‘The Sources of Scottish History’

University of Edinburgh

16 March 2024

All events will take place in the University of Edinburgh’s Old Medical School (Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9AG)

9.00-9.10am Welcome and Introductory Remarks (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

9.15-10.45am Panels 1A and 1B

Panel 1A: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Scotland (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

Chair: Kelsey Jackson Williams

- Alan MacDonald, ‘The Accounts of the Abbey of Holyrood, 1543-4’

- Amy Blakeway, 'War, Destruction and Records: The Anglo-Scottish Wars of the 1540s'

- Katharina Pruente, ‘“A Good Frende and Allye”: Can we Trust the Calendar of State Papers?’

Panel 1B: Knowledge Construction and Intellectual Exchange (Room G.16)

Chair: Karie Schultz

- John-Mark Philo, ‘“O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us”: Reading Scotland in Italian Libraries (1500-1700)’

- Roslyn Potter, ‘“Of parsnips and pomegranate flowers”: Fertility and Sexual Health in Early Modern Scottish Manuscript Culture’

- Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh, ‘Thomas Astle and the Gaelic Manuscripts of Clann Mhuirich’

10.45-11.15am Tea & Coffee Break

11.15-12.45pm Panels 2A and 2B

Panel 2A: Gender and Sexuality (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

Chair: Laura Doak

- Ashley Douglas, ‘"saphic songe so sueit": Marie Maitland, the Maitland Quarto manuscript, and the earliest lesbian love poetry since Sappho’

- Claire McNulty, ‘Tracing Bribery, Venality, and Sexuality through the Kirk Session Records’

- Jowita Thor, ‘Historiographical Game Changer: Sixteen Pages from the Aberdeen Female Penitentiary (1851-52)’

Panel 2B: Identity and Culture in Medieval Scotland (Room G.16)

Chair: Dauvit Broun

- Andrew Bull, ‘Few and Far Between: What Scottish Medieval Music Manuscripts Can Tell Us (and What They Can’t)’

- Duncan Sneddon, ‘Good News to the Poor? Poverty in Vita Sancti Columbae’

- Bryony Coombs, ‘Illuminating the Northeast: Image and Identity in the Kinloss Psalter and Andrew Lundy’s Primer’

12.45-2.30pm AGM and Lunch

Conference attendees are welcome to join the AGM (Meadows Lecture Theatre) before exploring the many lunch options in Edinburgh.

2.30-4.00pm Panels 3A and 3B

Panel 3A: Industry and Empire (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

Chair: Clare Loughlin

- Matthew Lee, ‘The Papers of Richard Holden as Sources of Scottish Involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade’

- Ronan McGreechin, ‘The Arkivz: The Denny Brothers Drawing Office Scrapbook (c.1880 – c.1950)’

- Spencer Segalla, ‘Ring of Bright Empire: Gavin Maxwell, Sources, and Erasures of Colonialism and Decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s’

Panel 3B: Epistolary Culture in Pre-Modern Scotland (Room G.16)

Chair: Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh

- Jade Scott, ‘Gender and Agency in the Letters of Annas Keith, Countess of Moray and Argyll’

- Laura Doak, ‘Saintly Letters: Materiality and the Covenanter Tradition’

- Emma Macleod, ‘The Wodrow-Kenrick Correspondence, 1750-1810’

4.00-4.30pm Tea & Coffee Break

4.30-5.30pm Presidential Lecture (Meadows Lecture Theatre)

James Robertson, '“The cultural centre of Scotland”: Montrose, Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s’

In October 1922, a poem appeared in The Scottish Chapbook, a monthly journal run by Christopher Murray Grieve, then working as editor-reporter on the Montrose Review. The poem, 'The Watergaw', was in Scots and was apparently written by one 'Hugh M'Diarmid'. This moment marks not only the 'birth' of Grieve's influential and controversial alter ego but also the beginning of the literary revival which MacDiarmid would spearhead throughout the 1920s and beyond. Montrose was the unlikely hub of this revolutionary movement.