Dr. Valentina Bold
Senior Lecturer
Room 221, Rutherford/McCowan Building
University of Glasgow
Crichton University Campus
Dumfries
DG1 4ZL
Tel: +44 (0)1387 702021
Fax: +44 (0)1387 702005
Email: v.bold@crichton.gla.ac.uk
Office hour: Monday 2-3
Convenor, M.Litt Scottish Cultural Heritage
Background/Biography
Dr Bold was educated at the University of Edinburgh, Memorial University of Newfoundland and the University of Glasgow. She was one of the first lecturers in the Dumfries campus, where she came in 1999 after working previously in the Elphinstone Institute at the University of Aberdeen where she worked on studying and promoting the traditional culture of Northern Scotland. Before that, she worked at the University of Glasgow, in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies.Research interests and current projects
Research interests include the literature and oral traditions of Scotland, particularly poetry, storytelling and song but also customs and beliefs. Dr Bold is interested in cultural heritage, both in Scotland and in Scottish diaspora communities, such as those within Canada and the U.S.A. She has served as Director of the Crichton Tourism Research Centre, supervising a research project into usage of the Southern Upland Way (funded by the Southern Upland Partnership) and was also a Principal Investigator, along with Dr Donald Macleod, in the Centre for Research into Regional Development (a European project through the Rural Development fund) which had special relevance to small and medium sized businesses in the South of Scotland.
Dr Bold has a special interest in the literary and song traditions of Southern Scotland, from the eighteenth century onwards, particularly in the work of Robert Burns and James Hogg. During 'Homecoming' year she is speaking on Burns in locations as far apart as Vancouver and Washington, as well as in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and she recently published a new edition of Burns's Merry Muses of Caledonia with illustrations by Bob Dewar (Luath Press, 2009). She is currently working on an edition of James Hogg’s Brownie of Bodsbeck for the Stirling/South Carolina edition of the Complete works of James Hogg. Future projects include a monograph considering consideration of Scottish identity in North America, a comparative study looking at European poets of the nineteenth century and an edition of the Kitty Hartley manuscript, held in the Ewart Library, Dumfries: Scotch Songs from Scotch Corner: the Kitty Hartley manuscript.
Dr Bold has supervised postgraduate students on topics as diverse as the song traditions of South West Scotland and tourism, the traditional expressive arts, and the work of specific writers including James Barke and Robert Burns. She is happy to discuss supervision of a variety of topics relating to Scottish literature and oral traditions, particularly from the seventeenth century onwards, as well as on Scottish folklore and traditional culture.
Research students
Allan Baldwin
John Young
Teaching
Undergraduate courses
Convenor
Narratives of Scottish Identity
Broadside Ballads
Guest lecturer
Research Methods for Social Sciences (contributor)
Postgraduate courses
Scottish Cultural Heritage: Approaches and Explorations (convenor)
South West Scotland: Image & Identity (convenor)
Scottish Poetry in the 19th Century
Scotland and Film
The Ballad
Storytelling
Fieldwork and Research Methodologies
Publications since 2001
Books and research editions
• Smeddum: Stories, Poems and Essays by Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Edinburgh, 2001).
• James Hogg: A Bard of Nature’s Making (Oxford, 2007).
• Robert Burns The Merry Muses of Caledonia as editor, with illustrations by Bob Dewar and essays by James Barke, Sydney Goodsir Smith and J.DeLancey Ferguson (Edinburgh 2009)
Forthcoming: James Hogg The Brownie of Bodsbeck as editor (Edinburgh)
Series General Editor: ‘The History and Culture of Scotland’ (Oxford: Peter Lang)
• James Hogg: A Bard of Nature’s Making by Valentina Bold (2007).
• Defining Strains: The Musical Life of the Scots in the Seventeenth Century edited by James Porter (2007)
Forthcoming: I cannot say about a beginning: James Kelman and Devolution by Aaron Kelly (Oxford); Discomfort and Joy: the Films of Bill Forsyth by Jonathan Murray (Oxford).
Chapters in Books
• ‘Collection as Colonisation’, The Flowering Thorn, ed Thomas McKean (Utah, 2003).
• ‘The Poetry of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, A Flame in the Mearns ed Marjory McCulloch (Glasgow: 2003).
• ‘Virtual Tourism: Exploring Scotland by CD-rom’, Niche Tourism: Conference Proceedings from the Crichton Tourism Research Centre, ed Donald Macleod (University of Glasgow, Crichton Campus: 2003).
• ‘Building Scottish Studies from Scratch’, Below the Belt. Festchrift for Professor Rex Taylor (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Crichton Campus, 2005).
• ‘Margaret Laidlaw’, ‘Janet Hamilton’, ‘Lady Caroline Nairne’, ‘Janet Little’, ‘Isobel Pagan’, ‘Jessie Russell’, Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, ed Elizabeth Ewan and Rose Pipes (Edinburgh, 2006).
• ‘James Hogg’ and ‘Ossian’, Alba Literaria. A History of Scottish Literature.ed Marco Fazzini. (Venezia, 2006).
• ‘“Lords o State and Lusty Banquetting: Public Representations of Scotland 1999-2003’, Culture, Nation, and the new Scottish Parliament (Lewisburg, PA, 2006).
• ‘Scottish Storytelling today: context, performance, renaissance’, Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature, ed Berthold Schoene (Edinburgh: 2007).
• ‘Scots Songs in the Kitty Hartley Manuscript’, Emily Lyle: A Persistent Scholar ed Francis Fischer and Sigrid Rieuwerts (Edinburgh: 2007).
• ‘Frank Miller’: Scotland’s forgotten collector, Singing the Nation: Herder’s Legacy, edited Dace Bula and Sigi Rieuwerts (Mainz, 2008).
• '"The Apple at the Glass": Halloween and Scottish Poetry", Treat or Trick? Halloween in a Globalising World ed Malcolm Foley and Hugh O' Donell (Newcastle, 2009).
Forthcoming
'The Wicker Man' in A Fanstasticall Imagination ed Lizanne Henderson (Edinburgh); 'Eighteenth Century Antiquarianism' in Companion to Scottish Traditional Literatures ed Suzanne Gilbert and Sarah Dunnigan (Edinburgh); 'Written Evidence: Fictional Prose and Poetry' and 'Scots Song' in Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology vol 1, ed Mark Mulhern (Edinburgh) and 'Jean Armour' in Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford).
Articles
• ‘“Rude Bard of the North”: James Macpherson and the Folklore of Democracy’, Journal of American Folklore Special Issue: James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson, (2001).
• ‘Editing Lewis Grassic Gibbon’, Newsletter of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon Centre (2001).
• ‘Digitising Scotland: From the North East to the South West’, Ethnologies (2001).
• ‘The David Murray Collection: From Scrapbook to Website’, Scottish Studies Review (2004).
'"I wish I was whaur Helen Lies"--collection, community and regeneration in South West Scotland, Markings (2009).
with Steven Gillespie, 'The Southern Upland Way: Exploring Landscape and Culture', International Journal of Heritage Studies (2009)
Reviews
Dr Bold was reviews editor for Scottish Studies Review between 2000 and 2007, compiling reviews of the year. She guest edited Issue 4: 2 (ASLS, 2003) Special Issue: Broadside Ballads. Since 1993 she has contributed reviews to Chapman, Lines Review, Cencrastus, the Scottish Literary Journal, Lines Review, Victorian Studies Review, Ethonologies, Slovene Studies, Western Folklore, Studies in Scottish Literature, The Edinburgh Review and The Scottish Review of Books.
Additional publications before 2001
• A People’s History of Townhead, booklet, (Glasgow, 1994).
• ‘The Royal Jubilee: James Hogg and the House of Hanover’, an annotated facsimile edition, Studies in Hogg & his World, (1994).
• Northern Folk. Living Traditions of North East Scotland. Interactive CD-rom, co-written with Thomas A. McKean (Aberdeen, 1999).
• ‘James Hogg and the Scottish Self Taught Tradition’, in The Independent Spirit: John Clare and the Self-Taught Tradition, ed John Goodridge, (Nottingham, 1994).
• J. Hogg, The Royal Jubilee, Studies in Hogg & his World, (1994).
• ‘“Inmate of the Hamlet”: Burns as “Heaven-taught ploughman”‘Love and Liberty. Robert Burns: A Bicentenary Celebration, ed Kenneth Simpson, (East Linton, 1997).
• ‘“Danaus’s Daughters”: Scottish Women Poets of the 19th century’, in History of Scottish Women Writers, eds Dorothy Macmillan and Douglas Gifford, (Edinburgh, 1997).
• ‘James Hogg’, Encylopaedia of Folklore and Literature, ed Mary Ellen Brown et al (Santa Barbara, 1998).
• ‘“Neither right spelt nor right setten doun”: Child, Scott and the Hogg family ballads’, The Ballad in Scottish History, ed Ted Cowan, (Glasgow, 2000).
• ‘Women and Supernatural Dreams’, Culture and Tradition, (1989).
• ‘James Young Geddes: A Re-evaluation’, Scottish Literary Journal, (1992).
• ‘Traditional Narrative Elements in Three Perils of Woman’, Studies in Hogg and his World (1992).
• ‘Janet Little “The Scotch Milkmaid” and “Peasant Poetry”‘, Scottish Literary Journal, (1993).
• ‘The Royal Jubilee: James Hogg and the House of Hanover’, Studies in Hogg & his World, (1994).
• ‘The Magic Lantern: Hogg and Science’, Studies in Hogg & his World, (1996).
• ‘“Poor as a Poet”: Macpherson, Burns and the Peasant Poet’, Scotlands 4.1 (1997).
• ‘The Mountain Bard: James Hogg & Macpherson’s Ossian, Studies in Hogg & his World (1998).
• ‘“Going Out with the Tide”: Three Generations of Scotsmen & the Sea’, Northern Scotland (1999).
Scholarly Activities
• Erasmus guest lecturer, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 2005 and Socrates guest lecturer, University of Konstanz, 2002
• Presenter, Scotland at the Smithsonian, Washington 2003
• Invited speaker to international conferences starting with the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, Quebec City 2001 and continuing to, for instance, the Burns conference in Prague, 2009, Washington Burns conference (funded by Scottish government and for which Dr Bold was an advisor) 2009 and Burns conference, Vancouver, 2009. Invited speaker in venues within Scotland including the National Library of Scotland and the 'Aye Write' festival in Glasgow (2009).
• Major research funding to establish CRRED, including £250K from the European Regional Development Fund, and £250K match funding from Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Power, the Crichton Foundation, University of Glasgow, University of the West of Scotland and Scotish Agricultural College.
• Additional funding of £80K secured from Scottish Enterprise to fund a Research Fellowship in Tourism, Heritage and the Environment.
• British Academy Funding to attend 5 international conferences.
• Carnegie Trust Funding for field research costs in Nova Scotia, 2004 and for publication subsidy, 2006.
• Scottish Arts Council funding in 1998, 2003 and 2004 and Shetland Arts Trust funding in 2004.
• Funding from Scottish Cultural Access Network and the Murray Trust in 1999, to finance £40K project, Northern Folk CD-rom.
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Robert Burns in Global Culture 2009 organising committee
• Have been invited to, and spoken in, places including Britain and Ireland, Canada (Ottawa, Quebec City, Vancouver, Monkton, St John’s), U.S.A. (Portland, Buffalo, Rochester, Albuquerque, Charleston), Finland, Ukraine, Latvia, Germany and Holland.
