
OBE, FBA, FRSE
The Glucksman Chair of Irish & Scottish Studies
- About
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- Email Address
- cairns.craig@abdn.ac.uk
- Telephone Number
- +44 (0)1224 273681
- Office Address
- HMF3 Humanity Manse Office Hours: Thursday 12pm - 1pm
- School/Department
- School of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History
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.
External Memberships
AHRC peer review panellist, British Academy grants officer.
- Research
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Research Overview
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.
- Publications
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Page 1 of 1 Results 1 to 42 of 42
525 Years in the Pursuit of Truth Podcast: The Influence of Prof. Herbert J.C. Grierson, 1866-1960
Non-textual Forms: Digital or Visual ProductsMuriel Spark, Existentialism and The Art of Death
Edinburgh University Press. 232 pagesBooks and Reports: BooksThe Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Indpendence
Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. 306 pagesBooks and Reports: BooksBotanic Gardens and the Aesthetics of Artifice
Journal of Scottish Thought, vol. 9, pp. 95-109Contributions to Journals: Articles- [OPEN ACCESS] http://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/2164/10407/1/Craig.pdf
James Robertson: In the Margins of History
The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000. Acheson, J. (ed.). Edinburgh University Press, pp. 163-173, 10 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersThe Art of Uncertainty: Forms of Omniscience in the Novels of Robin Jenkins
The Fiction of Robin Jenkins: Some Kind of Grace. Brill Rodopi, pp. 67-89, 22 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersEdwin Morgan's Poetry from Scotland
The International Companion to Edwin Morgan. Riach, A. (ed.). Association of Scottish Literary Studies, pp. 59-86, 28 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersAlexander Bain, Associationism and Scottish Philosophy
Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Graham, G. (ed.). Oxford University Press, pp. 95-118, 24 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersHerbert Grierson and the Making of Modern Poetry
Vita Mea: The Autobiography of Herbert Grierson. Craig, C. (ed.). Aberdeen University Press, pp. vi-lxxxvii, 82 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersThe modern scottish novel
A Companion to British Literature. De Maria Jr., R., Chang, H., Zacher, S. (eds.). Wiley, pp. 404-423, 20 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118827338.ch99
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Scotland's Migrant Philosophers and the History of Scottish Philosophy
History of European Ideas, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 670-692Contributions to Journals: Articles- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.735140
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
The Literary Tradition
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Devine, T., Wormald, J. (eds.). Oxford University Press, pp. 99-129, 31 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersEmpire of Intellect: The Scottish Enlightenment and Scotland’s Intellectual Migrants
Scotland and the British Empire. MacKenzie, J. M., Devine, T. (eds.). Oxford University Press, pp. 84-117, 34 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersTradition and the individual editor: Professor Grierson, modernism and national poetics
Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry. Mackay, P., Longley, E., Brearton, F. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, pp. 39-57, 19 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersThe Scottish Novel
Oxford History of the Novel in English: The Reinvention of the British and Irish Novel 1880-1940. Parrinder, P., Gasiorek, A. (eds.). Oxford University PressChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersScottish Fiction
The Oxford History of the Novel in English Volume 4: The Reinventiion of the British and Irish Novel 1880-1940. Parrinder, P., Gasoriek, A. (eds.). Oxford University Press, pp. 473-489, 17 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersKelman's Glasgow Sentence
The Edinburgh Companion to James Kelman. Hames, S. (ed.). Edinburgh University Press, pp. 75-85, 11 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
The last Romantics: how the scholarship of Herbert Grierson influenced Modernist poetry
TLS: The Times Literary Supplement, pp. 14-15Contributions to Specialist Publications: ArticlesOtherworlds: Devolution and the Scottish novel
The Cambridge Companion to: Scottish Literature. Carruthers, G., McIlvanney, L. (eds.). Cambridge University Press, pp. 261-274, 14 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCO9781139045407.020
- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
Finlay, Ian Hamilton (1925–2006)
Non-textual Forms: Web Publications and Websites- [ONLINE] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/97737
Scotland’s Fantastic Physics: Energy transformation in MacDonald, Stevenson, Barrie and Spark
Scotland as Science Fiction. Bucknell University Press, pp. 15-28, 13 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersArcades: The Turning of the Nineteenth Century
The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Brown, I., Riach, A. (eds.). Edinburgh University Press, pp. 15-24, 10 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersKenneth White
The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Poetry. Nicholson, C., McGuire, M. (eds.). Edinburgh University Press, pp. 154 -171, 18 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersIntending Scotland: Explorations in Scottish Culture since the Enlightenment
Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. 272 pagesBooks and Reports: BooksModernism 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)
The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume I, Britain and Ireland 1880-1955. Brooker, P., Thacker, A. (eds.). Oxford University Press, pp. 759-784, 26 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersNostophobia
Scottish Cinema Now. Murray, J., Farley, F., Stoneman, R. (eds.). Cambridge Scholars Pub., pp. 56-71, 16 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersThe study of Scottish literature
The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature: From Columba to the Union (Until 1707). Edinburgh University Press, pp. 16-32, 17 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters- [ONLINE] View publication in Scopus
1979, Edinburgh and Glasgow: Devolution Deferred
The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Literatures in English; Edinburgh University Press; eds. McHale, B., Stevenson, R., pp. 217-228, 11 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersCriticism of Scottish Literature
Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Vol 3, pp. 42-52, 10 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersDevolving the Scottish Novel
A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction, ed James English, pp. 121-140, 19 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersEdinburgh History of Scottish Literature
The Study of Scottish Literature, pp. 16-32, 16 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersNineteenth-Century Scottish Thought
Edinburgh History of Scottish LIterature, Vol 2, pp. 267-276, 9 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersNational Literature and Cultural Capital in Scotland and Ireland
Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society 1700-2000, eds Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan, pp. 38-64, 26 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters'Introduction', J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough
Unknown Publisher, J.G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890 edn); Canongate. 20 pagesBooks and Reports: BooksBeyond Reason -- Hume, Seth, Macmurray and Scotland's Postmodernity
Scotland in Theory, eds Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (Rodopi, Amsterdam- New York), pp. 249-283, 34 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersColeridge, Hume, and the Chains of the Romantic Imagination
Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism, eds Davis, Duncan and Sorensen, pp. 20-37, 17 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersLocation and Dislocation: A Scottish Perspective
The Promotion of Knowledge: Lectures ot Mark the Centenary of the British Academy 1902-2002, pp. 181-190, 9 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersScotland and Hybridity
Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature eds. Carruthers, G and Goldie, D (Rodopi, Amsterdam-New York), pp. 229-253, 24 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersCulture After Devolution
Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons, pp. 39-43, 4 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersPostcolonial Hybridity in Scotland and Ireland
Ireland (Ulster) Sxcotland: Concepts, Contexts, Comparisons, pp. 231-233, 2 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: ChaptersIain Banks's Complicity: A Reader's Guide
Continuum, New York. 92 pagesBooks and Reports: BooksWhere is the Nation You Promised?: American Voice in Modern Scottish and Irish Poetry’
Poetry and Contemporary Culture: The Question of Value, pp. 185-208, 23 pagesChapters in Books, Reports and Conference Proceedings: Chapters