Homecoming: A Scottish Phenomenon?
Caroline McCracken-Flesher, English Department
Not only will Scotland vote on its national independence in September, 2014, but
Scotland has declared 2014 a “Year of Homecoming.” With year-round programs and
events, the country invites everyone to celebrate its cultural and ancestral heritage and “come
home” to Scotland.
The discourse of homecoming, of exile and the hope to return, is a common theme
in Scottish culture. But strangely enough, there’s a huge disparity between the number of
people who actually have Scottish ancestry in America and people who claim it and imagine
somehow going “home” there. Dr. Caroline McCracken-Flesher, Professor of English at
UW, is interested in the notion of homecoming and wonders why it is so popularly
associated with Scotland. This summer, McCracken-Flesher travels to Scotland herself to
attend homecoming events and “determine what ‘home’ means to resident and emigrant
Scots, and what role ‘homecoming’ plays in the construction of modern Scotland.”
In her years studying Scottish literature, Dr. McCracken-Flesher has recognized this
discourse of homecoming lurking everywhere. It is the theme of a book she is currently
writing about Scotland’s evolving notion of homecoming in literature and culture. Thanks to
the funding from the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research, Dr. McCracken-Flesher
will be able to research the present moment in Scotland and gain first-hand experience about
her subject.
She has a busy month in Scotland. First, she will attend the celebration of the Battle
of Bannockburn, which was one of the pivotal moments of Scottish history. As McCrackenFlesher states, though Robert the Bruce’s battle against the English happened well before the
discourse of homecoming began in Scottish culture, the commemoration is “nonetheless an
expression of Scottishness that is anchoring all these homecoming events.” Next, she will
visit the family of a major author, Walter Scott, whose body of work she has studied
extensively in the past. With them she will attend the homecoming for the Scott clan and
stay in Walter’s Scott’s house. And last, she will conduct various interviews with people who
are involved in the independence campaign.
It is the kind of research she can’t do simply reading books or browsing the internet.
The only way to experience the discourse of homecoming as it exists in Scotland today, at
this crucial moment in Scottish history, is to be there. From this opportunity, McCrackenFlesher will complete her book. She plans, too, to give public talks about the issue—
homecoming is a topic, she believes, that stretches outside the study of Scottish literature.
She is curious not only about what homecoming means to Scots in Scotland, but what it
means in a transatlantic context, right out to Wyoming. Further, she is interested in the
notion of home and how it is constantly changing, how it can mean something completely
different and new all the time. “We are always trying to understand ourselves through the
humanities,” Dr. McCracken-Flesher says.