Q&A with Patrick O’Connor
Q. Tell us a bit about your book A. Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned is really a book about the importance of philosophy for literature. In it, I look at how one writer uses philosophy to…
Poetry and the Dream of a Gift without Return
"The gift—what we call “the gift” and “giving”—appears to have at least two distinct functions, and one would be hard pressed to decide between them."
“Wonderful, Rewarding & Harrowing” – Linguistic Fieldwork & Me: An Interview with Lyle Campbell
In this exclusive interview, renowned linguist Lyle Campbell discusses his career in linguistic fieldwork, the topic of his new book, Linguist on the Loose: Adventures and Misadventures in Fieldwork. Tell us a bit about Linguist on the Loose, why did…
Debating Our Gàidhealtachd Futures
By Michael Rosie In May 2021 Scottish Affairs gave over issue 30 (2) to a discussion on the position and prospects for Gaelic language and culture in Scotland. Edited by James Oliver (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Iain MacKinnon (Coventry University) the special issue addressed…
Folk Songs as Communication, Resistance, Lament, and Entertainment Among Women in Northeastern Afghanistan
By Wolayat Tabasum Niroo In the northeastern provinces of Afghanistan, talented women sing folk songs to entertain each other in female-only gatherings on happy occasions. The songs are accompanied by a diara or daff, a colorful frame drum made of…
Arthur Conan Doyle: Writing the Life
by Douglas Kerr There are dozens of biographies of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and one of the most popular storytellers in English. But his own account of his life, Memories and Adventures, published in 1924, is…
A Life in Textbooks
by Laurie Bauer An Introduction to English Lexicology is my fifth textbook published with Edinburgh University Press. The first was Introducing Linguistic Morphology (1988, 2nd edition 2003) and was based on my teaching material from Victoria University of Wellington. At…
Q+A with the Author of The Secret Architecture of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
by Steven Monte Tell us a bit about your book… The book is essentially about two things: reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets as an intricately organized collection and situating it within the literary marketplace of Elizabethan England, in which poets were fiercely…
Richly Varied Dishes: James Hogg and Scottish Periodicals
by Graham Tulloch When Judy King and I were invited to edit James Hogg’s contributions to Scottish periodicals for the Stirling/South Carolina Edition of the Works of James Hogg we were of course delighted to have the chance to do…