Title: What is the future of now?
Universities involved:
Aix Marseille University (Prof. Marie Hedon)
Glasgow University (Dr Corey Gibson)
University of Lausanne (Prof Kirsten Stirling)
2024-25: The political horizons of Devolution
Description of the project
Memory has long been an important aspect of literary studies in Scotland, particularly in the devolutionary period, which emphasises the necessity to delineate national, but also personal identities. With the twenty first century, the political developments in a Scottish context, devolution, the independence referendum, a Scottish government in Holyrood, the very notion of identity has taken on new, and more diverse, meanings: BAME writers have come to the forefront of the literary scene, bringing with them a renewed sense of past, new literary forms have emerged (film poems, collaborative theatre, Iphone-filmed narratives), the renewed interest in historical fiction has become a permanent feature, some of the writers of the 1980s have reached the status of cultural icons, with the recent release for instance of internationalised adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things. The period has also seen a spate of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic futuristic novels (either genre fiction, or mainstream fiction), which are environmentally conscious (Burnside, Sara Maitland) or observe the impact of globalisation on humanity (Morrison). Those are all signs that our notions of national identity have been deeply altered. This project aims to examine the different ways this paradigm change is reflected in, but also brought about by, the writing of Scottish writers.
The project involves a series of webinars organised by each of the partner universities in turn, with the goal of reflecting on what specific input Scottish literature brings to the altered sense of Scottish identity.
November 13 (5-6 PM UK time) Autumn Seminar (Aix Marseille Université) Poor Things revisited (Chair: Marie Hedon, Aix Marseille University)
Speakers:
Sorcha Dallas (Custodian of the Alasdair Gray Archive)
Lauren Forde (PhD student at Strathclyde university and Alasdair Gray Archive)
The webinar will look at Poor Things from two points of view:
From an archival point of view: Sorcha Dallas will give an intro to AGA, discuss Poor Things and its digital guide, and Lauren Forde will discuss her work on this book as part of her CDA.
Both Lauren and Sorcha will then elaborate on Yorgos Lanthimos’s adaptation connections to Poor Things as part of AGA’s collection. The examination of the film adaptation will be placed in the context of what archival material is available at the Archive.
Thursday 27th March, 5-6pm (UK time): Spring seminar (Glasgow University): IndyRef and Scottish Literature(Chair: Corey Gibson, Glasgow University)
Speakers:
Maike Dinger (Bournemouth University)
Calum Esler (University of Stirling)
Gina Lyle (University of York)
This webinar picks up from recent sessions at the Nottingham World Congress of Scottish Literatures addressing the devolutionary and post-devolutionary periods. Taking the form of a Roundtable Discussion, this event will host three early career researchers in the field. In broad terms, it will interrogate the usefulness of referenda as markers in literary history. More specifically, it will consider how particular writer/texts might be understood to have anticipated the 2014 referendum, how they curated it in real-time, and how they have come to memorialise it, since. Did IndyRef leave a mark on the literary imagination? Is it too soon to tell?