Date: Friday 6th September, 9:30am – 4.45pm
Location: Studio Two, Advanced Research Centre, University of Glasgow.
Tickets available here via Eventbrite.
We are inviting scholars and enthusiasts on Friday 6th September to the University of Glasgow’s Advanced Research Centre for a day symposium dedicated to the life, works and legacy of Scots poet Robert Fergusson.
This symposium commemorates 250 years since the death of the influential poet, Robert Fergusson (1750-1774). A key Scottish poet of the eighteenth century, Fergusson’s career was prolific: despite having only six creative years, Fergusson’s output of over one hundred poems and songs is substantial. His poems were written in English and Scots, and often heavily influenced by the reality of his Edinburgh surroundings. His most famous poems include Auld Reikie, ‘The Ghaists: A Kirkyard Eclogue’, ‘Leith Races’, and ‘The Daft-Days’.
With a mix of academic papers and creative contributions, this symposium will allow reflection on Fergusson’s works and legacies, through re-examining lines of literary transmission.
Programme:
9:00 – Registration opens
9:30 – Welcome and Introduction to Project Fergusson
Rhona Brown (University of Glasgow)
9:45 – P1: Amy Wilcockson (University of Glasgow), The Romantic Legacies of Robert Fergusson.
10:15 – P2: Charlotte Lauder, (University of Stirling), “Periodicals Poet(s)”: Robert Fergusson, Robert Garioch and the Textual Legacies of Scottish Magazine Culture.
10:45 – P3: Alan Riach (University of Glasgow), Fergusson, Hugh MacDiarmid and Samuel Johnson’s English: Direct Language and Insidious Implications.
11:15 – Comfort break
11:45 – P4: Frank Ferguson (Ulster University), Which Rabbie is oor Rabbie?: Robert Fergusson and Ireland, Influence, Legacy and Afterlives.
12:15 – P5: Jennifer Orr (Newcastle University), ‘Thrice famous Fergusson’: Robert Fergusson and Ireland.
12:45 – Lunch Break
13:45 – P6: Ainsley McIntosh (University of Edinburgh), ‘Myself, and the other fellow’: Robert Fergusson, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Literary Representations of Disability.
14:15 – P7: Mhairi Lawson (The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London), Singing Fergusson: Robert Fergusson’s Songs in ’The Royal Shepherd’, ‘Artaxerxes’ (Edinburgh 1769) and ’The Scots Musical Museum’ (1787-1803).
14:45 – Comfort Break
15:10 – Clare Thompson (Mitchell Library), Celebrating the Scottish poet Robert Fergusson (1750 – 1774): An Exhibition
15:30 – Martin Travers, Kieran McKenzie and Clare Yuille, (Braw Clan), Crown of Straw: Raisin The Deid.
16:30 – Closing comments
Rhona Brown (University of Glasgow)
16:45 – Programme ends
For more information, please see the social media pages on X and BlueSky.
The symposium is free to attend, and organised as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded research project The Works of Robert Fergusson: Reconstructing Textual and Cultural Legacies’. It is supported by the Centre for Robert Burns Studies (CRBS), University of Glasgow.