World Congress of Scottish Literatures 2024
We are very excited to announce that the fourth World Congress of Scottish Literatures will be hosted by the School of English at the University of Nottingham, from Wednesday 3rd to Sunday 7th July 2024.
Both the School and the city enjoy a richly interlinked history with Scotland and Scottish writing. The School has particular specialist research in Older Scots, Romanticism, literary Modernism, and in the contemporary. Nottingham and its Midlands environs recur in the writing of Walter Scott; Byron’s ancestral home of Newstead Abbey lies just north of the city; J. M. Barrie earned a living writing for the Nottingham Journal; and the University holds the papers of Catherine Carswell. We even make an appearance in Trainspotting.
We hope that the Congress will be an opportunity to continue the mission of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, to bring together scholars from all over the world situate Scotland in a global and transnational scope. Hosting the Congress south of the border also offers us an opportunity to revisit the historical relationship between England and Scotland, and the effect that collaboration has had on the world. Nottingham, meanwhile, is indelibly marked by an outlaw imagination, and we are looking forward to a Congress held in that spirit.
Call for Papers
While the fourth World Congress does not have a specific theme, our scope is transnational, and we would especially welcome papers on subjects that reflect the specific context of the Congress in Nottingham: the relationship between Scotland and England from earliest times to the present, a relationship which has had profound implications for the entire world, and which is a significant relationship in literatures in Scots, Gaelic, English, French and Latin from earliest evidence to contemporary production.
Proposals for papers, posters and presentations should include an abstract of c. 200 words, and your affiliation. Papers in English, Scots or Scottish Gaelic are welcomed; however, the conference is unable to provide simultaneous translation services for papers not delivered in English. The deadline for ALL proposal submissions is 31 October 2023.
Please send submissions to the Congress Committee at Nottingham: wcsl24@nottingham.ac.uk.
