The Celtic Revival in Scotland (1860–1930)

1–3 May 2014, Edinburgh, Scotland

Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2014.

Organised by the University of Edinburgh’s department of Celtic and Scottish Studies and part-hosted by the National Galleries of Scotland.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The recent upsurge of interest in early twentieth-century cultural nationalisms has raised the profile of the Scottish role in the cultural and nationalist revival movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Especially during the key period between the 1890s and the First World War, the Scottish Celtic Revival movement witnessed a flowering of artistic, literary, and cultural activities that helped to shape incipient political and cultural nationalisms, both Scottish and pan-Celtic.

This interdisciplinary conference (1–3 May) will be organised by the University of Edinburgh’s department of Celtic and Scottish Studies and part-hosted by the National Galleries of Scotland. It will be supported by the Modern Humanities Research Fund and co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), and the Centre for Theology and Public Issues (CTPI), University of Edinburgh. The conference will bring together scholars working on the art, music, folklore collection, literary production, scholarship, politics, Gaelic linguistic revival, architecture, and material culture of the period, in order to reassess the role played by the Celtic Revival in the creation of modern Scottish identities. Through an examination of the roots, rise, and withering of the Celtic Revival in Scotland, the conference will reassess the successes – and failures – of the movement in its widest context.

Sessional paper proposals are invited from scholars working in all disciplines concerned with the Revival and figures involved in it. Topics may include Celtic Revival literature in Gaelic and in English, Celtic Revival art, architecture, craft and book design, the varied politics of the Celtic revival, Pan-Celticism, revivalism in the individual Celtic countries and European nationalist movements, the collection and representation of folklore and folksong, Celtic revivalism and the historiography of academic Celtic scholarship, language revival movements and their relationship to cultural, political and educational developments, the invention of the ‘spiritual Celt’, the Celtic Revival and the Celtic diaspora, the legacy of the Celtic Revival, as well as key figures such as Alexander and Ella Carmichael, Patrick Geddes, W. B. Yeats, John Duncan, Marjory Kennedy-Fraser, Fiona Macleod (or William Sharp), Ruaraidh Erskine of Marr, Maurice Walsh, Granville Bantock, and many others. Paper proposals (up to 250 words) and enquiries about the conference can be sent to: CelticRevivalinScotland@ed.ac.uk