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. Full details are pasted into the bottom of this email.
We hope that some of you will be able to join us for the conference. The full registration
cost is £20 (£10 reduced fee for students, unwaged, over-60s), payable to 'University
of Stirling'. 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> . Registration
forms and payment should be emailed/sent to gemma.robinson(a)stir.ac.uk
<mailto:gemma.robinson@stir.ac.uk> , Department of English Studies, Pathfoot
Building, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA by Monday 16 June at the latest.
As part of the conference we are also holding an evening poetry reading. This event is
free of charge and all are welcome.
Tuesday 24 June 2008
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.