular. También argumenta que ambos textos, al representar las emociones y las historias vitales de sus autores arraigadas en el paisaje social y cultural de la ciudad, desplazan los límites de la imaginación de la ciudad, al mismo tiempo tropezando con los límites del discurso de Glasgow y ampliándolos. Palabras clave. la novela de Glasgow; comunidades emocionales; literatura escocesa contemporánea; ciudades en la literatura; identidad nacional escocesa.
Humanities, 2021
Introduction to Special Issue: "Environment, Ecology, Climate and ‘Nature’ in 21st Century Scotti... more Introduction to Special Issue: "Environment, Ecology, Climate and ‘Nature’ in 21st Century Scottish Literature"This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution.
Humanities 2021, 10(1), 34, 2021
In lieu of an abstract, this is an excerpt from the first page: "A pivotal scene in the 2019 rein... more In lieu of an abstract, this is an excerpt from the first page: "A pivotal scene in the 2019 reinvention of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film Local Hero into musical theatre1 involves a hangover. The cast collectively suffer the adverse effects of the previous night’s raucous ceilidh, a celebration electrified by the drunken promissory of a community windfall. Knox Oil, a US oil company seeking to raze the sleepy Highland village of Ferness and its surrounding area for petro‐development, has proposed a buy‐ off. The scene, which opens the second half, is a deliberate mood‐killer. As it develops, it platforms the environmental reckoning at the core of the plot. A comically entitled song, “Never Felt Better” establishes a performative contrast between heady prospects and sharp sobriety, further conveyed by distinct dramaturgical transitions between tenor, movement, lighting, tone, volume and lyric. The film uses similar ironic contrasts to build its general atmosphere of whimsical hope, anticipated loss and wistful regret in the face of the social tumult and terraforming that oil would bring. This transformation, experienced unevenly by different constituencies in Scotland, is registered somewhat archetypally by the various characters in Local Hero, in their predicaments and in the dashing of their prospects. We need not be familiar with the original to recognise familiar contradictions. [...]"
JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES (9:1), 2019
This article discusses how contemporary Scottish literature often unsettles the binary logic of n... more This article discusses how contemporary Scottish literature often unsettles the binary logic of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. It provides a historical/theoretical premise on how and why such questioning of this deeply-ingrained binary is a much needed turn. ‘Strangers’ have had a very central role in devolutionary and post- devolutionary Scottish literature, which has accounted for a wide variety of attitudes and relations between them and the national community: from outsiders whose irreconcilable alien-ness is beyond what is knowable and assimilable, and represents a downright threat, to strangers, or ‘outsiders inside,’ that closely border on ‘Scotland’ and slowly alter its definition.Arguing for an ‘ethics of strangers’, the article then focuses on a number of texts, grouped around three constructions of the stranger: the stranger as outsider, the familiar stranger, the stranger caught between homes.
British Literature in Transition, 1980–2000. Accelerated Times, 2018
This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resis... more This chapter reconsiders Scottish devolution writing both as an expression of and a form of resistance to globalization and global culture, in the light of Scotland’s changing nationalism and on the backdrop of a rapidly transforming world scene. It contends that Scottish writers’ work, far from being ‘provincial’, thoughtfully engages with contemporary global concerns and with wider political and theoretical issues. Their firm critique of Britishness, for example, subtly connects, in the same period, with the postcolonial and archipelagic projects. Finally, by considering the work of some of the most prominent writers of the devolutionary decade (Alisdair Gray, Iain Banks, Ian Rankin, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, Iain Crichton Smith, Robert Alan Jamieson, Jackie Kay), the chapter aims at showing how their work radically redefines Scottish nationalism and, at a more general level, the relationship between the local and the global.
Intersections of Gender, Class, and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond, 2018
This chapter explores the nexus between nation and gender in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair... more This chapter explores the nexus between nation and gender in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair, one of the most iconic texts of modern Scottish literature. By questioning canonical readings of the trilogy, focused on a conventionally nationalist stance or on the ‘realistic’ components of Gibbon’s masterpiece, it attracts the attention on its subtle, radical re-drawing of gender and national boundaries, especially in relation to its two central characters, Chris and her son Ewan. The chapter identifies a subtle androgynous subtext in the trilogy — a (cross-)gender imagi-nation, interestingly reverberating the perspective of a number of nineteenth-century Scottish literary texts. While Gibbon’s trilogy may not be consistently radical, it nonetheless creates ‘a ‘dislocated’ discursive system, whose inherent tensions and ambivalences powerfully subvert contemporary notions of nation and gender identity.
Textual Practice, 2018
Italy was Muriel Spark’s elective country of residence for 40 years, the first decade of which, f... more Italy was Muriel Spark’s elective country of residence for 40 years, the first decade of which, from 1967, when she settled in Rome, till the end of the 70s, represented one of the most contradictory and yet intellectually fertile periods of Italian modern history. Notwithstanding such long-lasting and meaningful bond, explicitly represented in a number of her works, her complex relationship with the culture and history of this country remains largely under-investigated. The article contends that Italy plays an important role in the shaping of Spark’s literary imagination, and that ‘Italian palimpsests’ can be traced in her work throughout her career. Taking the palimpsest as a trope of transformation and construction that implies border-crossing and transit, the article focuses on four novels – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Public Image, The Takeover, Territorial Rights – which explicitly engage with Italy and Italianness. From her investigation of the aesthetics of Fascism in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, to her re-vision of Italian filmic and popular culture in The Public Image and The Takeover, and her playful representation of the palimpsestic literary imagination of Venice in Territorial Rights, Spark’s engagement with Italy's high and popular culture is shown to be rich, complex and transformative.
The Yearbook of English Studies, 2017
My essay interrogates the striking silences in Scott's oeuvre in relation to Scotland's involveme... more My essay interrogates the striking silences in Scott's oeuvre in relation to Scotland's involvement as a partner of the British Empire in the colonization of the Caribbean and in the exploitation of slavery in this region. By drawing from narratological theories (especially those articulated by Robyn R. Warhol and Ruth Rosaler), I treat Scott's silences as examples of 'implicature' — a 'conspicuous silence', which acquires and generates meaning through the interaction of text and context, and represents a form of communication in its own right. Through a discussion of samples from his Letters, Tales of a Grandfather, Rokeby, Rob Roy, The Antiquary and Heart of Midlothian I try to identify the invisible maps of meaning of the unsaid and 'unnarrated'. While suggesting that this approach allows us to articulate a more nuanced perspective on Scott and Scottish-Caribbean relations, I also claim that it allows us to critically rethink the problems and possibilities of engaging with Caribbean slavery in British/ European nineteenth-century fiction
The International Companion to Scottish Poetry (ed. by Carla Sassi), 2016
'Home' and 'nation' are contiguous terms — pointing towards an idea of respectively 'affective' a... more 'Home' and 'nation' are contiguous terms — pointing towards an idea of respectively 'affective' and 'imagined' community — that both imply a common identity, a sense of belonging, cohesiveness and security. If the ideas of home/nation are largely dependent on a community's imagination, then, as recent scholarship has pointed out, poetry in larger measure than other literary expressions plays a key role in the shaping of such collective identities. At the same time, poetry's 'singularities' problematise the construction of a collective identity. This chapter explores how Scottish poetry has not only reflected but also creatively (re)shaped the experience of home/nation, covering a wide range of poems in Gaelic, Scots and English from the Middle Ages to the present, from various different genres, including elegies/poetry of mourning, epic poetry, panegyrics and political satire. It charts different approaches to/perceptions of home/nation, including those of women and diasporic Scots.
The International Companion to Lewis Grassic Gibbon (ed. by Scott Lyall), 2015
This article focuses on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s staging of multiple personae both in his life and ... more This article focuses on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s staging of multiple personae both in his life and in his oeuvre. It deals with what is termed is here as a ‘heterodixical stance’ – a shifting perspective and a fragmentary method that chime with modernist techniques. It discusses a wide range of works, both fictional and non-fictional, canonical and less explored. Through such a radical re-reading the article also attempts to reframe Gibbon’s nationalism as ‘cosmopolitan’ and fluid.
G. Covi, L. Marchi (eds.), Democracy and Difference: The US in Multidisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives. Papers from the 21st AISNA Conference, 2012
G. Collier, M. Delrez, A. Fuchs, B. Ledent (eds.), Engaging with Literature of Commitment, vol. 2, 2012
Hugh MacDiarmid's work as a poet, journalist, essayist, critic and political activist, as well as... more Hugh MacDiarmid's work as a poet, journalist, essayist, critic and political activist, as well as his contentious persona, are all indelibly and inextricably bound to his life-long, controversial engagement with inter/nationalism. Expelled from the National Party of Scotland in 1933, in part because of his increasing communist affi liation, and in 1936 from the Communist Party of Great Britain because of his 'nationalist deviationism', MacDiarmid personifi es, possibly like no other writer, the confl ict between two over-arching ideologies, opposed yet co-existing throughout the post/modern age. His long life, critically spanning the early decades of modernism to the eve of the digital revolution, as well as his position within a stateless nation which was both agent and arguably object of British colonialism, make him a pivotal fi gure not just within the Scottish literary canon but also − as the present chapter purports to demonstrate − within the emerging map of global modernisms, one in which Europe and the United States are important, but not exclusive, sites of cultural production. Such a reconfi gured vision of Modernist Studies, advocated in recent years by postcolonial and feminist theorists and redefi ning modernism as a transnational movement deeply related to the world expansion of nineteenth-century empires, with simultaneously local and global affi liations, 1 will provide the privileged theoretical framework for the present investigation. Seen under this decentred, planetary perspective, in fact, MacDiarmid's engagement with both nationalism and internationalism does not seem any longer either contradictory or eccentric, as it has often been labelled, but rather it can be reassessed as a valuably complex and nuanced expression of modernism's unease with eighteenth-and nineteenthcentury concepts of the nation and the modernist quest for new paradigms of trans/national spaces. His re-vision of the Scottish nation, as we shall see, can be seen as a pioneering attempt to transcend not only nineteenth-century constructions of Scottishness, but also to question powerfully the discourse of the nation-state through two distinct and yet deeply related strategies: an 'autoethnographic' account of Scotland and an embodied sense of belonging in the Scottish landscape.
In my talk I will briefly illustrate how the study of Scottish literature has developed phenomena... more In my talk I will briefly illustrate how the study of Scottish literature has developed phenomenally across the world in the past 10/15 years, and how this is having an impact on the re-definition of this field of studies. I will expand upon and update some of the reflections I made in 2005, and explain why a focus on Scotland's literature and culture is still relevant in the world we live in, and how and why it may provide an important perspective on other, wider fields of studies, from 'English' to postcolonial studies and beyond. I will also attempt to map out possible lines of future development, especially in a comparative and transnational context.
I will speak of the challenges facing a new generation of students/scholars who choose to engage ... more I will speak of the challenges facing a new generation of students/scholars who choose to engage with Scottish Studies. Looking both "backwards" and "forward" I will chart how ideas of national identity are evolving or even fading in the context of 6 distinct 'scenarios', from the conventional approaches to SF and comics/graphics fictional representations.
This conference will investigate the many portrayals, both historical and contemporary, of the ri... more This conference will investigate the many portrayals, both historical and contemporary, of the rich, distinctive cultures of the Scottish islands or islands with Scottish connections through poetry and song, fiction and non-fiction, drama, film, art and music.
Nations can be the object of intense emotions, and while some are notoriously blinding and destru... more Nations can be the object of intense emotions, and while some are notoriously blinding and destructive, others “involve cognitive appraisals” and thus can be “of great help in getting people to think larger thoughts and recommit themselves to a larger common good”. Poetry can play a powerful and positive role in articulating the thoughts and feelings of a nation. It can direct hearts and minds towards principles of equality, justice and democracy, so that the nation becomes the catalyst for global change.
PANEL I: TRANSFORMATIONS IN SCOTTISH LITERATURE Frauke Reitemeier (University of Göttingen, Germ... more PANEL I: TRANSFORMATIONS IN SCOTTISH LITERATURE
Frauke Reitemeier (University of Göttingen, Germany): “Shall
this be a long or a short chapter?” Scott Novels “Newly Adapted
for the Modern Reader”
Manfred Malzahn (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain,
United Arab Emirates): Over the Water and Back Again: Rites
and Wrongs of Passage in Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Kidnapped
Carla Sassi (University of Verona, Italy): Transforming
Landscapes, or the Future(s) of Scotland
David Kinloch (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland):
Translating Visual Art
The European age of empires is marked by encounter, exchange, conflict and mobility on an unprece... more The European age of empires is marked by encounter, exchange, conflict and mobility on an unprecedented global scale, which launched a process of globalisation that continues to the present day. However, the expansion of authoritarian empires and capitalist systems across the world is also inextricably linked with the birth and diffusion of revolutionary discourses (in terms of race, nation or social class): the quest for emancipation; political independence; economic equality.
R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852–1936), in both his life and his oeuvre, most effectively represents the complex interaction between imperial and revolutionary discourses in this dramatic period. Of mixed Scottish and Spanish family background, he was bilingual in English and Spanish, lived in Britain, Belgium and Argentina, and travelled in South and North America, Spain and North Africa. His travels and migrations correspond with current interest in Scottish involvements with European imperialisms. At the same time, Cunninghame Graham’s involvement in the Scottish Home Rule movement and the nationalist parties can be seen as part of an ‘anticolonial’ initiative which sets these Scottish political trends in relation to international anticolonial movements in Ireland, India and Africa.
This conference aims to promote inter-disciplinary scholarly engagement with Cunninghame Graham and his time, with particular emphasis on issues of globalisation, empire, colonialism and postcolonialism, democracy, civil rights and social justice.
Books From Scotland. The Best of Scottish Books. "WISH YOU WERE HERE: ISSUE, 2019
Scottish Studies Newsletter, 2018
The Jack Medal, 2021
The Jack Medal 2021 - Call for Submissions and Nominations The International Association for th... more The Jack Medal 2021 - Call for Submissions and Nominations
The International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures (IASSL) invites submissions and nominations for the best article/book chapter published on a subject related to Reception or Diaspora in Scottish Literatures.
Any and all authors can submit their published works, including those who are not IASSL members. The only requirement is that the submitted article/chapter is in the English language or in Scottish Gaelic (in the latter case, an English translation will have to be supplied). Nominations from IASSL members and journal editors are also welcome.
Submissions and nominations for 2021 should be sent by 30 November 2021. More information at
https://6647d2da-4f6e-40eb-be4c-516a10905f0e.filesusr.com/ugd/20da6a_e2a026382fe042e0bacc10fa00f74fd0.pdf
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IASSL, 2021
Please join us on 24th September at 17.00 (BST) for ‘Environmental Scotland’, the second in IASSL... more Please join us on 24th September at 17.00 (BST) for ‘Environmental Scotland’, the second in IASSL’s series of panel discussions on Scottish literatures. Speakers include Susan Oliver, Sìm Innes, Samantha Walton and Monika Szuba. Titles and abstracts of their presentations are attached below. The webinar is free and open to everyone but registration is required. Further information at the link https://univr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5CBomCleRNShPlcNrNqV7g
Susan Oliver (University of Essex) “Reading current and historical ecologies: how 19th-century Scottish literature illuminates crises of the 21st century”
The climate emergency, species loss, and extinction are probably the most urgent problems that the world faces. Without a healthily functioning environment, the future for all life is bleak. Focusing on Walter Scott but including other writers, I ask how ecocritical readings of 19th-century Scottish literature can inform approaches to current and future environmental crises. I will talk about Scotland and the Anthropocene, eco-ethics and land economics, scale and differential perspectives, and the problem of understanding ecological time. My new book Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland (Cambridge University Press, 2021) provides a starting point for expanding this discussion.
Sìm Innes (University of Glasgow) “‘Miann a’ Bhàird Aosda’ (c.1776) and Highland environmental history”
‘Miann a’ Bhàird Aosda’ (‘The Aged Bard’s Wish’) was given pride of place as the opening poem in the first ever printed anthology of Scottish Gaelic song and poetry Comh-Chruinneachidh Orannaigh Gaidhealach (1776), known as the ‘Eigg Collection’. It was one of the very few poems in the ‘Eigg Collection’ to also be given an English-language translation. The second printed anthology, Sean Dain agus Orain Ghaidhealach (1786), known as the ‘Gillies Collection’, contained an expanded version of the poem. Although largely ignored today, the poem was thought important enough for inclusion in John MacKenzie’s canon-forming Sàr-Obair nam Bàrd Gaelach/The Beauties of Gaelic Poetry (1841). The poem is at the intersection of ‘bogus’ Macpherson-inspired Ossianica and Gaelic nature writing. Scholars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries used it to bolster the authenticity of Macpherson’s translations and as an archaic piece of literary evidence for a particular moment in Highland stadial history, due to the appearance of pastoral verses. It, thus, became a key text for Scottish Enlightenment understanding of Gaelic Scotland’s past and changing patterns of land use.
Samantha Walton (Bath Spa University) “Nan Shepherd in the Anthropocene: geology, deep time, and The Living Mountain”
Awareness of deep time demands thinking in vastly different scales about agency, responsibility, impact, and the ecological longevity of human cultures. This is all the more pressing in our current age of Anthropocene, in which humanity has been named as an agent of change on a geologic scale. In this talk, I consider how Nan Shepherd’s work invites a reading attentive to the current epochal shift in human-planetary understanding and interactivity. How was deep time understood in Shepherd’s own moment, and how does The Living Mountain accommodate geologic temporality while remaining intimate, present, sensuous and subjectively grounded?
Monika Szuba (University of Gdańsk) “‘Towards a finer earth-living’: Elements of nature in contemporary Scottish poetry and essay”
The work of contemporary Scottish poets offers a powerful manifestation of experiencing a landscape with its organic and elemental aspects, which reveals ways of thinking the self and world. In this highly distinctive manner of responding to the world, the self is inseparable from the elements, attuned to their effects. Among the elemental forces, the atmospheric powers intertwine with the chthonic powers. Because so much of their writing focuses on the ground, rocks and stones, it exhibits – as I wish to argue – what Jeffrey Jerome Cohen calls ‘geophilia’ (2015, 25-6). In a close reading of selected poems and essays by Kathleen Jamie, Jen Hadfield and Kenneth White, I will attempt to recognise wider features in the modern Scottish literary landscape, which offer reflections on ‘a finer earth-living’. The discussion will focus on evocations of the elements which recur in their work – sea, stone, and wind – in order to trace phenomenological potentiality of Scottish poetry and essay.
Humanities, 2021
A pivotal scene in the 2019 reinvention of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film Local Hero into musical theat... more A pivotal scene in the 2019 reinvention of Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film Local Hero into musical theatre involves a hangover[...]