Professor Cairns CRAIG

Professor Cairns CRAIG The University of Aberdeen School of Language & Literature Head of School Language & Literature work +44 (0)1224 273681 work +44 (0)1224 272562 pref cairns.craig@abdn.ac.uk pref HMF3 Humanity Manse Office Hours: Thursday 12pm - 1pm

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Biography

Cairns Craig is Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies, and is Director both of the second phase of the AHRC-funded Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies (2006-10). He rejoined the University of Aberdeen in 2005, having been a lecturer in the 1970s, after a long career in the University of Edinburgh, where he was Head of the English Literature Department 1997-2003, during the period when it achieved 5* rating in the Research Assessment Exercise. He was also Director for the Centre for the History of Ideas in Scotland.

He has published widely on Scottish and modernist literature, including Yeats, Eliot, Pound and the Politics of Poetry (1982), Out of History : Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and English Culture (1996), The Modern Scottish Novel (1999). His most recent books are Associationism and the Literary Imagination: From the Phantasmal Chaos (2007) and Intending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture since the Enlightenment (2009). He has also written an introduction to Iain Banks’s Complicity (2002).

He was general editor of the four volume History of Scottish Literature (1987-89) and general editor of the determinations series published by Edinburgh University Press from 1987 – 1997, which included titles such as Craig Beveridge and Ronald Turnbull’s The Eclipse of Scottish Culture (1987), Alexander Broadie’s The Tradition of Scottish Philosophy, Christopher Harvie’s Cultural Weapons: Scotland and Survival in a New Europe, as well as Forward!: Labour Politics in Scotland 1888-1988, edited by Ian Donnachie, Christopher Harvie and Ian S. Wood; The Manufacture of Scottish History, edited by Ian Donnachie and Christopher Whatley; and Scotland’s Claim of Right, edited by Owen Dudley Edwards. He was also an editor of the Canongate Classics series, in which he published (with Randall Stevenson) An Anthology of Twentieth Century Scottish Drama.

He was on the editorial board of the influential arts magazine Cencrastus, from its founding in 1981 till 1987; he was an associate editor of Radical Scotland from 1988, and was the publisher of Edinburgh Review from 2001–05. Through Edinburgh Review he was responsible for publications such as Angela McSeveney’s Imprint, George Davie’s Ferrier and the Blackout of the Scottish Enlightenment, and Peter Manson’s Adjunct: An Undigest.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2001, of the British Academy since 2005 and was awarded an OBE for services to Literature and Education in 2007.

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Research Interests

Irish-Scottish cultural relations from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries (MacPherson to Yeats in poetry, Sterne to Kelman in the novel, Hutcheson to MacIntyre in philosophy)

The ‘lyrical epic’ in modern poetry (Yeats to Muldoon)

Late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Scottish thought (William Thomson, Peter Guthrie Tait, James Clerk Maxwell, John Ferguson McLennan, William Robertson Smith, J.G. Frazer, Patrick Geddes, Edward Caird, Andrew Seth, John Laird, Norman Kemp Smith)

Contemporary Scottish writing (especially Iain Banks, A.L. Kennedy, Janice Galloway, Alan Warner)

Scottish women writers of the inter-war period (Nan Shepherd, Catherine Carswell, Naomi Mitchison, Willa Muir).

Graduate students interested in working in any of these areas, or in connected areas, should contact him by email at cairns.craig@abdn.ac.uk.

 

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Current Research

I am currently working on a book on Muriel Spark, a history of the Scottish novel since the eighteenth century, and a biography of the Scottish sociologist Robert Morrison  MacIver, who taught sociology in the University of Aberdeen before the First World War and who held professorships at the University of Toronto and at Columbia, New York. My work on MacIver is part of a project on 'Intellectual Migrants' run by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, and which is exploring the role of Scottish and Irish university graduates in the development of educational institutions in North America and in Australasia.

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External Responsibilities

AHRC peer review panellist, British Academy grants officer.

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Publications

Chapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings

Chapters

• Craig, RC. (2011). 'The Scottish Novel'. P Parrinder & A Gasiorek (eds), in: Oxford History of the Novel in English: The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel 1880-1940. vol. 4, Oxford History of the Novel in English, vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.
• Craig, RC. (2011). 'Scottish Fiction'. P Parrinder & A Gasoriek (eds), in: The Oxford History of the Novel in English, volume 4: The Reinventiion of the British and Irish Novel 1880-1940. vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, pp. 473-489.
• Craig, RC. (2011). 'Empire of Intellect: The Scottish Enlightenment and Scotland’s Intellectual Migrants'. JM MacKenzie & TM Devine (eds), in: Scotland and the British Empire. Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 84-117.
• Craig, RC. (2011). 'Tradition and the Individual Editor: Professor Grierson, modernism and national poetics’'. P Mackay, E Longley & F Brearton (eds), in: Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 39-57.
• Craig, RC. (2010). 'Scotland’s Fantastic Physics: Energy transformation in MacDonald, Stevenson, Barrie and Spark'. in: Scotland as Science Fiction. Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg [Pa.], pp. 15-28.
• Craig, RC. (2009). 'Kenneth White'. C Nicholson & M McGuire (eds), in: The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Poetry. Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, pp. 154 -171.
• Craig, RC. (2009). 'Arcades: The Turning of the Nineteenth Century'. I Brown & A Riach (eds), in: The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, pp. 15- 24.
• Craig, RC. (2009). 'Nostophobia'. J Murray, F Farley & R Stoneman (eds), in: Scottish Cinema Now. Cambridge Scholars Pub., Cambridge, United Kingdom, pp. 56-71.
• Craig, RC. (2009). 'Modernism and National Identity in Scottish Magazines: The Evergreen (1895-7), Scottish Art and Letters (1944-50), The Scottish Chapbook (1922-3), The Northern Review (1924), The Scots Magazine (1924- ), The Modern Scot (1930-6), Outlook (1936-7), and The Voice of Scotland (1938-9, 1945, 1955)'. P Brooker & A Thacker (eds), in: The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume I, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955. vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 759-784.
• Craig, RC. (2006). 'Nineteenth-Century Scottish Thought'. in: Edinburgh History of Scottish LIterature, Vol 2. Edinburgh History of Scottish LIterature, Vol 2, pp. 267-276.
• Craig, RC. (2006). 'Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature'. in: The Study of Scottish Literature. The Study of Scottish Literature, pp. 16-32.
• Craig, RC. (2006). 'Criticism of Scottish Literature'. in: Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol 3. Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol 3, pp. 42-52.
• Craig, RC. (2006). '1979, Edinburgh and Glasgow: Devolution Deferred'. in: The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Literatures in English; Edinburgh University Press; eds. McHale, B., Stevenson, R.. The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Literatures in English; Edinburgh University Press; eds. McHale, B., Stevenson, R., pp. 217-228.
• Craig, RC. (2006). 'Devolving the Scottish Novel'. in: A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction, ed James English. A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction, ed James English, pp. 121-140.
• Craig, RC. (2005). 'National Literature and Cultural Capital in Scotland and Ireland'. in: Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society 1700-2000, eds Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan. Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society 1700-2000, eds Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan, pp. 38-64.
• Craig, RC. (2004). 'Scotland and Hybridity'. in: Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature eds. Carruthers, G and Goldie, D (Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York). Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature eds. Carruthers, G and Goldie, D (Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York), pp. 229-253.
• Craig, RC. (2004). 'Coleridge, Hume, and the Chains of the Romantic Imagination'. in: Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism, eds Davis, Duncan and Sorensen. Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism, eds Davis, Duncan and Sorensen, pp. 20-37.
• Craig, RC. (2004). 'Beyond Reason -- Hume, Seth, Macmurray and Scotland's Postmodernity'. in: Scotland in Theory, eds Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (Rodopi, Amsterdam- New York). Scotland in Theory, eds Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (Rodopi, Amsterdam- New York), pp. 249-283.
• Craig, RC. (2004). 'Location and Dislocation: A Scottish Perspective'. in: The Promotion of Knowledge: Lectures ot Mark the Centenary of the British Academy 1902-2002. The Promotion of Knowledge: Lectures ot Mark the Centenary of the British Academy 1902-2002, pp. 181-190.
• Craig, RC. (2003). 'Postcolonial Hybridity in Scotland and Ireland'. in: Ireland (Ulster) Sxcotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons. Ireland (Ulster) Sxcotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons, pp. 231-233.
• Craig, RC. (2003). 'Culture After Devolution'. in: Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons. Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons, pp. 39-43.
• Craig, RC. (2002). 'Where is the Nation You Promised?: American Voice in Modern Scottish and Irish Poetry’'. in: Poetry and Contemporary Culture: The Question of Value. Poetry and Contemporary Culture: The Question of Value, pp. 185-208.

Books and Reports

Books

• Craig, RC. (2009). 'Intending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture since the Enlightenment'. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
• Craig, RC. (2004). ''Introduction', J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough'. Unknown Publisher, J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890 edn); Canongate.
• Craig, RC. (2002). 'Iain Banks's Complicity: A Reader's Guide'. Unknown Publisher, Continuum: New York.

Contributions to Specialist Publications

Articles

• Craig, RC. (2010). 'The last Romantics'. TLS: The Times Literary Supplement, 15 January.

Non-textual Forms

Web Publications and Websites

• Craig, RC., (2010). 'Finlay, Ian Hamilton (1925–2006)'. , 2010, Web publication/site, Oxford University Press, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  [Online] DOI: 10.1093/ref:odnb/97737

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