Caribbean-Scottish Passages: representations of colonial relations in Scottish literature

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Starting date
February 1, 2008
Duration (months)
6
Managers or local contacts
Sassi Carla

This project will investigate changing constructions of national identity in Scottish literary texts dealing with the West Indies, clustering around two key historical/ideological phases: first, Scotland’s active involvement in the exploitation of slaves on West Indian plantations and (the response to) Scottish abolitionist campaigns and the eventual abolition of slavery; and second, the anti-imperial turn of 20th-century Scottish (cultural) nationalism and its distancing from ‘British’/’English’ imperial exploits. The aim of the research is to highlight how literary figurations of Scotland’s relation to the West Indies (represented as an edenic/exotic place or alternatively as an economic asset or, in more recent times, as a problematic/traumatic lieu de mémoire) signal and explicate imperial destabilizations and re-formations of Scottish identity.

Sponsors:

Enti vari
Funds: assigned and managed by an external body
Syllabus: ENTI.RIC - Finanziamento da enti vari per la ricerca

Project participants

Carla Sassi
Associate Professor

Collaboratori esterni

Gemma Robinson
University Stirling, UK English Studies Senior Lecturer
Research areas involved in the project
Letteratura inglese e letterature anglofone
Geographical-Cultural Areas: Scotland
Publications
Title Authors Year
Caribbean-Scottish Relations: for a Poetics of Memory Sassi, Carla 2011
Remembering the Caribbean: Post-devolutionary Scotland at the Crossroads of History and Memory Sassi, Carla 2011
Issues of Memory, Issues of Identity: Interrogating Scotland’s Mnemonic Fictions of the Caribbean Sassi, Carla 2010
A Double Strangeness: Albinia Catherine Hutton's negotiation of home and exile identities between Scotland and Jamaica Sassi, Carla 2009
Editorial: Caribbean-Scottish Passages Sassi, Carla; Robinson, G. 2008
International Journal of Scottish Literature N.4 - Special Issue - "Caribbean Scottish Passages" - ISSN 1751-2808 Sassi, Carla; Robinson, G. 2008
The Kilted Planter: Scottish-Caribbean Relations and the Literary Imagination Sassi, Carla 2008
Caribbean-Scottish Relations. Colonial & Contemporary Inscriptions in History, Language & Literature Covi, G.; ANIM ADDO, J.; Pollard, V.; Sassi, Carla 2007

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