New Field School in Scotland for SFU Students
By HARRY MCGRATH
VANCOUVER - The University of Stirling in Scotland is a new university in an ancient setting. The university opened in 1967 and is located on the Airthrey Estate just outside the town of Stirling. The estate was mentioned in the charter of King David in 1146 and was the scene of a conflict between Royalists and Covenanters in 1645.
As well as the new university buildings, the grounds feature Airthrey Castle designed by famous Scottish architect Robert Adam in 1791 and two standing stones which are said to mark a battlefield where King Kenneth I defeated the Picts to unite Scotland in 839.
All of this is centred on a man made loch (lake) designed in the late Eighteenth Century and Dumyat, an ancient bald hill with a Pictish fort at its summit, forms the backdrop. Many people believe that the Stirling campus is the most beautiful in Britain.
It is an axiom of Scottish history that whoever controlled Stirling effectively controlled Scotland, as Stirling Castle was strategically placed to monitor movement across the Lowlands and into the Highlands. For that reason, the town of Stirling and the surrounding area is rich is historic buildings and battlefields.
King Alexander I built the “new” Stirling Castle in the Twelfth Century on the same great rock that the Picts and the Romans had used before him. Within a few miles of the castle William Wallace, “Braveheart,” defeated the English at Stirling Bridge in 1297, Robert Bruce beat them again at Bannockburn in 1314, and Hanoverians and Jacobites fought a bloody draw at the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715.
Sheriffmuir was the scene of another famous battle in 1975 when King Arthur and his army fought it out with invisible assailants at the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Most of the soldiers backing King Arthur on that occasion were students from the University of Stirling.
The film Braveheart had its British premier at the McRobert Theatre on the University campus in 1995. You can still find evidence of that in a peculiar sandstone sculpture formed in gratitude by a Scotsman who saw the movie and survived a triple heart bypass at about the same time. His “Wallace” sits at the foot of the Wallace Monument, a Victorian memorial to the Scottish hero, and features an unnaturally squat body with Mel Gibson’s face atop it. It is currently on sale for £350,000 but has had no takers.
The new Field School at Stirling will provide students from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver an opportunity to study Scottish history and culture while visiting many of the sites they are learning about. The Field School is under the direction of Dr. Chris Jones of the SFU Humanities Department and will be taught by her and faculty from the University of Stirling.
The courses offered will be Humanities 240-3 “Studies in European Culture: Reputations in Scottish History,” Humanities 330-4 “Religion in Context: Scottish Culture and Society during the Protestant Reformation,” and Humanities 385-4 “Selected Topics in European Studies: Cultural Constructions of the Scottish Nation.”
Stirling is a short drive or train journey from the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and the ancient towns of St. Andrews and Perth. The field school will finish at the end of July allowing students the opportunity to attend the world’s largest arts festival in Edinburgh.
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For more information, contact Harry McGrath at the SFU Centre for Scottish Studies by e-mail at: hmcgrath@sfu.ca, or call (604) 221-1273.
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