23 March 2011

Poetry conference marks end of Burns project

A conference marking the culmination of a year-long project examining the legacy of Robert Burns will be held at the University of Dundee this weekend.

‘The Object of Poetry’ takes place at the Dalhousie Building on Saturday, 26th March, and is the final event to take place as part of the 'Robert Burns: Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory, 1796-1909' project.

The conference will examine literary reception and popular memory, and explore the ways in which writers such as Burns are transmitted into the broader cultural context

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the year-long Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory project has built a web-based catalogue of all the public monuments to Burns worldwide as well as classifying different kinds of Burns-related memorabilia.

It also looked at the relationship between literary and material culture and how the memorialisation of Burns fed back into how his poetry was perceived.

Admission to the conference costs £35, although entrance is free to postgraduate students from the University of Dundee. Lunch will be provided to delegates.

Anyone wishing to attend the event should contact research assistant Katherine McBay at k.a.mcbay@dundee.ac.uk.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07854 953277