Boundless Scotland: Space in Contemporary Scottish Fiction
In the picture (from the left): Carla Sassi, Glenda Norquay, John Burnside and Alan Riach.
Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last six and a half years of his life in the Pacific (1888–1894). He was a keen participant observer of the islands – from his first Pacific landfall in the Marquesas to his last residency in Samoa, where he lies buried. Against the prevailing fatal impact argument of the time, he encouraged and celebrated the resilience of Polynesian culture. Such works as In the South Seas, South Sea Tales, A Footnote to History, the Times articles, his Pacific legends, fables and poems, testify to Stevenson’s commitment to Pacific culture. In their turn, Pacific writers have written or commented upon Scottish Stevenson’s place in their own culture.
For this Loxias issue on “Stevenson and Polynesian Culture”, all unpublished essays on Stevenson in the following areas are welcome: Pacific travel literature, Pacific fiction, comparative literature, colonial/post-colonial literature, Pacific anthropology/proto-ethnography, Pacific history, visual arts, cross-cultural exchanges, languages, etc.
Abstracts should be no longer than half a page. Authors of selected articles will have to follow the author guidelines on
http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/index.html?id=2155 .
The accepted languages are English and French, but on final publication abstracts will be required in both languages.
Please send abstracts and a short CV electronically to both Odile.GANNIER@unice.fr and sylvie.ortega@upf.pf with the authors’ complete contact information (name, university affiliation, address and email).
The renewed deadline for abstract submission is 30th June 2015.
The deadline for paper submission will now be 30th October 2015.
The 2016 edition of the journal Etudes écossaises will focus on Scottish culture, history and politics through the prism of migrations and borders. Papers in English or French will be welcomed from specialists in all fields of Scottish studies including arts and literature, civilization studies, history, political science, culture and the media.
Migrations and Borders
As a “stateless nation” (McCrone) Scotland has been posited as displaying both an unchallenged validity as a cultural entity and an incomplete political existence. This lack of alignment between the country’s historical, cultural and administrative border with the formal, diplomatic border of a supranational United Kingdom was recently highlighted in the context of the 2014 referendum as the borders of this polity came very close to being redrawn on the basis of a demand in Scotland for self-determination. While the SNP argument relied on a sense of distinctive nationhood to put forward such claims, the party itself strongly advocated a cosmopolitan conception of Scottishness, which opened the vote to legal residents of Scotland whether they be Scottish, English, European or Commonwealth citizens. In the closing days of the campaign, fears concerning the creation of a “literal and figurative” border with England complete with passport controls,[1] or worries about the volatility of RBS and Lloyds banking jobs which were said to be moving to England,[2] became key issues in the debate. Thus migration and borders, which have been key vectors in arguments surrounding cultural authenticity, economic viability and political legitimacy throughout Scottish history, remain vital considerations today.
For the upcoming issue of Etudes écossaises authors are particularly invited to address issues of how questions of uniqueness, difference and hybridity have been informed through instances of migration and border-crossing. While contributors from all specialties are free to explore issues of transplantation and rootedness, cultural fixity and transition, physical movement and imaginative flight, some fruitful areas of exploration will include:
– the importance of borders and migration in the 2014 referendum
– the role of Scottish diaspora communities in forging and reconstructing Scottishness
– the politics of immigration and emigration
– the shifting political borders of a quasi-federal state in light of the 2014 referendum
– the construction of Scottish national identity within the UK
– the socio-economics of exile and return
– cross-border ties and international co-operation
– the significance of a maritime Scotland with links to Europe and beyond
– analyses of linguistic and cultural borders within Scotland
– the symbolism of borders as physical and cultural frontiers
A brief proposal (200-300 words) should be sent by 1st June 2015. Papers (5,000-8,000 words) may be submitted in French or English. The deadline for finished papers is 1st October 2015. Contact : david.leishman@u-grenoble3.fr
The journal Etudes écossaises contributes to the research project of Grenoble 3 – Stendhal University’s Institut des Langues et Cultures d’Europe, des Amériques, d’Afrique, d’Asie et d’Australie (ILCEA4)
[1] UK Home Secretary Theresa May quoted in “Britons ‘would need passport to visit an independent Scotland’”, Telegraph, 10/9/14.
[2] “RBS will leave Scotland if voters back independence”, Guardian, 11/9/14
Prospective contributors will have to abide by the presentation norms of ELLUG
Alan Riach’s poems are postcards in different shades of blue: Hamilton in New Zealand, Calcutta, Istanbul, a small town in Portland, Corunna, Dungeness in England. Landscapes are shaped by roads and paths, passages and crossings, over which bridges – present in many poems – create arcs. The poet always returns to Scottish landscapes – Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Drumelzier, the Hebrides and the Orkney Islands – as Scotland is both the end and the start of the road.
Wiersze Alana Riacha są jak pocztówki z podróży w różnych odcieniach błękitu: Hamilton w Nowej Zelandii, Kalkuta, Stambuł, małe miasteczko w Polsce, La Coruna, Dungeness w Anglii. Świat kształtują tu drogi i ścieżki, przejścia i przejazdy, nad którymi mosty – tak często obecne w wierszach Riacha – zakreślają łuk. Poeta powraca zawsze jednak do rodzimych krajobrazów – Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Drumelzier, Hebrydów czy Orkadów – gdyż Szkocja to koniec i początek drogi.
Monika Szuba
Jeżeli chcieliby państwo nabyć tomik, prosimy o skontaktowanie się bezpośrednio z wydawnictwem. E-mail: wydawnictwo@wydawnictwomaski.pl If you would like to purchase a copy, please contact the publisher at wydawnictwo@wydawnictwomaski.pl.
Riach has contributed to many collections and written other books, including the monograph, Hugh Macdiarmid’s Epic Poetry, which was based on his PhD dissertation and was published in 1991 by Edinburgh University Press. He is also the General Editor of Carcanet’s multi-volume, The Complete MacDiarmid.
Since 2003, Alan Riach has held a Professorship in Scottish Literature and is currently Head of Department. His most recent critical book is Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography: The Masks of the Modern Nation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and he has contributed poems and essays to numerous recent volumes, including Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (co-edited with Professor Douglas Gifford, Carcanet, 2004), 121 New Zealand Poets (Godwit Press, 2005), Spirits of the Age: Scottish Self-Portraits (ed. Paul Scott, Saltire Society, 2005), The Wallace Muse (ed. Lesley Duncan and Elspeth King, 2005) and The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh University Press, 2005).
The journal calls for articles examining all aspects of post-millennial Scottish literature. Articles may address but are not limited to:
Originally published as Held (Polygon 2010)
Translated into Polish by David Malcolm and Monika Szuba
Szkocka poetka Elizabeth Burns zajmuje się nie tylko “tworzeniem księżycowego dzbana”, ale również budowaniem literackich światów w ogóle. W materialnych, wręcz namacalnych krainach jej poetyckiej wyobraźni znajdziemy postaci najróżniejszego typu (od dwóch sióstr czytających o wojnie, przez garncarza przy pracy, aż po Mozarta u schyłku życia), otoczone zastępami barwnych przedmiotów, wspomnień i elementów krajobrazu. Wizualny wymiar tej poezji jest równie wyraźny jak zaufanie, którym Burns darzy wspomnienia. Oto “migotania pamięci” – “ulotne cudowne kwiecie”.
Jeżeli chcieliby państwo nabyć tomik, prosimy o skontaktowanie się bezpośrednio z wydawnictwem wydawnictwo@wydawnictwomaski.pl
If you would like to purchase a copy, please contact the publisher at wydawnictwo@wydawnictwomaski.pl
Crime Scenes: Modern Crime Fiction in an International Context.
Ed. Urszula Elias and Agnieszka Sienkiewicz-Charlish (Peter Lang, 2014)
Crime Scenes: Modern Crime Fiction in an International Context examines the ways in which crime fiction has developed over several decades and in several national literary traditions. The volume covers a wide spectrum of current interests and topical concerns in the field of crime fiction studies. It introduces twenty-four original essays by an international group of scholars divided among three main sections: «Genres», «Authors and Texts» and «Topics». Issues discussed include genre syncretism, intertextuality, sexuality and gender, nationhood and globalization, postcolonial literature and ethical aspects of crime fiction.
Contents:
David Malcolm, Introduction
PART I: GENRES
Thomas Anessi, “Literary Codes of Conduct in PRL Crime Fiction: Barańczak, Joe Alex and the Powieść Milicyjna.”
Nina Holst, “Way too meta»: Readers, Writers and Transmedia in Castle.“
Nina Muždeka, “A Pothead Detective Challenging the Genre: Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.”
Elżbieta Perkowska-Gawlik, “The Quest for Identity in Academic Mystery Fiction.”
Agnieszka Sienkiewicz-Charlish, “Tartan Noir: Crime, Scotland and Genre in Ian Rankin’s Rebus Novels.”
PART II: AUTHORS AND TEXTS
Stephen Butler, “Banville, Simenon, Stark – An Existential Ménage à Trois.”
Wolfgang Görtschacher, “Constructions of Identity and Intertextuality in Martha Grimes’s The Black Cat.”
Ayşegül Kesirli Unur, “Cingöz Recai at Work: A Study on Early Turkish Crime Fiction on Film.”
Arkadiusz Misztal, “LSD Investigations: The End of Groovy Times and California Noir in Inherent Vice by Thomas Pyncho.”
Monika Rajtak, “Investigating Evil: Crime Fiction Remodelled in When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro.”
Monika Szuba, “Bloody Typical: Genre, Intertextuality, and the Gaze in The Cutting Room by Louise Welsh.”
Jørgen Veisland, “Whose Letter? Possession, Position and Detection in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’.”
Jadwiga Węgrodzka: The Detective as Reader: Narration and Interpretation in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Detective Stories
Marta Aleksandrowicz-Wojtyna, “Crime Fiction in South Africa? Nadine Gordimer’s Rendition of Crime in ‘Country Lovers’ and ‘Town Lovers’.”
Bernd-Peter Lange, “South Asian Sleuths: Colonial, Postcolonial, Cosmopolitan.”
PART III: TOPICS
Dorota Babilas, “Her Majesty’s Own Murderer? Queen Victoria and Jack the Ripper in Popular Fiction.”
Rachel Franks, “Gender and Genre: Changes in ‘Women’s Work’ in Australian Crime Fiction.”
Marie Hologa, “‘Snort for Caledonia’ – Drugs, Masculinity and National Identity in Contemporary Scottish Detective Fiction.”
Miriam Loth, “‘…the abyss gazes also into you’ – Guilt and Innocence in British Golden Age Detective Fiction and Contemporary Crime Novels.”
Jacqui Miller, “An American in Europe: US Colonialism in The Talented Mr Ripley and Ripley’s Game.”
Fiona Peters, “The Perverse Charm of the Amoral Serial Killer: Tom Ripley, Dexter Morgan and Seducing the Reader.”
Cyprian Piskurek, “More Than Meets the (Camera) Eye: Detective Fiction in Times of CCTV.”
Marta Usiekniewicz, “The Eating Detective: Food and Masculinity in Robert B. Parker’s Spencer Series.”
Arco van Ieperen, “What’s the Word? Sexism and Political Correctness in the Crime Fiction of Robert B. Parker and Sara Paretsky.”
A short story by Paul D. Brazill – “The Tut.”
With the referendum for Scottish Independence scheduled for September 2014 and the Cornish having recently been granted minority status, questions about the dis-unity of the ‘United’ Kingdom are prominent in the contemporary debate regarding nationalism and regional identity. Regional Gothic will explore these fractures and the darker imaginings that come from the regions of Britain.
The British regions, ‘imagined communities’ with fragile and threatened identities and boundaries, carry their own dark sides and repressions. The Gothic preoccupation with borders, invasion, contamination and degeneration imbricates quite naturally with the different and shifting meanings that arise from writings from – and about – the scattered margins of British identity. Locality affects the Gothic and Regional Gothic seeks to explore these specificities. Gothic fictions of the regions may originate from within those territories or be imagined from elsewhere. Yet, whether coming from the inside or the outside, conceptions of the regional can powerfully inform ideas of identity and belonging. And, as Ian Duncan has pointed out, whilst this may sometimes be a positive thing, regionalism can also ‘register a wholesale disintegration of the categories of home, origin, community, belonging’.
We are seeking abstracts for chapters that address the concept of regions and the Gothic. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of regional difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary imaginings of the regions and the Gothic.
Topics may include (but are not bound by):
• Welsh/Scottish/Irish Gothic
• Nationalism
• Cornish or Northern Gothic
• Peripheralism
• Gothic of the Islands
• Dark Tourism
• Queer identities in the regions
• Urban Gothic
• Ethnicity and the regions
• Village Gothic
• Gender and regionalism
• Suburban Gothic
Please send 300 word abstracts by 1st December 2014 to William Hughes and Ruth Heholt: w.hughes@bathspa.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk
Completed essays of approximately 6000 words will be required by September 2015.
2014 marks the 700th anniversary of the iconic Battle of Bannockburn. Not only did this battle change life in medieval Scotland, it also influenced the way later generations of Scots conceived of themselves and their history. To mark this event, editors at the International Review of Scottish Studies are now accepting submissions for a special issue that will investigate the impact of Bannockburn in history. It will include selected papers from the St Andrews Society of Toronto’s “Bannockburn Then and Now” conference on 21 June 2014 (http://www.standrews-society.ca/event/battle-of-bannockburn-event-scotland-then-and-now/). The issue will be published online, as part of an open-access, EBSCO-indexed journal. Submissions will be peer reviewed, and must be submitted to the IRSS website, http://www.irss.uoguelph.ca/, by 1 May 2014.
An essay prize of $300 will be available for the best submission from an early career researcher. Graduate students and early career researchers within 24 months of completion of a graduate degree are eligible.
In Bannockburns: Scottish Independence and the Literary Imagination, 1314-2014 poet and critic Robert Crawford explores in detail the literary-cultural background to Scottish nationalism in the lead-up to the referendum Scottish independence.
Here is an interesting review of the book from TLS: http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1377172.ece
Nowe Szkoty 