When Age Speaks, Youth Listens (Sometimes) with Craig Lamont

In his talk “When age speaks, youth listens (sometimes),” Craig Lamont, Lecturer in Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow, explored the centrality of memory studies to his work across disciplines and historical contexts. Drawing on research in literature, history, creative writing, and interdisciplinary collaboration, Lamont presented memory as a key analytical tool.

A central focus of the talk was the distinction between individual memory and cultural memory, as well as between collective memory and collected memory. These nuances were illustrated through a discussion of memory within family narratives, drawing on visual and literary examples. Lamont examined Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s painting “The Father of a Family Reading the Bible to his Children” alongside Robert Burns’s poem “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” In both works, memory appears as a practice embedded in domestic settings, where intergenerational transmission is staged through acts of reading, listening, and moral instruction. Such scenes link private forms of remembrance to broader cultural narratives and ideas of communal identity.

Craig Lamont is Lecturer in Scottish Studies at the University of Glasgow. Craig has published widely in Scottish literature and history, with a focus on textual editing, print culture, and cultural memory. His monograph The Cultural Memory of Georgian Glasgow was published by EUP in 2021. He is currently the founding co-director of the Memory Lab and the Scottish Catholic Studies Arts Lab at Glasgow. He also works in the Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies and the Centre for Robert Burns Studies. Craig occasionally writes short stories, and other pieces (mostly about memory).