Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: A Symposium

About the event

Join us as we celebrate Robert Louis Stevenson Day 2024 with an academic symposium reflecting on Stevenson’s Pacific writing, travels, and cross-cultural friendships. The symposium brings together academics and creative practitioners to engage in interdisciplinary conversations, as well as to participate in a programme that ranges across studies of adaptation, museums, literature, documentary film, and environmental humanities.

The programme features Stevenson scholars, graphic artists, documentary filmmakers and poets. Together, they will explore Stevenson's legacy across Scotland, Sāmoa and Hawai‘i, all within the context of the AHRC-funded ‘Remediating Stevenson’ project, for which this symposium was commissioned.

About the research strand

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the 'Remediating Stevenson' research project explores the relevance of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific fiction to contemporary communities in Scotland, Sāmoa and Hawai'i. The project will do so through arts education workshops; newly commissioned graphic adaptations and poetry; a documentary film; and exhibitions at the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) and the National Library of Scotland.

Over the course of the three-year project (2022 to 2025), a research team from the Universities of Edinburgh and Chester, in partnership with an international team of creative practitioners and stakeholders, will explore the legacies of Stevenson's Pacific writing, specifically the three short stories published in his 1893 collection Island Nights' Entertainments.

In addition to producing new creative works by project artists, poets and film-makers, the 'Remediating Stevenson' team is working in partnership with educators, non-profit organisations, artists and writers on a multimodal programme of community-based participatory research in Scotland, Sāmoa and Hawai'i.

The project’s Principal Investigator is Professor Michelle Keown of the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, working alongside Dr Shari Sabeti (Moray House School of Education and Sport) and Dr Simon Grennan (University of Chester).

Programme

9:00 to 9:30am - Registration and Scottish welcome with Joseph Farrell (University of Strathclyde)

9:30 to 10:15am - Panel 1: Poetry, Art and Translation

Keao NeSmith and Solomon Enos (Hawai‘i)

10:15 to 10:45am - Coffee break

10:45 to 11:30am - Panel 2: Stevenson’s Pacific Fiction - Adapted and Adapting

Lucio De Capitani (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) and Simon Grennan (University of Chester)

11:30 to 12noon - Coffee break

12:00 to 12:45pm - Panel 3: RLS and the Environment

Carla Manfredi (University of Winnipeg) and Alice Chapman-Kelly (University of Edinburgh)

12:45 to 1:30pm - Lunch

1:30 to 2:15pm - Panel 4: Documentary Film: Tales of Tusitala

Dan Lin, Nick Stone (Hawai‘i)and Emma Dussouchaud-Esclamadon (University of Edinburgh)

2:15 to 2:45pm - Coffee break

2:45 to 3:30pm - Panel 5: The National Library of Scotland’s RLS collection and exhibition

Colin McIlroy (National Library of Scotland)

How to attend

This event is open to all and free to attend. Spaces are limited, so you can reserve your spot on Eventbrite.

Related links

Read our article on the research project