Centre for Robert Burns Studies News
The Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies Centenary Lecture Series: The People's Chair in Scottish History and Literature
The Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies - Ionad Eòlas na h-Alba is na Ceiltis - warmly invites you to a series of lectures celebrating the centenary of Scottish History and Literature at the University of Glasgow.
Featuring esteemed academic speakers from a variety of disciplines in the University (including Professor Gerard Carruthers, Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies), the series hopes to illuminate the wonderful historic and literary heritage of the city through a variety of perspectives.
The lectures are held at the Mitchell Library and while attendance is free, pre-registration is required. To register, visit: http://glasgowinscottishhistoryandliterature.eventbrite.com/
John Clare in Space: Poetry, Nature and Contemporary Culture
150th Anniversary Conference, 30 – 31 May 2014
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
This two-day conference seeks to explore the work, life, contexts and culture of the English poet, John Clare (1793-1864). Clare died in Northampton on 20 May 1864. 150 years after his death, delegates are asked to explore the places and spaces of Clare’s life and work, and the broad the dimensions of his engagement with traditions across literary, rural and folk cultures, and to investigate the reasons Clare might be increasingly relevant to contemporary culture.
Confirmed Speakers:
- Jonathan Bate
- Josie Long
- Richard Mabey
- David Morley
- Iain Sinclair
(…more to follow soon).
The conference will feature an array of responses to Clare: academic and creative; critical and expressive; historical and contemporary. Any and all proposals to present at the conference on Clare and related topics are welcome. Papers speaking to the following themes and provocations are especially welcome:
- John Clare in Space: topography, locality, horizons
- Clare, ecology, natural history, environment
- Clare and literary traditions – past, present or future
- Eyeing Clare: art and visual culture
- Clare the trespasser: boundaries, Gypsies, transgressions
- Feral Clare: wilds, woods, weeds
- Sexual Clare: women, wine and song
- Mad Clare: asylums, quacks and escape
- Environmental poetics, politics and aesthetics
- Romanticism: where is Clare?
- Clare in (and out of) history
- Heritage Clare: archives, land, houses, charities, trails, trusts and the ‘legacy’ industry
- Presenting peasants: class, language, literature and the editing of Clare
In essence, this will be a broad celebration of Clare, marking 150 years since his death on 20 May 1864, so the conference welcomes all original responses to the full breadth of his world and work.
Formal registration for the conference (accommodation, food etc.) will open in January 2014, though proposals for papers and sessions are welcome from now until the deadline of March 2014. Please follow this link for further details and electronic submission of proposals:
http://www.english-languages.brookes.ac.uk/conferences/2014/John-Clare/
For all enquiries, please contact:
Simon Kövesi, email: skovesi@brookes.ac.uk
Maurice Lindsay's The Burns Encyclopaedia
We are very happy to announce that the newly-revised and updated edition of Maurice Lindsay's The Burns Encyclopaedia (first published in 1959) is now available.
This fourth edition of Lindsay's Burns Encyclopaedia has been revised and edited by Professor David Purdie, and the Centre for Robert Burns Studies' Co-Directors, Professor Gerard Carruthers and Dr Kirsteen McCue.
All aspects of the poet's biography and literary output are covered, as are his correspondents and contemporaries, many of the latter set against the backdrop of Enlightenment Edinburgh.
CRBS at the Burns Monument Centre
Professor Gerard Carruthers (co-director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies) and John Burnett (formerly of National Museums Scotland) recently led a workshop on Burns and Kilmarnock at Kilmarnock's Burns Monument Centre. To read more about this workshop, please click here.
In February, the Centre for Robert Burns Studies' Professor Gerard Carruthers and Dr Pauline Mackay, and Dr Rhona Brown (from the University of Glasgow's School of Critical Studies) visited the Burns Monument Centre to view the Centre's Kilmarnock Periodicals collections. To read more about their visit, please click here and here.
'Robert Burns: At Home and Abroad' on iTunesU
The Centre for Robert Burns Studies is delighted to announce that a selection of papers delivered at the 'Robert Burns: At Home and Abroad' conference in January 2013 are now available to listen to on the University of Glasgow's iTunesU.
You can listen to these recordings by clicking here.
We hope you enjoy listening!
Professor G Ross Roy (1924 - 2013)
The Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow has lost a great friend with the death of of George Ross Roy (known to his family and friends as Ross). He was 88.
The modern editor of the letters of Robert Burns, one of the bard's greatest bibliographers and the builder of the best Burns collection in North America, Ross Roy was someone who was extremely generous with the scholarly resources that he established. The W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Research Fellowship, funding a period of summer study in the Burns collection at Columbia, South Carolina, was named in memory of Ross's grandfather who had begun the collection in his native Canada. Four members of the School of Critical Studies were the fortunate receipient of this award over the years.
After serving in the Royal Canadain Air-force as a bomber-navigator during World War II, Ross took his doctorate at the Sorbonne and it was in France where he met his wife Lucie. Lucie was his close comrade in all aspects of his life, and together in 1963 the pair established the journal, Studies in Scottish literature, which has proved one of the great resources for and disseminators of scholarship in Scottish Literature over the past half century.
Ross became an Honourary Fellow of the Burns Centre at Glasgow in 2007, the university awarded him a doctorate in 2009, and in 2010 the Universities Committee for the Teaching of Scottish Literature (comprising all the universities in Scotland where the subject is taught) in partnership with the then Scottish Arts Council established the Ross Roy Medal awarded annually to a postgraduate thesis demonstrating exceptional excellence.
Professor Gerard Carruthers
Chair of Scottish Literature Since 1700
Deputy Head, School of Critical Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies
'Back to the Mother Country?' The Impact of Ulster-Scots Writing on Scotland 1750-2013
We are delighted to announce that on Friday 15 March 2013 the Centre for Robert Burns Studies and the University of Ulster plans to host the Symposium 'Back to the Mother Country?': The Impact of Ulster-Scots Writing on Scotland 1750-2013.
If you would like to book your place at the Symposium, please RSVP by Friday 8 March to: RobertBurnsStudies@glasgow.ac.uk. The day's programme is below:
Friday 15th March 2013
The Senate Room, University of Glasgow
10.00-10.30 Tea, coffee and welcome
10.30-11.00 Dr Richard Holmes (University of Bristol) ‘The Cause of Virtue in Hume, Hutcheson and the Poet of Snuff’
11.00-11.30 Dr. Frank Ferguson (University of Ulster) ‘Very Gothic Celts: Thomas Percy, Robert Anderson, Correspondence, Criticism and Cultural Consumption.’
11.30-11.45 Tea & Coffee
11.45-12.15 Dr. Andrew Holmes (Queen’s University Belfast) ‘The Scottish Reformations: Presbyterian interpretations in Scotland and Ulster, c. 1800-1860’
12.15-12.45 Dr. Carol Baraniuk (University of Ulster) ‘Out of the Box: Insights into the Ireland-Scotland connection from a Glasgow collection of popular poetry and song’
12.45-1.45 LUNCH
1.45-2.15 Prof. Norman Vance (Sussex) 'Language, Thought and University Wits'
2.15-2.45 Prof. Colin Kidd (St Andrew’s) 'The Ayrshire Enlightenment'
2.45-3.00 Tea & Coffee
3.00-3.30 Round-table discussion
Workshops at the Burns Monument Centre
The Burns Monument Centre (Kilmarnock) has announced its series of Heritage Workshops - including one on Burns, featuring Professor Gerard Carruthers of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies.
For more information, see the Burns Monument Centre's website: http://bmc.burnsmonumentcentre.co.uk/upcoming-workshops/
Music in the University Lunchtime Concert
On Thursday 31 January the Centre for Robert Burns Studies will collaborate with some very special performers at the University of Glasgow. See below for details of this free lunchtime concert:
Music in the University Lunchtime Concert Series: Jamie MacDougall (tenor), Sharon Griffiths (harp)
Date: Thursday 31 January 2013
Time: 13.10-14.00
Venue: University of Glasgow Concert Hall, off University Avenue, G12 8QQ
Marking the birthday of national bard Robert Burns the programme features, in his centenary year, Benjamin Britten's song cycle 'A Birthday Hansel' written as a commission for the Queen Mother's 75th birthday in 1975. The cycle includes Burns favourites 'A Rosebud by my early walk', 'Flow gently sweet Afton', and 'The winter it is past' - with Britten's altogether different and refreshing settings! In collaboration with the University's Centre for Robert Burns Studies.
We hope to see you there! Please click Music in the University to download the programme for more information.
A Taste of Scotland, with The Caledonian Fiddle Orchestra
The Rotary Club of Motherwall and Wishaw present A Taste of Scotland, with the Caledonian Fiddle Orchestra, on 23 February at 7.30. For more information click on A Taste of Scotland to download their flier.
'Kilmarnock Edition' on iTunes-U
To mark St Andrew's Day, The Centre for Robert Burns Studies is very pleased to announce that we have launched recordings of speakers, and music performed by Bill Adair, from our recent 'Kilmarnock Edition' symposium, held in October 2012. These are available on the University of Glagow's iTunes-U.
To hear a series of talks by staff and colleagues of the Centre, please click here.
To hear some of Robert Burns's earliest songs performed by Bill Adair, please click here.
We hope you enjoy listening!
Annual One-Day Conference - 12 January 2013
'Robert Burns: At Home and Abroad'
We are delighted to announce that the Centre for Robert Burns Studies has finalised plans to host its annual one-day conference in January.
'Robert Burns: At Home and Abroad' will take place in the Western Infirmary Lecture Theatre at the University of Glasgow, on Saturday 12 January 2013. Prices are £25, or £15 for students.
To see a full programme of events, please click here to download the Burns At Home & Abroad Flier.
Please click here to download the Burns At Home & Abroad registration form.
We look forward to seeing you at this event! For more information, please contact: RobertBurnsStudies@glasgow.ac.uk
2 October 2012
The Centre for Robert Burns Studies is delighted to announce the launch of the Burns database!
This eighteen-month project will result in the first ever database of Robert Burns manuscripts, produced by the Centre for Robert Burns Studies in collaboration with the National Burns Collection. Click on the links below to view press attention given to this exciting new project by the BBC, the Daily Record and the Scotsman:
'Database Planned For Robert Burns Manuscripts' (BBC website)
'Digital Database with Works of Robert Burns to be Created' (the Daily Record)
'Robert Burns Manuscripts to be Stored in Digital Database' (the Scotsman)
Click on the link below to read a feature by the Arts and Humanities Research Council on the major project 'Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century':
'Robert Burns: a victim of his own popularity?' (AHRC) 