Robert Louis Stevenson: New Perspectives
5-8 July 2017, Edinburgh Napier University
Merchiston Campus (10 Colinton Road, Edinburgh)
SCHEDULE
Wednesday 5 July
1-1.30pm Registration (Glass Room)
1.30-2pm Welcome: Linda Dryden (Glass Room)
2-4pm Panel 1
Connections and collaborations (Glass Room)
(Chair: Lydia Craig)
Michael Shaw (University of Glasgow), Scotland’s Lament: J. M. Barrie’s Memorials for Stevenson
Julie Gay (Université Bordeaux Montaigne), Robinson Returns: Revisiting the Vestiges of Adventure in Stevenson and Conrad’s Fiction, from Repetition to Creation
Audrey Murfin (Sam Houston State University, Texas), Collaboration and ‘the Perils of the Author’: Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne’s The Wrong Box
Duncan Milne (Edinburgh Napier University), ‘The incomparable pomp of eve’: Robert Louis Stevenson and the Poetry of the Fin-de-Siècle
4-4.30pm Tea and coffee (Glass Room)
4.30-6pm Panel 2 & 3
Literary networks (Glass Room)
(Chair: Anthony Mandal)
Glenda Norquay (Liverpool John Moores University), Whistling boys, quivering needles and woodland creatures: the business of going beyond
Kathryn Simpson (Queen’s University Belfast), Stevenson and Haggard: critical authorial networks
Harriet Gordon (Cardiff University), ‘My voyage across ocean and continent’: Robert Louis Stevenson’s American Literary Geographies
Religion, ethics and morality (B2)
(Chair: Mark J. Sanderson)
Maureen M. Martin (William Paterson University), God, Satan, and the Scottish Ethos in Stevenson’s ‘The Merry Men’
Roland Hugh Alexander (University of Cambridge), ‘A black spot upon my character’: Shame in Robert Louis Stevenson
Bridget Mellifont, Levels of Space in Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Markheim’ and The Ebb-Tide
7.30pm Barbecue night
Thursday 6 July
10-10.30am Tea and coffee (Glass Room)
10.30am-12.30pm Panel 4
Intention and interpretation (Glass Room)
(Chair: Lesley Graham)
Burkhard Niederhoff (University of Bochum), ‘The Pavilion on the Links’ and the Problem of Copy-Text
Flora Benkhodja (University Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle), Reading the ‘Sea Runes’: Hermeneutics in ‘The Merry Men’
Caroline McCracken-Flesher (University of Wyoming), From Ogilvy to Essendean: Cruxes in Kidnapped
Hilary J. Beattie (Columbia University), The ‘attraction of repulsion’: Katharine de Mattos and Robert Louis Stevenson
12.30-2pm Lunch at Montpeliers
2-3.30pm Panel 5 & 6
Travel and empire (Glass Room)
(Chair: Kathryn Simpson)
Nora Pleßke (Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany), Island Treasures, Curiosities, and Junk: Material Culture in R.L. Stevenson’s South Sea Writing
Jennifer Hayward (Universidad Autónoma, Santiago, Chile), Foreigner at home: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels in California
Lena Wånggren (University of Edinburgh/Edinburgh Napier University), California Gothic in Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson’s ‘The Warlock’s Shadow’
Essays I: Personas (B2)
(Chair: Robert-Louis Abrahamson)
Richard Dury (University of Bergamo, Italy), Stevenson’s early essays and Manet’s ‘Woman with a Parrot’
Masao Morishige (Keio University, Tokyo, Japan) Stevenson’s Samurai and Paternal Lighthouses: A Comparative Approach to Kidnapped and ‘Yoshida-Torajiro’
Lesley Graham (University of Bordeaux), Toing and froing in Stevenson’s sense of personal history in some of the later essays (1880-94)
3.30-4pm Tea and coffee (Glass Room)
4-5.30pm Panel 7 & 8
Gothic Stevenson (Glass Room)
(Chair: Caroline McCracken-Flesher)
Jean-Pierre Naugrette (University Sorbonne-Nouvelle Paris 3), Revisiting the ‘chambers of the brain’: Stevenson’s ‘A Chapter on dreams’ between Sherlock Holmes and Dorian Gray
Douglas Kerr (University of Hong Kong), The Strange Case of the Creeping Man
Anthony Mandal (Cardiff University), Fiction as/at Play: Romance, Gothic and Literary Gaming
Political Stevenson (B2)
(Chair: Duncan Milne)
Catherine Mathews, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Risky Publications: Reputation, Defamation and Sedition in the Pacific
Lucio De Capitani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice), World-systems in the mirror of ethnography: Stevenson’s Pacific writings
Lydia Craig (Loyola University Chicago), Silver the Parrot: Stevenson’s Marxist Allegory of Unclaimed Wealth and Class Mobility
5.30-6.30pm Wine reception (Glass Room)
7pm Dinner at Osteria del Tempo Perso
Friday 7
10-11am Panel 9 & 10
Illustrating Stevenson (Glass Room)
(Chair: Bridget Mellifont)
William B. Jones, The Black Arrow: Illustrators as Interpreters
Richard Hill (Chaminade University of Honolulu), Illustrating The Ebb-Tide: A Missed Opportunity
History and genre (B2)
(Chair: Glenda Norquay)
Abby Boucher (University of Glasgow), Stevenson and Ruritania: Class, Bodies, and Evolution in Prince Otto
Gillian Hughes, Escaping from Scott in Weir of Hermiston
11-11.30am Tea and coffee (Glass Room)
11.30am-1pm Panel 11 & 12
Gender and race (Glass Room)
(Chair: Lena Wånggren)
Allison E. Paynter (Chaminade University of Honolulu), ‘Unstable Mixtures’: The destabilisation of race and gender in the Stevensons’ The Dynamiter
Timothy S. Hayes (Chowan University), ‘About All I’ve Got’: Interracial Relationships in The Beach of Falesá and Almayer’s Folly
Marlena Marciniak (Opole University, Poland), Growing into a Gentleman: The Concept of Manliness in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novelettes ‘The Story of a Lie’ and ‘The Misadventures of John Nicholson’
Essays II: Style (B2)
(Chair: Richard Dury)
Ivan D. Sanderson and Mark J. Sanderson, ‘The Strangely Fanciful Device of Repeating the Same Idea’: Chiasmus in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Essays
Ana Carolina Silva (State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil), Versatility and style: controversies involving the literary production of Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert-Louis Abrahamson, Virginibus Puerisque: ‘A wee thrawn kin o’ buik’
[Free afternoon. See conference handout for possible outings.]
6pm Reception at Stevenson House
7.30pm Dinner at Yeni Meze Bar
Saturday 8
9.30/10-11am Panel 13 & 14
Stevenson across borders: reception and influence (Glass Room)
(Chair: Duncan Milne)
José Miras (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Stevenson in Spain: A Note on the Early Spanish Editions
Ilona Dobosiewicz (University of Opole, Poland), The Early Reception of Robert Louis Stevenson in Poland
Scottish geographies (B2)
(Chair: Gillian Hughes)
Nathalie Jaëck (Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France), ‘The valley was as clear as in a picture’: landscape as an ideological tool to come to terms with Scottish identity in Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
Ruth Richardson, The re-imagined terrain of Stevenson’s Bodysnatcher
Tam Dean Burn, Kidnapped in Clermiston
11-11.30am Tea and coffee (Glass Room)
11.30am-1pm THE ERNEST AND JOYCE MEHEW MEMORIAL LECTURE
The Light-Keeper: Robert Louis Stevenson, flashes of brilliance and artificial light.
Louise Welsh (Glass Room)
Close of conference