Workshop 30: Creating a New Field:
Women in Early Modern Scotland

Conveners:

• Sarah Dunnigan, English, University of Glasgow
• Elizabeth Ewan, History and Scottish Studies, University of Guelph
• David Mullan, History and Religious Studies, University of Cape Breton
• Evelyn Newlyn, English, SUNY, Brockport

This workshop examined ways of introducing students to an area which is a) in a historical and literary field unfamiliar to most of them and b) at an early stage of scholarly research. It focuses on pedagogical questions including what types of sources are most useful for students, the value of comparative work from other countries, and the extent to which students can be encouraged to contribute to the development of a new field. Should such a course be taught with the focus on women specifically, or as a national history/literature course from a gendered perspective? The sources examined include poetry by Mary Queen of Scots, four anonymous sixteenth-century poems (possibly of female authorship), and a seventeenth-century woman's spiritual autobiography. With participants from history and literature, the panel will also raised issues about the advantages and disadvantages of interdisciplinary approaches to the lives of early modern women.

Participants were asked to share their experiences of using women's writing in teaching, suggest ways in which use of theoretical developments elsewhere could benefit the study of Scottish women, and consider how studying women in less-researched European countries might raise questions about women's lives in more intensively-studied countries.