We are a worldwide academic organisation dedicated to cultivating the study of Scottish languages, literatures and cultures across the globe. 

The 2022 Jack Medal

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Nigel Leask (University of Glasgow) and Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh (University of Edinburgh) were awarded the 2022 Jack Medal for their article "‘Co-ainm na taca seo an-uiridh’: Dugald MacNicol’s Caribbean Lament for Argyll"  which was published in the journal Studies in Scottish Literature 47:2 (2022). The Jack Medal was awarded in recognition of the extensive primary research and in appreciation of the article's cross-cultural approach, which provides an original and important perspective on a complex and pivotal chapter in Scotland’s colonial history.

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Statement: We are very proud to have been awarded the 2022 Jack Medal for our article ‘Co-ainm na taca seo an-uiridh: Dugald MacNicol’s Caribbean Lament for Argyll’ Studies in Scottish Literature 47.2: 43–68. This is our first collaborative article on Gaelic literature and we hope that this award from the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literature will encourage further collaborative cross-disciplinary research of this kind, drawing on both Gaelic and Anglophone sources. It is a welcome acknowledgement and timely recognition of the central importance of Gaelic to Scottish literature more generally. The Jack Medal recognises research on Scottish literature’s international connections: the fact that MacNicol’s Gaelic texts were written in the colonial West Indies makes this a timely project, connecting with a wave of recent scholarship on romantic period literature and colonial enslavement. We’re especially grateful to scholarly contacts in Barbados who have helped us recover some of the details of MacNicol’s life in the Caribbean, as well as (nearer home) to a supportive community of historians interested in Scotland’s colonial past, Gaelic scholars, and experts in Highland history and culture. We’d also like to thank Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells, and the team at the journal Studies in Scottish Literature for their encouragement and professionalism, it’s been a privilege to be published by such an outstanding international journal of Scottish literature.

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Kirstie Blair (University of Stirling) was awarded an Honourable Mention for her article “Cosmopolitanism and the Scottish Working-Class Writer: John Parkainson/Yehya-En-Nasr and Islam In Ayrshire” which was published in the journal Studies in Scottish Literature 48:1 (2022). The article provides an original and theoretically sophisticated investigation into hitherto little known cosmopolitan practices and discourses in Scotland’s long Victorian period.

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Statement: I am delighted to receive an honorary mention for this article. It was exciting to realise that Scotland’s working-class poets in the nineteenth century included an Islamic convert, and it was a pleasure to use his life and works as a way to think more about Scottish cosmopolitanism and its intersection with Scottish identities. 

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Alessandra Petrina (Università degli Studi di Padova) was awarded an Honourable Mention for her chapter “Translations Facing Inwards: James VI/I’s Basilikon Doron” which was published in the collective monograph Traduire. Tradurre. Translating. Vie des mots et voies des œuvres dans l'Europe de la Renaissance (Droz, 2022). The chapter provides a searching and original examination of the translation process of James VI/I’s text in relation to the final translation product and its reception.

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Statement: I am very happy and honoured to have received an honourable mention in the Jack Medal 2022 competition for my ‘Translations facing inwards: James VI/I’s Basilikon Doron’. This is a chapter in a volume edited by Jean-Louis Fournel and Ivano Paccagnella, Traduire – Tradurre – Translating (Droz, 2022), the outcome of a multilingual project which explored translation in early modern Europe. Within this project, I examined Basilikon Doron, its early editorial history and some of its translations (one by the King himself, from Middle Scots to English, another by John Florio, into Italian), analysing them as part of the king’s construction of an international political network. Translation is therefore analysed as a linguistic as well as a political act, and the literary work is seen not as simply the outcome of a single mind but as the production of a complex and articulate scribal community within which the translator has a prominent role. With the publication of Basilikon Doron, King James made a political statement in the international community, a statement that became modified and amplified with the successive translations. The analysis of this work offers us a unique perspective into the positioning of Scotland in early modern Europe.

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The 2021 Jack Medal

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Bryony Coombs (University of Edinburgh) was awarded the 2021 Jack Medal for her chapter ‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the Transfer of Ideas Between Scotland and the Continent 1509-1536,' which was published in Britain and its Neighbours: Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2021). The medal was awarded by the judging panel in recognition of the chapter's extensive primary research which illuminates the transnational history of Renaissance Scotland in a precise, original, fresh and readable way.

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Emilio Amideo (University of Naples “L’Orientale”) was awarded an Honourable Mention for his chapter 'Waves of Sound, Gender Fluidity, and Shifting Kinships in Jackie Kay's Trumpet,' which was published in Queer Tidalectics: Linguistic and Sexual Fluidity in Contemporary Black Diasporic Literature (Northwestern University Press, 2021). The judges agreed that the chapter provides a searching and original examination of diasporic and gender identities in Kay’s well-known novel in the wider, transnational context of Black Queer Diaspora. 

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Find out more about the awardees here