Dr Elizabeth Ritchie, University of the Highlands and Islands, delivers this year's Tartan Day Public Talk, "'His manly worth': Thoughts on nineteenth-century masculinity and gravestones in the Scottish Highlands".

In recent books and films such as Diana Gabaldon’s novel Outlander and the films Braveheart and Rob Roy, Highland men are portrayed as rough around the edges, sexy, and noble; to nineteenth-century novelists like Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott, they were loyal, adventurous, and slightly dangerous; to eighteenth-century military recruiters they were the gallant bulwark of Empire; to anti-Jacobite propagandists they were untrustworthy, traitorous, and uncouth. Much has been projected onto Highland men, but what did Highland men think of themselves? Drawing upon a wide range of sources, including unconventional ones such as gravestones, Dr Ritchie explores the complex ways Highland men performed their gender and their roles in society; how they related to their families; how they worshipped, and how they understood their relationships to the land.

Please join us on Friday, April 7th, 2017, from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, SFU Burnaby campus, AQ 6229.

And please join us at the Highland Pub following the talk!