Notes on Contributors
Corey E. Andrews received his Ph.D. from Ohio University, and he is an Assistant Professor of English at Youngstown State University. He specializes in eighteenth-century Scottish studies, particularly the work of Robert Burns. His book Literary Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Club Poetry was published in 2004, and he has published articles and reviews in The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, Eighteenth-Century Scotland and Lumen. His current book project focuses on the cross-cultural nature of eighteenth-century Scottish verse, tentatively entitled Scots in English: Cross-Cultural Poetics in Eighteenth-Century Scotland.
Murdo Macdonald is Professor of History of Scottish Art at the University of Dundee. He was editor of Edinburgh Review from 1990 to 1994. He is author of Scottish Art in Thames and Hudson’s World of Art series. He currently leads an interdisciplinary research project into Highland art funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. His book, Patrick Geddes: A Democratic Intellect, will be published in 2009.
Andrew O. Lindsay was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. He gained the degrees of MA and B.Phil from St Andrews University, and went on to become a Principal Teacher of English. He is a life-long Burns enthusiast and a former President of St Andrews Burns Club. Family connections take him frequently to Guyana, where evidence of a strongly Scottish colonial past led him to speculate how Burns would have reacted to plantation life if he had indeed gone to the West Indies in 1786.
Daniel Livesay is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation examines the movement of mixed-race individuals from the Caribbean to Britain from 1770-1820. In particular, he explores how their presence in the metropole impacted British racial attitudes and ideology in the years surrounding abolitionism.
Kei Miller read English at the University of the West Indies and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. His PhD work considers epistolary narratives from the Caribbean. Kei’s first collection of short fiction, The Fear of Stones, was short-listed in 2007 for a Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize. He has written two poetry collections and is also editor of Carcanet’s New Caribbean Poetry Anthology. His first novel, The Same Earth, was published in 2008. Kei has been a visiting writer at York University in Canada, a Vera Rubin Fellow at Yaddo, and an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa.
Michael Morris is currently doing a PhD at Glasgow University on ‘Scotland: Empire and the Black Atlantic’.
Alan Riach is a poet and holds the Chair of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. He has published four books of poetry including Clearances (2001) and his most recent book of criticism is Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). His radio work in New Zealand includes individual programmes on Scottish opera, Scottish literature, music and the arts, and the ‘Literature’ contributions to the ‘Millennium Series’ Fearful Symmetries; his own series ‘The Good of the Arts’ can be found at http://www.southwest.org.nz/productions/tgota/index.htm.
Gemma Robinson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Studies, University of Stirling. She is the editor of University of Hunger: Collected Poems and Selected Prose of Martin Carter (Bloodaxe, 2006) and a co-investigator on the AHRC project, Devolving Diasporas, part of which focuses on diasporic writing and performance in Scotland, 1980-present (www.devolvingdiasporas.com). She gratefully acknowledges the support of Devolving Diasporas for research on diasporic literary connections between Scotland and the Caribbean, and the British Academy conference grant that supported 'Caribbean-Scottish Passages'.
Carla Sassi is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of Verona. Among her most recent books: Imagined Scotlands. Saggi sulla letteratura scozzese (2002), Why Scottish Literature Matters (2005), published by the Saltire Society in Edinburgh, and, as a co-author, Caribbean-Scottish Relations. Colonial and Contemporary Inscriptions in History, Language and Literature (2007). Her main fields of interest include Scottish literature (with special reference to the post-Union period and the ‘Scottish Renaissance’) and post-colonial theory. She is Honorary Patron of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. She was a Caledonian Research Foundation/Royal Society of Edinburgh Visiting Research Fellow at the Dept. of English Studies at the University of Stirling for six months in 2008.
Michael Visocchi’s practice involves the use of sculpture, photography and drawing. He is concerned with the pursuit and development of a stylised and coded language exploring issues surrounding the European landscape. In 2004 Visocchi was elected the youngest ever academician of the Royal Scottish Academy. In September 2008 his public artwork: the UK memorial to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade was unveiled in the City of London. He graduated in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art in 2001 and continues to exhibit widely across the UK and abroad.
Karina Williamson has taught English and Caribbean literature at the universities of Uppsala, Oxford, Edinburgh, and New Mexico, and is now Honorary Fellow in English Literature at Edinburgh. She has edited The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart, the anonymous Jamaican novel, Marly, and Contrary Voices: Representations of West Indian Slavery.
