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Unsettling
Scottish Studies: 
Canons, Chronologies, Colonialisms

November 22-23, 2024

About the conference

To be held November 22-23, 2024, this will be the first international multi-disciplinary workshop dedicated to decolonizing Scottish Studies, bringing together nearly 30 established and emerging scholars and graduate students from Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and New Zealand to share their research at Simon Fraser University's Vancouver campus. Scholars from the fields of Celtic Studies, Education, Fine Arts, History, Indigenous Studies, Literary Studies and Tourism Studies will exchange knowledge to produce a new understanding of the field of Scottish Studies and of Scotland's historical role in global colonialism for both academic and more general audiences. By holding the event in a location where histories of Scottish settlement and Indigenous displacement collide, on the unceded traditional territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam Nations, and by collaborating with Indigenous scholars, we aim to unsettle the dominant narratives of Scottish Studies which situate colonized peoples at its margins.

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SFU Vancouver campus: Harbour Centre

515 West Hastings Street Rooms 1400-1430 Vancouver, BC

Location:

Public Events

Please join us for our free, public events!  There are three events over the course of two days; use the button below to get your tickets for one or more.  All events happen at SFU's Vancouver campus in Harbour Centre and are in-person only (no online component).

 

Event 1: Author Stephanie Wood on her recent history of the Squamish people, "tiná7 cht ti temíxw (We Come From This Land)." Fri Nov 22, 11:15 a.m. -12:15 p.m.

 

Event 2: A cultural celebration entitled “Storywork: Music and Dance from the Métis and Scottish Gaelic Traditions” featuring V’ni Dansi Métis Dancers and musicians and Shot of Scotch Highland Dancers. Fri Nov 22, 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.

 

Event 3: Annual St. Andrew's and Caledonian Lecture: Public talk by Nisga’a scholar Amy Parent/Nox Tsaa’wit (Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education & Governance in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University) on the rematriation of the Ni’isjhool memorial pole that was stolen in 1929 by Marius Barbeau and sold to National Museums Scotland. Sat Nov 23, 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 pm.

 

Immediately following Amy Parent's talk, a performance by the Nisga'a Ts'amiks Vancouver Traditional Dancers will provide an embodied community experience and enrich the cultural understanding of the context of the talk. Sat Nov 23, 12:15 p.m. - 12:45 p.m.

Conference Program

Unsettling Scottish Studies: 

Canons, Chronologies, Colonialisms

Nov. 22-23, 2024

Room 1400-1430 SFU Harbour Centre 515 West Hastings Street

 

Friday Nov. 22

 

— (Academic Symposium/Register as an Audience Member Here) —

 

[Participants wanting to walk from the Sylvia Hotel, meet with Juliet Shields in the lobby at 7:30 am]

 

8:00-8:30 am: Registration and coffee

 

8:30-9:30 am: Land Acknowledgement, Welcome and Introductions

 

9:30-10:45 am: Unsettling Categories and Concepts: The Historical and Theoretical Construction of Scottish Studies (sponsored by the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen)

 

Chair: Juliet Shields (U of Washington)

 

  1. Leith Davis (SFU), “Unsettling Scottish Studies: Starting Places”

  2. Michael Brown (U of Aberdeen), “Unsettling the Scottish Enlightenment”

  3. Silke Stroh (U of Koblenz), “Black and Asian Scottish Writers & and the Diversification of the Canon”

  4. Sarah Sharp (U of Aberdeen), “The New Old Country: Literary Nostalgia and Scottish Settler Colonialism”

  5. Arun Sood, (University of Exeter) “Brown Hebrideans: Unsettling Place, Language, People and Song”

 

10:45-11:15 am: Break

— (End of Academic Symposium/Ticketed) —

 

— (Performance/Public: Please Register HERE) —

 

11:15 am -12:15 pm: 

 

Public talk by Stephanie Wood on the recent history of the Squamish people, tiná7 cht ti temíxw (We Come From This Land). 

[Welcome by Steeve Mongrain (Associate Dean, Research and International, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)]

— (End of Performance/Public) —

 

— (Academic Symposium/Register as an Audience Member Here) —

 

12:15-1:30 pm:  Lunch for presenters

 

1:30-2:45 pm:  Unsettling Colonialisms 1:  Confronting Scottish Studies and Empire

 

Chair: Holly Nelson (Trinity Western U)

 

  1. Andrew MacKillop (U of Glasgow), “Unsettling Empire, the Empire Angst of Smollett, Galt, and Scott” 

  2. Angela Esterhammer (U of Toronto), “Unsettling Settlement in John Galt’s Transatlantic Tales”

  3. Delaney Anderson, “Cycles of Reprinting and the Unintended Readerships of John Galt’s Short Fiction”

  4. Michael Morris (U of Dundee), “Avowing Slavery in Scottish Studies”

  5. Juliet Shields (U of Washington), “Unsettling Scottish Romanticism: Wedderburn and Hogg”

  

2:45 pm-4:00 pm:  Unsettling Place: Re-envisioning the Ecologies of Scottish Studies  (sponsored by the James Hogg Society)

 

Chair: Angela Esterhammer (U of Toronto) 

 

  1. Sharon Alker (Whitman College)/Holly Faith Nelson (TWU), “Hogg, Ecology, and the Unsettling of Social Structures”

  2. Kaitlyn MacInnis (SFU), “Centering Sheep in Scottish History" 

  3. Tony Jarrells (U of South Carolina), “Region and Colony in Romantic Scotland”

  4. Euan Healey, (U of Glasgow), “Unsettling Histories of the Highland Clearances from the Soil Upwards”

  5. Alex Dick (UBC), “Walter Scott, The British Fishery Society, and Coastal Poetics”

 

4:00 pm -4:30 pm: Break

 

4:30 pm -5:45 pm: Undergraduate Research Poster Sessions: “Unsettling Scottish Studies” with students from English 433W SFU students

 

5:45-7:00 pm:  Dinner for presenters 

 

— (End of Academic Symposium/Ticketed) —

 

— Performance/Public: Please Register HERE —

 

7:30-9:30 pm:  A cultural celebration: “Storywork: Music and Dance from the Scottish Gaelic and Métis Traditions”: featuring Shot of Scotch Highland Dancers and V’ni Dansi Métis Dancers and musicians. 

— (End of Performance/Public) —

 

Sat. Nov. 23 

— (Academic Symposium/Register as an Audience Member Here) —

 

[Participants wanting to walk from the Sylvia Hotel, meet with Juliet Shields in the lobby at 7:30 am]

 

8:00-8:30 am:  Coffee/Tea for presenters

 

8:30-9:45 am: Intersections: Indigenous Studies and Scottish Studies 

 

Chair: Euan Healey (U of Glasgow)

  1. June Scudeler (SFU), “Indigenous Literary Nationalisms and Ethical Approaches to Indigenous Literatures”

  2. Nikki Hessell (Victoria U of Wellington), “The Course of Time” and Cherokee Sovereignty”

  3. Nathaniel Harrington (St. Francis Xavier), “Gaelic literature and/as Indigenous Literature”

  4. Jeremy Laity (TWU), “ Large in Stature, Dwarfed in Mind: Contact, Conflict, and Claim in the Writing of Eric Duncan”

  5. Don Nerbas (McGill U), “Industrialism, Colonialism, and Region in an Atlantic World: The Other Colliers Across the Sea”

 

— (End of Academic Symposium/Ticketed) —

 

 

9:45-10:45 am: Workshop for Presenters Only: Indigenizing the Curriculum (Sophie McCall and Deanna Reder) 

 

10:45-11:15 am:  Break

 

— Performance/Public: Please register HERE  —

 

11:15 am-12:15 pm: Annual St. Andrews and Caledonian Lecture 

Introduction by Cilla Bachop (St. Andrews and Caledonian Society)

Welcome by Steve Collis, Chair, English Department, Simon Fraser University

Public talk by Nisga’a scholar Dr. Amy Parent/Noxs Ts’aawit (Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education & Governance in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University) on the rematriation of the Ni’isjhool memorial pole that was stolen in 1929 by Marius Barbeau and sold to National Museums Scotland.

 

12:15-12:45 pm: Performance by the Nisga'a Ts'amiks Vancouver Traditional Dancers 

 

— (End of Performance/Public) —

 

12:45-1:30 pm:  Lunch for presenters

 

— (Academic Symposium/Register as an Audience Member Here) —

 

1:30-2:45 pm: Unsettling Place 2: Disrupting Spatial Geographies

 

Chair: Sharon Alker (Whitman College)

  1. Dana Graham Lai (SFU), "’That’s what we wanted!’: Landscape, People, and the Colonial Sublime in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour in Scotland, A.D. 1803”

  2. Erin Scott (UBC), “Dùthchas: Decolonizing Scottish Identity in a Canadian Context”

  3. Petra Johana Poncarová (U of Glasgow), “Global Gaelic Diaspora and Twentieth-Century Gaelic Magazines”

  4. Pam Perkins (U of Winnipeg), “Robert Ballantyne and the Imagined Scottish Arctic”

  5. Kevin James, (University of Guelph), “De-centring and De-territorialising Scottish Histories of Travel”

 

2:45-4:00 pm:  Unsettling Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality

 

Chair: Pam Perkins (U of Manitoba)

  1. Ella Phillips (University of Strathclyde & University of Stirling), “Unsettling Narratives of ‘Rescue’ in Scotland: The Glasgow Magdalene Institution (1859-1870)”

  2. Darryl Peers (Manchester Metropolitan U), “Queerness and Influence in Scottish Fiction”

  3. Kirsteen McCue (U of Glasgow), “Designing a new 'herstory' of Scottish Women's Writing: Challenges & Opportunities”

  4. Julianna Wagar (SFU), “Scottish Romance Novels”

 

4:00-4:30 pm: Break

 

4:30-6:00 pm: Unsettling Scottish Studies: Practical Directions Forward(Partnerships, Research Agendas, Pedagogical Strategies): informal discussion and next steps

 

6:30 pm: Participants will meet for dinner at the Irish Heather for presenters (248 East Georgia Street, Vancouver)

 

*We acknowledge the generous support of the following organizations: the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada; Simon Fraser University’s Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; the Office of the Vice-President, Research, Simon Fraser University; the Community Engagement Initiative, Simon Fraser University; the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen; the James Hogg Society. 

Accommodation, Locations & Transportation 

Conference Location

The conference will be held at the SFU Vancouver campus: Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street Rooms 1400-1430 Vancouver, BC.  It is easily accessible by transit and near the SkyTrain. The campus is wheelchair accessible and has wheelchair accessible washrooms. Gender neutral washrooms are also available.

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There will be a "walking bus" from the hotel to the conference location for participants who would like to travel by foot.  Other options include sharing a rideshare or using public transit.

Sylvia Hotel​

We recommend staying at the Sylvia Hotel, Restaurant, and Lounge. It is located at 1154 Gilford St, Vancouver, BC and is only a short distance away from the conference.

Irish Heather Shebeen

The conference restaurant is located at 248 E Georgia St, Vancouver.

Transportation

Whether you need a ride from the airport or between the conference and hotel, there are many flexible transportation options such as Uber and Lyft that can pick you up whenever and wherever! 

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If you would like to call a taxi, try Vancouver Taxi at 604-871-1111

To travel from Vancouver Airport (YVR) to the Sylvia Hotel via public transportation, Googe Maps recommends the following:

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  1. Take the Canada Line (Waterfront Station) of the SkyTrain from the airport to the Yaletown-Roundhouse Station in downtown Vancouver.

  2. Exit via the Yaletown-Roundhouse Station and walk along Davie Street toward Hamilton Street until you arrive at Bay 1, Yaletown-Roundhouse Bus Transit Station.

  3. Get on the 006 Davie St. bus at Platform Bay 1. Remain on the bus for 9 stops, getting off at the Denman Street bus stop (the stop is located just before Denman Street).

  4. Walk northwest to Denman Street. Cross the street (continuing northwest) and walk along Beach Avenue for 2 minutes.  At the corner of Beach Avenue and Guilford Street, you will see the Sylvia Hotel, Restaurant, and Lounge (1154 Gilford Street, Vancouver, BC  V6G 2P6).

INFO

SUGGESTED READING

BOOKS, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND JOURNAL ARTICLES

Scotland and the Caribbean

Alston, David, Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021.

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Devine, T.M., ed. Recovering Slavery’s Past: The Caribbean Connection. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.

 

Hamilton, Douglas. Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World, 1750-1820. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.

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Morris, Michael. Scotland and the Caribbean, c. 1740-1833: Atlantic Archipelagos. New York and London: Routledge, 2018.

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Mullen, Stephen. The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775-1838. London: University of London Press, 2023.

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Phillips, Kate. Bought and Sold: Slavery, Scotland and Jamaica. Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2022.

 

Scotland and the Atlantic World in General

Kehoe, S. Karly, Chris Dalglish, and Annie Tindley, eds. Scottish Highlands and the Atlantic World: Social Networks and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023.

 

Scotland and Emigration / Migration / Colonization

MacKenzie, John M., and T. M. Devine, eds. Scotland and the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

 

Harper, Marjory. Adventurers and Exiles: The Great Scottish Exodus. London: Profile, 2004.

 

—. Emigration from Northeast Scotland. 2 vols. [Aberdeen]: Aberdeen University Press, 1988. Print.

 

Harper, Marjory, and Stephen Constantine. Migration and Empire. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, [2010].

 

Hatton, Timothy J., and Jeffrey G. Williamson. The Age of Mass Migration: Causes and Economic Impact. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

 

Jorrand, Sophie. “From ‘the Doors of the Seas’ to a Watery Debacle: The Sea, Scottish Colonization, and the Darien Scheme, 1696–1700.” Etudes écossaises, Scotland and the Sea, 19 (2017). https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesecossaises.1184

   https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/1151?lang=en.

 

McCarthy, Angela, ed. A Global Clan: Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century. London and New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2006.

 

Mullan, Stephen, and Ewan Gibbs. “Scotland, Atlantic Slavery and the Scottish National Party: From Colonised to Coloniser in the Political Imagination.” Nations and Nationalism 29.3 (2023): 922-938.

 

Sandrock, Kirsten. Scottish Colonial Literature: Writing the Atlantic, 1603-1707. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

 

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Scotland / Scottish Studies and Decolonisation

MacKenzie, John, and Bryan S. Glass, eds. Scotland, Empire and Decolonisation in the Twentieth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.

 

MacKinnon, I. ‘On Decolonising and Indigenising Scottish Gàidhlig Studies: A Rejoinder to Armstrong et al.,’ Scottish Affairs 31.1 (2022): 109-121. [pdf available online] https://dx.doi.org/10.3366/scot.2022.0401

 

Quayson, Ato, Ankhi Mukherjee. “Introduction.” Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum, ed. Quayson and Mukherjee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. [Open Access:https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/decolonizing-the-english-literary-curriculum/introduction/40B859BEFA4A0BF2E164444C6E509490].

 

Scots Emigration to North America (and its Impact on Indigenous Peoples)

Adams, Ian H., and Meredyth Somerville. Cargoes of Despair and Hope: Scottish Emigration to North America 1603-1803. Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1993.

 

Bumsted, J. M. The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America, 1770-1815. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1982.

 

—. “The Scottish Diaspora: Emigration to British North America, 1763-1815.” Nation and Province in the First British Empire: Scotland and the Americas, 1600-1800, ed Ned C. Landsman. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 200l.

 

Calder, Jenni. Lost in the Backwoods: Scots and the North American Wilderness. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, [2013].

 

      —. Scots in Canada. Edinburgh: Luath, 2003.

 

Calloway, Colin. White People, Indians, and Highlanders: Tribal Peoples and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

 

      Devine, T. M. Scotland’s Empire, 1600-1815. London: Penguin, 2004.

 

—. To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland’s Global Diaspora, 1750-2010. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, [2011]. Print.

 

Devine, T. M. Devine, ed. Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society: Proceedings of the Scottish Historical Studies Seminar University of Strathclyde 1990-91. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1992.

 

Graham, Ian Charles Cargill. Colonists from Scotland: Emigration to North America, 1707-1783. Ithaca, N.Y: Published for the American Historical Association by Cornell University Press, 1956.

 

Harper, Marjory, and Michael Vance, eds. Myth, Migration and the Making of Memory: Scotia and Nova Scotia, c.1700-1990. Halifax, N.S: Fernwood Publishing, 1999.

 

Kehoe, S. Karley, and Vance, Michael. “The Mi’kmaq, the Pattersons and Remembering the Scottish Colonisation of Nova Scotia.” In Reappraisals of British Colonisation in Atlantic Canada, 1700-1930. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

 

Landsman, Ned C. Scottish Colonization and the Concept of Ethnicity in Early America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.

 

Lutz, John Sutton, ed. Myth and Memory: Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Vancouver; Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2007.

                                                            

MacDougall, Robert. The Emigrant’s Guide to North America. Ed. Elizabeth Thompson. Toronto: Natural Heritage, 1998.

 

Morton, Graeme, and David A. Wilson, eds. Irish and Scottish Encounters with Indigenous Peoples: Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Montreal; Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.

 

Newton, Michael. “Bury my heart at Culloden: Reflections on Empire, Identity and Social Justice in the Gaelic Diaspora.” Struileag: Shore to Shore / Cladach gu Cladach, ed. Kevin MacNeill. 2015.

 

—. “Celtic Cousins or White Settlers? Scottish Highlanders and First Nations.” Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 5 / Fifth Scottish Gaelic Research Conference, ed. Kenneth Nilsen, 221-37. Sydney, Nova Scotia: Cape Breton University Press, 2010.

 

—. “The Gaelic Diaspora in North America.” The Modern Scottish Diaspora, ed. Duncan Sim. Edinburgh: EUP, 2014.

 

—. “Highland Canon Fodder: Scottish Gaelic Literature in North American Contexts.” eKeltoi 1 (2016), 147-175.

 https://www4.uwm.edu/celtic/ekeltoi/volumes/vol1/1_6/newton_1_6.pdf

 

—. “The Macs meet the ‘Micmacs’: Scottish Gaelic First Encounter Narratives from Nova Scotia.”Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies 5.1 (Autumn 2011).

 

—. Seanchaidh na Coille / The Memory-Keeper of the Forest: Anthology of Scottish-Gaelic Literature of Canada. Sydney, C.B: Cape Breton University Press. 2015., ed. Celts in the Americas. Sydney, C.B.: Cape Breton University Press. 2013

 

—. We’re Indians Sure Enough: The Legacy of the Scottish Highlanders in the United States. Richmond: Saorsa Media. 2001.

 

Peterson, Jan. Kilts on the Coast: the Scots who Built BC. Victoria, B.C.: Heritage House, [2012].

 

Rattray, W. J. The Scot in British North America. 4 vols. Toronto: Maclear, 1880.

 

Reid, Stanford, ed. The Scottish Tradition in Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976.

 

Rider, Peter E., and Heather McNabb, eds. A Kingdom of the Mind: How the Scots Helped Make Canada. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.

 

Szasz, Ferenc Morton. Scots in the North American West, 1790-1917. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, c2000.

 

LECTURE SERIES / EVENTS / PODCASTS

      Decolonizing Scottish Studies (“series of events”; lectures on YouTube), SFU Public Square, 17 April 2021.

https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/events/2021/decolonizing-scottish-studies.html

  • Bridgman, Alyssa. “Sites of Memory and Amnesia: Simon Fraser’s Legacy in Vancouver”

  • Bond, Emma, and Michael Morris. “Transnational Scotland: Legacies of Empire”

  • Parent, Amy. "Building Solidarity to Re-right History through the Repatriation of the House of Niis Joohl Pole from the National Museum of Scotland"

 

MUSEUMS / GALLERIES

Colonial Histories and Legacies in our Museums,” National Museums Scotland,https://www.nms.ac.uk/about-us/our-work/colonial-histories-and-legacies/#:~:text=For%20more%20than%20200%20years,soldiers%2C%20missionaries%20and%20forced%20migrants.

 

Curry, Tommy J. “Decolonising the Scottish Museum: The Stakes of a Decolonial Approach to Scottish History,” Museums Galleries Scotland, 14 September 2022. https://www.museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk/blog-article/decolonising-the-scottish-museum-the-stakes-of-a-decolonial-approach-to-scottish-history/

 

“Decolonising Scotland’s Design History,” V & A Dundee.

 https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/articles/decolonising-our-galleries

 

 

PODCASTS

 “TNP 134: Decolonizing Scottish Highland History and Radicalizing Gaelic Folk Culture with Michael Newton.” PodBean, 3 January 2020. https://crspagnola.podbean.com/e/tnp134-decolonizing-scottish-highland-history-and-radicalizing-gaelic-folk-culture-with-michael-newton/

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Unsettling Scottish Studies: Canons, Chronologies, Colonialisms

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Events are hosted by SFU's Research Centre for Scottish Studies.

Sponsorship and funding provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), SFU's Community Engagement Initiative (CERi); Reconciling Curriculum Grant via SFU's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), and SFU's Provost and Vice-President Academic.

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