Study Abroad Program

Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster is a memoir of a twenty-first-century literary pilgrimage to retrace the famous eighteenth-century Scottish journey of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, two of the most celebrated writers of their day. An accomplished journalist and aficionado of fine literature, William W. Starr enlivens this crisply written travelogue with a playful wit, an enthusiasm for all things Scottish, the boon and burden of American sensibility, and an ardent appreciation for Boswell and Johnson—who make frequent cameos throughout these ramblings. Blending biography, intellectual and cultural history, and comic asides into his travelogue, Starr has crafts an inviting vantage point from which to view aspects of Scotland's storied past and complex present through an illuminating literary lens.

Print book
No writer is more charismatic than Robert Burns and no biographer has captured his energy, brilliance and radicalism as well as Robert Crawford does in The Bard. To his international admirers Burns was a genius, a hero, a warm-hearted friend; yet to the mother of one of his lovers he was a wastrel, to a fellow poet he was 'sprung...from raking of dung', and to his political enemies a 'traitor'. Drawing on a surprising variety of untapped sources - from rediscovered poetry by Burns to manuscript journals, correspondence, interviews and oratory by his contemporaries - this new biography presents the remarkable life, loves and struggles of the great poet.

eBook
An historically and critically sound - and contemporary - evaluation of tartan and tartanry based on proper contextualisation and coherent analysis. This critical re-evaluation of one of the more controversial aspects of recent debates on Scottish culture draws together contributions from leading researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, resulting in a highly accessible yet authoritative volume. This book, like tartan, weaves together two strands. The first, like a warp, considers the significance of tartan in Scottish history and culture during the last four centuries, including tartan's role in the development of diaspora identities in North America. The second, like a weft, considers the place of tartan and rise of tartanry in the national and international representations of Scottishness, including heritage, historical myth-making, popular culture, music hall, literature, film, comedy, rock and pop music, sport and'high'culture.From Tartan to Tartanry offers fresh insight into and new perspectives on key cultural phenomena, from the iconic role of the Scottish regiments to the role of tartan in rock music. It argues that tartan may be fun, but it also plays a wide range of fascinating, important and valuable roles in Scottish and international culture.

eBook
The last decades of the twentieth century have seen something of a Renaissance in Scottish studies, and no era has generated more interest among both scholars and the general public than the Middle Ages. History, Literature, and Music in Scotland, 700-1560 brings together contributions from scholars working in different disciplines but with a common interest in medieval Scotland. The essays cover a variety of topics and different approaches to the past by historians, literary scholars and musicologists, who discuss historical writing, political culture, entertainment, culture, gender, power and authority, and identity between AD 700 and AD 1560. Many contributions highlight the connections of medieval Scotland with other regions of Europe, including Ireland and Scandinavia, and almost all of the papers illustrate how new approaches to the source material can illuminate significant new aspects of medieval Scottish society.

Print book
How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond.