Lynn Abrams and Callum Brown

6pm, 15 May
Dalhousie Building

Troubled transition to modernity: Scottish everyday life in the 20th century

In 1900 Scotland was one of the least prosperous industrial zones in Europe. House overcrowding was the highest in the western world, religious culture was vigorous and, to many modern eyes, artless and oppressive, whilst sexual relations were surrounded with complex repressive etiquette and the masculinity of 'the hard man'. By 2000, Scotland was transformed, with a liberal and mostly secular culture, spacious homes, the world's largest arts festival in Edinburgh, and a 'liberated' sexual culture defined by high illegitimacy rates and the idealisation of 'the new man'. In this lecture, Abrams and Brown present an illustrated account of this often traumatic transition in everyday life for Scots, most of it concentrated in the period since 1960. The lecture marks the launch of their jointly-edited book from Edinburgh University Press - The History of Everyday Life in Twentieth Century Scotland (2010).

Lynn Abrams is the Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow, and the author of many books including The Making of Modern Woman: Europe 1789-1918 (2002), Myth and Materiality in a Women's World: Shetland 1800-2000 (2005), and The Orphan Country: Children of Scotland's Broken Homes, 1845 to the Present (1998)

Callum Brown is the Professor of Religious & Cultural History at the University of Dundee, and author of 10 books, including The Death of Christian Britain (2001, 2009), Britain since 1707 (with WH Fraser, 2010), and Postmodernism for Historians (2004). He is married to Lynn.

Tickets are available from the University's Online Store.

Drinks reception follows.

Overflow theatres may be in use.

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2005 - Saturday Evening Lecture Series