Professor Liam McIlvanney
MA(Hons) (Glasgow),
DPhil (Oxon)
Stuart Chair in Scottish Studies
| liam.mcilvanney@otago.ac.nz | |
| Phone | 64 3 479 4936 |
| Fax | 64 3 479 8558 |
| Office | 101 First Floor 99 Albany Street Dunedin |
| English Department University of Otago PO Box 56 Dunedin New Zealand |
Expertise
Scottish literature and culture since 1707, including: Robert Burns; Scottish vernacular poetry; the Glasgow Novel; Ulster-Scots poetry; contemporary Scottish writing; Irish-Scottish literary connections; literature of the Scottish Diaspora.
Professor McIlvanney is Director of the University’s Scottish Studies Programme.
Teaching
ENGL 241 Irish-Scots Gothic and the Gothic as Genre
ENGL 260 Modern Scottish Literature
ENGL 341 Irish-Scots Gothic and the Gothic as Genre
ENGL 350 Contemporary Irish and Scottish Poetry
Research Supervision
I am happy to supervise in any of the areas listed above. Prospective postgraduate students should visit the Postgraduate Pages on the Scottish Studies website.
Current Research
I recently guest-edited a special Robert Burns number of the International Journal of Scottish Literature, 6 (Spring/Summer 2010), and co-edited (with Ray Ryan) a collection of essays on contemporary Anglophone fiction, entitled The Good of the Novel (Faber, 2011). The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature, edited by myself and Dr Gerard Carruthers, will be published in 2011. I am currently completing my second novel, and preparing articles on: James K. Baxter; John Buchan’s Huntingtower; and Glasgow fiction of the 1930s.
Publications
Books
The Good of the Novel, ed. by Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan (London: Faber, 2011)
All the Colours of the Town (London: Faber, 2009).
Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700-2000, ed. by Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005)
Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002)
Book Chapters
‘Across the Narrow Sea: The Language, Literature and Politics of Ulster Scots’, in Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700-2000, ed. by Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 171-98
Introduction to Growing Up in the West: Edwin Muir, Poor Tom; J. F. Hendry, Fernie Brae: A Scottish Childhood; Gordon M. Williams, From Scenes Like These; Tom Gallacher, Apprentice (Edinburgh: Canongate Classics, 2003), vii-xxi
‘The Politics of Narrative in the Post-war Scottish Novel’, in On Modern British Fiction, ed. by Zachary Leader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 181-208
‘“Sacred Freedom”: Presbyterian Radicalism and the Politics of Robert Burns’, in Love and Liberty: Robert Burns, A Bicentenary Celebration, ed. by Kenneth Simpson (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997), pp. 168-82
Journal Articles
‘‘Editorial’, Special Robert Burns Number, International Journal of Scottish Literature, 6 (Spring/Summer 2010)
Hugh Blair, Robert Burns and the Invention of Scottish Literature’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 29.2 (2005)
‘The Scottish Renaissance and the Irish Invasion: Literary Attitudes to Irishness in Inter-war Scotland’, Scottish Studies Review, 2.1 (Spring 2001), 77-89
‘Robert Burns and the Ulster-Scots Literary Revival of the 1790s’, Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 4.2 (Winter 1999 / Spring 2000), 125-43
‘“Why shouldna poor folk mowe”: Bakhtinian Folk Humour in Burns’s Bawdry’, Scottish Literary Journal, 23 (1996), 43-53
‘Robert Burns and the Calvinist Radical Tradition’, History Workshop Journal, 40 (1995), 133-49
Reviews
‘The Coldest Place on Earth’; review of Colm Tóibín, Brooklyn, London Review of Books, 25 June 2009
Review of Irvine Welsh, If You Liked School, You’ll Love Work, The Guardian, 21 July 2007
‘That Time’; review of Magda Szabó, The Door, London Review of Books, 15 December 2005
‘About Myself’; Review of Karl Miller, Electric Shepherd: A Likeness of James Hogg, London Review of Books, 18 November 2004
‘Give or Take a Dead Scotsman’; review of James Kelman, You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free, London Review of Books, 22 July 2004
‘Navigational Aids’; Review of Jonathan Raban, Waxwings, London Review of Books, 6 November 2003
‘Mohocks’; review of David Finkelstein, The House of Blackwood: Author-Publisher Relations in the Victorian Era, London Review of Books, 5 June 2003
‘Damn Their Celtic Twilight: Eric Linklater and a broader vision of Scottishness’; lead article, Times Literary Supplement, 11 August 2000
‘Divided we stand – Scotlands for ever’; review of Cairns Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, Times Literary Supplement, 21 April 2000
‘A good place for art’; review of George Friel, A Glasgow Trilogy, Times Literary Supplement, 22 October 1999
‘With eyes wide open’; review of Lindsay Paterson, ed., A Diverse Assembly: The Debate on a Scottish Parliament, Times Literary Supplement, 5 March 1999
‘War in Scotch Street’; review of Maurice Leitch, The Smoke King, Times Literary Supplement, 13 March 1998
‘The fricative vigour of the demotic’; review of Duncan McLean, ed., Ahead of Its Time: A Clocktower Press Anthology, Times Literary Supplement, 15 August 1997
‘Aphorisms of emptiness’; review of Glen Duncan, Hope, Times Literary Supplement, 4 July 1997
‘Bakhtin and RLS’; review of Alan Sandison, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Appearance of Modernism, and J. R. Hammond, A Robert Louis Stevenson Chronology, Times Literary Supplement, 20 June 1997
Review of M. John Harrison, Signs of Life, Times Literary Supplement, 30 May 1997
‘More of Morvern’; review of Alan Warner, These Demented Lands, Times Literary Supplement, 4 April 1997
‘In the steps of Bible John’; review of Ian Rankin, Black and Blue, Times Literary Supplement, 28 February 1997
‘New Caledonian’; review of Harry Ritchie, ed., New Scottish Writing, Times Literary Supplement, 20 December 1996
‘A cityful of lives’; review of Robert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street, Times Literary Supplement, 23 August 1996
‘Memories of Giacomo’; review of Carl MacDougall, The Casanova Papers, Times Literary Supplement, 17 May 1996
‘The Voices of Eros’; review of Susie Maguire and Marion Sinclair, eds, Scottish Love Stories, Times Literary Supplement, 1 March 1996
Recent Presentations
‘Internal Borders in Scott and Buchan’, Walter Scott: Sherriff and Outlaw (Ninth International Scott Conference), University of Wyoming, 7 July 2011.
'Imagining Scotland and the Scottish Diaspora', Inaugural Professorial Lecture, University of Otago, 13 October 2010
‘The Curious Physical: Sense and Sensation in Late Victorian Scottish Literature’, The Victorian Sensorium (The Australasian Victorian Studies Association Conference), University of Otago, 5 February 2009
‘Burns the Radical’, Guest lecture, Queen’s University Belfast, 25 January 2007
'How, Where (and Why) to Begin', AHRC Irish-Scottish Poetry Symposium, Queen’s University Belfast, 24 November 2006
‘Robert Burns and the French Revolution’, Robert Burns Conference, École Normale Supérieure, Lyon, 26 November 2004
‘Across the Narrow Sea: The Language, Literature and Politics of Ulster Scots’, The Smithsonian Institution, Great Schools Programme, Washington DC, 19 March 2004