Digital Commons Network^™

Scotland’S Top Ten & The Inadequacy Of A National Canon: Alasdair Gray’S Lanark (1981), Scott Lyall

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the healthy overlap in the recent BBC Scotland poll on Scotland's Favourite Novel between popular appeal and critical recognition; judges Gray's Lanark as "Scotland's greatest modern novel," which "deserves to be much better known internationally," as "the outstanding postmodern challenge to the global conformism of capitalist hyper-individualism," laments that, despite their usefulness, such curated polls and lists are self-perpetuating, to the neglect of many distinctive Scottish novels, and concludes by asking "what would a truly uncurated top 30 look like?"

Robin Jenkins, The Thistle And The Grail (1954) With A Comment On Sunset Song, David E. Latane

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Robin Jenkins's story of a Scottish football (soccer) team, Drumsagart Thistle, and its quest to win the Scottish Junior Cup, as "a marvelous compendium of Roy of the Rovers improbabilities, Our Town ethnography, critiques of gender relations, subtle and broad satire, and laugh outloud comedy."

Eric Linklater, Private Angelo (1946), Gill Plain

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Linklater's novel about World War II in Italy as "a book that cherishes national difference while utterly condemning nationalism," "as much a book for 2017 as it was for 1946," and "a sharply observant satire dissecting the male vanity, national hubris and hypocrisy behind the 'logic' of war."

Willa Muir, Imagined Corners (1931), Timothy C. Baker

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Muir's novel (which came in 30th in the BBC poll), set in a small Scottish town and concerned with "'the ideology of Scotland,' and questions of class, religion, sexuality, politics, and education," as "indisputably a great novel, perhaps equalled in British fiction only by To the Lighthouse, and utterly unique in the Scottish canon,"

James Robertson, The Fanatic (2000), Silvia Mergenthal

Studies in Scottish Literature

Suggests that Robertson's first novel, chiefly concerned with 17th century Scotland, already shows the complex intertextual relationships with earlier Scottish works by Scott, Hogg, and Stevenson that marks his subsequent writing, and comments particularly on its question "What happens later?," in relation to the Scottish vote for political devolution in May 1997.

James Robertson, Joseph Knight (2003), Ilka Schwittlinsky

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Robertson's novel, based on the true story of the Jamaican slave who in 1778 successfully asserted his freedom in the Scottish Court of Session, and the intertwined story of John Wedderburn, the Scottish plantation owner whose slave he had been, as "an eminently enjoyable historical novel which tackles a difficult subject matter [Scotland’s complicity in slavery and the slave trade] with astonishing humanity."

Nan Shepherd, The Quarry Wood (1928), Carole Jones

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Shepherd's novel about an independent woman in north-east Scotland as "vivid in delineating its female central character, its local language, and what is undoubtedly a radical engagement with sexual politics," that "examines closely issues of sexual identity and gender relations, and ... comes to its own thoughtful conclusions on women's place in the world."

Muriel Spark, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Katrin Berndt

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Spark's well-known novel, recognizing its "curious amalgamation of acerbic humour, elegance of style, Calvinist spirit, and careful poignancy of plot development," but pointing also to "the pleasurable challenge" offered by its "charismatic" protagonist, Jean Brodie, "glamorous and romantic," "with a proud self-assurance rarely bestowed on female characters," which nonetheless "eludes everyone’s emotional grasp."

Writing On The Margins: Luke Sutherland, Venus As A Boy (2004), Manfred Malzahn

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Sutherland's "epiphanic" short novel, which received rave reviews on publication, as a novel that should have been "an almost mandatory selection" for the BBC poll ballot, suggesting that it was excluded, not only because of length, explicit language, and violence, but because its island setting and depiction of "the fuzzy margins of sexual and racial identity" made it wrongly seem peripheral to the Scottish "mainland and mainstream."

Gavin Douglas's Aeneados: Caxton's English And 'Our Scottis Langage', Jacquelyn Hendricks

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scots poet Gavin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Aeneid into Scots, and Douglas's treatment of his predecessor William Caxton's translation of Virgil into English, arguing that Douglas associates Caxton's English with a barbaric world of monsters and beasts, in contrast to Scots which is seen as expressing civilized classical values, and that Douglas's translation, by enhancing and showcasing the literary power of Scots for a wider audience, successfully resisted for at least forty years the linguistic standardization initiated by the burgeoning print industry.

Beattie's The Minstrel: A Missing Link In Scottish Poetry, Ian C. Robertson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scottish poet James Beattie's poetry, especially his major work The Minstrel, and his shorter poem in Scots, "To Mr Alexander Ross," in terms of his connections, role and influence within the Scottish poetry and culture of the mid- to late 18th century, arguing that without taking into account Beattie's complex relationship to Scottish, and specifically Aberdonian, culture, the development of 18th century Scottish poetry between Ramsay and Burns cannot be adequately understood.

The Scotch Bard And 'The Planting Line': New Documents On Burns And Jamaica, Clark Mcginn

Studies in Scottish Literature

Based on newly-identified documents, reexamines Burns's plan in 1786 to emigrate to Jamaica to take a job on a Scottish-owned slave plantation, and the timing and circumstances of his eventual decision to stay in Scotland, concluding that Burns "kept his options open to the last moment," and that the new documents might mean Burns "sought to prosper from chattel slavery," and "only dropped the opportunity because a better offer came along, not because of any moral scruples."

Immigrant Communities, Cultural Conflicts, And Intermarriage In Ann Marie Di Mambro's Tally's Blood, Ian Brown

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the stage history, structure and themes of Anne Marie Di Mambro’s play Tally’s Blood (1990), especially in terms of the cultural stresses on Italian immigrant families in Scotland in the 1930s and the impact on them of the Second World War.

An Ssl Research Symposium: Introduction: New Developments In Robert Burns Bibliography, Gerard Carruthers

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces four talks given at the National Library of Scotland on March 16, 2017, at a workshop on New Developments in Robert Burns Bibliography, jointly convened by Robert Betteridge of the National Library and by Prof. Carruthers, as general editor of the AHRC-funded project Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century, arguing that "every bit as much as literary criticism or textual editing, bibliographical studies need generational renewal."

Towards A New Bibliography Of Robert Burns, Craig Lamont

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces and describes the first phase of a new, free on-line resource from the University of Glasgow, A Bibliography of Robert Burns for the 21st Century: 1786-1802, based on fresh examination of multiple copies in several Scottish libraries, as well as in collections in the US and Canada, providing significantly-expanded entries for the early book-publication of Burns's poetry, and so allowing textual editors a more complete record of the textual history of Burns's work.

'Not In Egerer'? (Some Of) What We Still Don't Know About Burns Bibliography, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Briefly reviews developments in Burns bibliography since J.W. Egerer's Bibliography of Robert Burns (1964), examines the kinds of material that Egerer aimed to include and exclude, and presents a series of brief case-studies illustrating the desirability of additional research, especially on early publication in non-book formats, for obtaining a fuller picture of Burns's textual history and readership.

Burns And Chapbooks: A Bibliographer's Twilight Zone, Iain Beavan

Studies in Scottish Literature

Based on records for 358 chapbooks containing material by Robert Burns, published in Scotland, England and Ireland, between the 1780s and the 1880s, provides statistical information on their distribution by date and place of publication, and discusses some of the special research issues raised by this publication format, especially relating to the attribution (and misattribution) of authorship.

Robert Burns In Print At The National Library Of Scotland, Robert Betteridge

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the early Burns editions now in the National Library of Scotland, compares the NLS holdings to those of other major UK research libraries, examines the limited role of the deposit privilege in bring early Burns editions to the Advocates' Library before the founding of the NLS, and provides examples of significant early editions that were subsequently acquired for the library by purchase and donation.

'Upon The Decaying Kirk': A Footnote To Ane Dialogue, Jamie Reid Baxter

Studies in Scottish Literature

Prints a short Scottish verse-fragment from the 1630s, "Upon the Decaying Kirk," and discusses its relation to an earlier, longer workAne Dialogue (1619: see SSL 43:1) and to presbyterian protests in the Edinburgh High Kirk against the introduction of episcopalianism under King Charles I.

Digital Resources For Scottish Neo-Latin Literature, Ralph Mclean

Studies in Scottish Literature

Provides an annotated guide to the Scottish neo-Latin texts and translations now available in two major digital projects, the Philological Museum (University of Birmingham) and Bridging the Continental Divide (University of Glasgow), with briefer notes on other related print and digital resources, commenting on the importance of fully-annotated editorial and translation projects now fewer students and researchers can tackle such texts in the original Latin.

Gaelic Scotland And Post-Colonial Readings, Carla Sassi

Studies in Scottish Literature

A review of Silke Strohe's book Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 (2017), setting it in the context of Strohe's earlier work on Gaelic literature in the same period and of developments in the post-colonial theory as applied in interdisciplinary Scottish studies.

Books Noted And Received, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Short reviews and brief notices of twenty-one recent books in Scottish literary studies.

Contributors To Ssl 43:2

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

Anglo And Hispanic Vowel Variation In New Mexican English, Susan Brumbaugh

Linguistics ETDs

This study examines vowel formant differences between English speakers in New Mexico that self-identify as Anglo versus those that self-identify as Hispanic. Audio recordings were made of 16 New Mexicans reading short stories and carrier phases with embedded target words. F1 and F2 measurements were compared at the 50% point for monophthongs and at the 20% and 80% points for diphthongs. Mixed effects models assessed statistical significance of ethnicity, gender, and interactional effects on vowel formants and trajectory length.

All speakers showed a near-complete overlap of BOT and BOUGHT tokens, supporting a merger. Hispanic men and women patterned together to …

Co-Simulation Framework For Power Distribution System Analysis With Humans In The Loop, Victor H. Ayon

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Recent developments in the area of power generation have led to an increased penetration of storage and distributed energy resources (DER) in power distribution systems. As a result, new and enhanced energy management systems will be necessary as the deployment of DERs, as well as the need to control loads, continues to increase in the coming years. Advanced management systems are especially important to achieve resilient power delivery during emergency situations. During a blackout for example, a section of a distribution feeder could island to operate as a microgrid to ensure critical services such as water, food, and medical care …

Public Health Perspectives On Sexual Health And Family Planning, Molly Mccarthy

Theses & Dissertations

Large bodies of evidence document the importance of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in the lives of individuals and among populations. Of particular interest are sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), due to their potential for long-term health consequences, and unintended pregnancy because of its association with social and economic outcomes for women and families.

This dissertation addressed three distinct but related areas of reproductive health and family planning: counseling for condom use following an STD test, counseling for contraception following a pregnancy test in a clinical setting, and the effect of abortion on having and achieving long-term plans. These topics are …

Prodigal Father, Robert John Exley Jr

Capstones

Prodigal Father tells the story of one man’s journey from teenage drug addiction to joining one of the most violent white supremacist gangs in the country and now, nearly 20 years after turning his life around, he is dealing with the aftermath of a lifetime of bad decisions.

Bobby Exley, a former Nazi Low, spent most of his adult life in prison or on parole battling a 20-year heroin addiction. His wife, Rhonda, stuck by his side throughout his many incarcerations while raising their eight children. The Prodigal Father, told through the eyes of namesake son, filmmaker, Robert Exley Jr., …

Probing Consciousness, Samia Bouzid

Capstones

For centuries, the study of consciousness remained the purview of philosophers, spiritualists and religious leaders. But in the 1980s, the co-discoverer of the double-helix, James Crick, initiated a quest for a scientific explanation for consciousness — in a secret club. In the decades that followed, consciousness gained ground as a respectable area of scientific study, in fields such as neuroscience, artificial intelligence and physics. Yet, the more scientists learn about consciousness, the more it calls into question our fundamental assumptions about the way the world works. https://samiabouzid.atavist.com/probing-consciousness

Refugees Of New York/ Exilio En Nueva York, Lidia Hernandez

Capstones

Refugees of New York is a multimedia series about three people who fled their countries to find a new home in New York: a Guatemalan woman, a young Russian philosopher and a Syrian journalist. New York City is known as a welcoming place for immigrants and refugee seekers. But at the same time that they do find protection, they also struggle through long legal processes that may last for years. They experience cultural shock while adjusting to their new way of life. This story focuses on the personal experiences that brought these people from different nationalities and backgrounds, and aims …

The Vibe, Sarah P. Douglass

Capstones

The Vibe is a long-form narrative about where tech is taking the female orgasm. The piece concludes that physiological research is a required next step when creating the climax of the future.

http://sarahpdouglass.com