Monday started off with an amazing lecture about archives from Dr. Patricia Whatley (one of our host professors), Caroline Brown (Dundee's Deputy Archivist) and Alan Bell (Dundee's Records Manager). The lecture started out with Alan pointing out that records are what makes the world go round in every field - not just history. For example, receipts are records, phones are records, tickets, and anything really that gives information about something. He and Caroline also made sure to note that which records survive history can tell us a lot about what was important in a certain time and that they often will tell a lot about power relationships. For instance, who is administering financial receipts and records and who is signing them? Who can purchase and who is selling? Etc. Caroline's ultimate conclusion on the topic of which records get preserved and which don't was that when it comes to choosing which records to keep, people don't think about use, but instead about representation, which I find to be very insightful and accurate (think about the Declaration of Independence, culturally important books, newspapers, etc.).
After learning new ways to consider records, Caroline walked us through a more hands-on version by passing out several old books and documents and asking us to analyze them with her. They really were some rather remarkable documents. The first one she passed around was literally a piece of papyrus from 99 AD. No, you didn't read that wrong and it's not a typo, I really mean 99 AD.
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| The piece of papyrus from 99 AD |
Other very fascinating records we examined included a charter from a bishop from 1634 written on animal hide, a copy of a copy of a diary from the 17th century, a diary from a prisoner of war during WWI, records from a female asylum in Dundee from the end of the 19th century and records from an infirmary. As we looked at the records, Caroline had us note certain aspects and clues we gathered from them like their level of authenticity, the material they were made of and notably, what was missing from each of them. For instance, in the records from the women's asylum, there was no mention of any sort of mistreatment for rather obvious reasons. Thus, Caroline taught us that when interacting with records, we must consider content, context and structure.
Ultimately, our time with the archivists and records really opened our perspective to how to perceive and interact with sources, which is especially valuable for me as a future educator in history. I am a sincere believer that the use of primary sources can serve to better engage students in history and this lecture gave me a lot of ideas on how to try to implement this in my future classroom.
After our fascinating lecture, we hopped on the bus to Arbroath, home of the Declaration of Arbroath and Arbroath Abbey but also the most amazing Fish and Chips! Which makes sense because it's right on the coast. Before heading to the Abbey, we stopped in at a local restaurant to try out the fish and chips which did not disappoint. We all had haddock and delicious chips (thicker french fries) and agreed it was amazing.
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| Everyone with our authentic fish and chips! And Keegan trying to be an Abercrombie model - classic. |
After our authentic Scottish cuisine, we headed to the Arbroath Abbey. WHICH WAS AMAZING. Alright, first thing's first: the Declaration of Arbroath. This document, signed in Arbroath Abbey was a letter sent to the pope by the Scottish nobility requesting to no longer be excommunicated and insisting that they have the right to determine their own king, preferably Robert the Bruce (who fought alongside William Wallace...not literally, though). Now, why were they excommunicated? Robert the Bruce happened to murder one of his rivals on holy ground, so the pope excommunicated both Robert the Bruce and also all of Scotland, which the Scottish people were not okay with at all. Now you might be thinking, "wait a second Lisa, you've been writing all about how Protestant Scotland is! What do they care about the pope?!" Well good people, Scotland was just as Catholic, or more accurately, Christian since Catholicism didn't technically exist until the Reformation, as the rest of Europe in 1320, when the Declaration of Arbroath was being signed. So, the declaration was sent off to the pope, pleading for freedom from English domination and the right to select their own king.
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| The Declaration of Arbroath!...well, a copy of a copy of it. All the little circles hanging off are the seals of the Scottish Nobility who agreed with its message, like signatures! Here's a link to the actual text: http://www.nas.gov.uk/downloads/declarationArbroath.pdf |
So does any of this sound familiar? It should to American audiences! It's been speculated that some of the contributors to the Declaration of Independence were inspired by rhetoric of freedom and the importance of the people in the Declaration of Arbroath. In fact, two signatories of the Declaration of Independence had grown up in Scotland and might have been influenced by this very declaration! How cool is that? Scotland and the U.S. are more intertwined than I had ever imagined.
Right, so Arbroath Abbey itself is where the Declaration of Arbroath was written -- probably. When things occur that long ago, there's always an element of "probably" involved. But the abbey itself is awesome! And in pretty good shape for being built in 1178! Basically, it was a big, beautiful church that also housed 40 monks or so and had a separate house for the Abbott (who lived rather lavishly compared to the monks who wore nothing but hand-me-downs their whole lives that they just had to layer during winter, were vegetarians and barely ever had exposure to the outside world). The reason the Abbey has been reduced to ruins is, shockingly enough, the Protestants who had a small role in its destruction, but after that, the town just used the remaining bricks and stone to build up the town! Actually our own tour guide admitted she thought her own house was made from the Abbey.
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| The outside of Arbroath Abbey |
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| I'm hanging out inside some of the monk's quarters -- look at how short the doorways are! They must have all been my height. |
Perhaps my favorite part of the Arbroath Abbey was a room where the monks used to keep their robes, which was almost fully in tact and had the most amazing acoustics. My fellow Fulbrighter, Daniel and I like to sing and stuff, so we did a few renditions of some classic folk songs. Here's a video of our Amazing Grace:
After Arbroath, we all settled down to write our blogs and journals and had a nice night in.
We only had a few lectures on Tuesday, but they were both really interesting. The first was all about innovation in Dundee, which is a theme becoming more and more prevalent the more time we spend here. The highlight of the lecture was the new V&A museum (which stands for Victoria and Albert) being constructed on Dundee's waterfront. One of the more famous architects, Kengo Kuma, is behind the amazing design of the building that is hoped to bring a new wave of modernity to Dundee and allow the city to continue growing as an integral area of Scotland. Speaking of innovation, we also got to see the new museum through a virtual projection just using a headset and an app! It was pretty technologically awesome.
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| Here's a projection of what the V&A museum will look like |
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| Liam checking out the new building in a virtual world - Photocred to Patty |
After our experience of innovation in Dundee, we had a quick (and delicious) lunch at a restaurant called "Folk Cafe" and headed to our next lecture called "Highland Landscapes and History: a creative perspective" by Dr Annie Tindley of the History department and Lindsay McGregor, an independent writer specializing in poetry. This lecture blended the disciplines of history and creative writing and despite none of us being English majors, we were all deeply engaged in their presentation. It started out with a quick history of the Highland Clearances, particularly in Sutherland where they were considered to be the most brutal. So, the Sutherland clearances were part of this movement that considered the Scottish highlands to be wasted space in their current states of subsistence farms with thousands of occupants. The idea of "improvement" became quite enticing to land owners at the time. "Improvement" was this concept that redistributing the people living on subsistence farms in the Highlands to tiny plots of land on the coast of Scotland to be fishermen and replacing their land with commercial sheep farms (a popular product at the time) would actually serve the entire country and therefore people better than the current state of affairs. Most of these displaced Highlanders had no idea how to fish and therefore their deportation often lead to extreme poverty. So, only a few Scots owned all the land of the Scottish highlands that these subsistence farmers lived on, one big chunk of it being Sutherland itself. Thus when Lady Elizabeth of Sutherland married Lord Stafford of England (who funded much of the clearances) in 1785, the hot new trend of "improvement" was on their minds and they decided to implement. Some scholars believe that the landowners who inflicted the clearances really did have the Scottish people's best interest in mind. They may have figured the evicted people would thrive as fishermen and the Scottish economy would be better off due to the greater amounts of sheep and wool production. This did not turn out to be the case (the result was poverty, famine and wars), but who could have known, right? Perhaps. Perhaps the Scottish country and population weren't priorities in the minds of these landowners at all and it was all just a plot to become personally wealthier. Either way, the Sutherland Clearances is a sad moment in Scottish history, but a massively important one.
It should also be noted that the clearances are a mainly Scottish issue - it does not contribute much to English and Scottish tensions. Although English money was often used to implement the clearances, such as in the case of Sutherland, the clearances were an issue between Scottish farmers and their Scottish landlords.
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| A rather famous portrait depicting the Highland Clearances |
So, where does the creative writing come in? Obviously, this was a very emotional time in Scottish history and many books, songs, and poems have been written about the issue both nationally and internationally due to the Scottish diaspora that resulted from the clearances. So Lindsay walked us through a few poems written about the clearances and the Scottish highlands then having us create a group poem and individual poems as well. Not to toot our own horns, but our group poem was stunningly beautiful. Each of us contributed a line or two or several phrases. Here it is:
I don’t usually see the earth reaching up
high enough for the clouds to reach back
where sheep grace the crags and peaks
chiselled from the wind. Those restless hills
who mimic calves that graze snow-dusted
hollows of lichens and brambles
infusing lifelessness with beauty.
I want to live in this wonderful melancholy.
Shadows mark the contradictions
of a land of permanence and impermanence,
where castles stand and fall
on mountains which have lasted longer.
One of the more interesting tidbits of the presentation brought the States into the picture yet again. There is a rather famous book written about the Clearances called Gloomy Memories written by Donald MacLeod and published in Toronto, Canada. This book was apparently a reaction to our own Harriet Beecher Stowe's (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) novel titled Sunny Memories, which was written after her stay in Scotland during which she resided with the Sutherland family who treated her very well. As a result, her account of the Sutherland Clearances was rather mild, infuriating MacLeod. Thus, he published a direct response to Ms. Stowe's novel, countering her mild account with a quite damning eye-witness account of the Strathnaver clearances.
Thus the other Fulbrighters and I were exposed to the wonderful mingling and cooperation of History and English in a very tangible fashion. After our lectures, we all split up to relax and continue our reading and journaling and preparing for our big day in Edinburgh tomorrow.
Cheers until then!
