The image of the border evoked by the title of the present volume provides a central interpretative key for our project at more than one level, as it is suggestive both of Scotland as a 'theoretical borderland' in relation to the Empire and postcoloniality, and of our attempt at bringing into dialogue scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, including Scottish, Celtic and postcolonial studies. The 'Scotland' of the present volume's title is thus suggestive of a critical standpoint from which and within which we purpose to productively question disciplinary borders and epistemological fences. Divided into three parts - Gaelic (Post)colonial Perspectives; Writing Scotland's (Post-)Empire; Scotland's Others: Relations and Representations - Within and Without Empire intends to encourage, by mapping out pathways and patterns of interdisciplinary conversation, more theoretical and theoretically driven empirical research across Scottish and postcolonial studies. Furthermore, by moving beyond the theoretical impasse of a 'pure' (post)colonial identity, it also aims, possibly more ambitiously, to foster a re-thinking of discipline-bound 'truths' and a shaping of new paradigms for a deeper understanding of a world in dramatic flux and of ever-growing global interdependence.
About the Author: Carla Sassi is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Verona and specialises in Scottish and postcolonial studies. Her publications include Why Scottish Literature Matters (2005) and, as a co-author, CaribbeanScottish Relations (2007). She has edited a special issue of the International Journal of Scottish Literature on Caribbean-Scottish Passages (2008) and of Anglistik on "Focus on Scottish Studies (2012). She is currently editing the International Companion to Scottish Poetry (ASLS). She was a Royal Society of Edinburgh Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Stirling (2008) and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow (2010-2011). Theo van Heijnsbergen is Lecturer in the department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, with Scottish medieval and Renaissance culture in a European perspective his main research field. Following a co-edited volume with Nicola Royan on Literature, Letters and the Canonical in Early Modern Scotland, his latest publications are on early modern travel writing, literary networks, Renaissance court culture and Jacobean poetics. He is currently working on a contracted monograph on The Culture of Literature in Early Modern Scotland. He is also an Executive Officer of the Scottish Text Society.