Panelists
Julia Di Castri, MA Student, University of Guelph
A Picture-Perfect Girl: The Highland Lassie in Postcards
Abstract
Julia’s Master’s thesis focuses on the iconography of the Scottish Highland Lassie in Scottish tourism ephemera. Her research primarily examines the Late Victorian to Early Edwardian period, focusing on the “Golden Age” of the postcard (1900-1914). By analyzing Scottish tourism promotional materials, her research aims to identify the shared and varied characteristics of this well-known yet understudied figure. The Highland Lassie appears in various contexts, including postcards, visual art, literature, songs, travel posters, cigar boxes, cigarette tins, and more. Julia’s presentation will highlight the characteristics of the Highland Lassie and the various forms she takes to represent Scottish life and tourism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Bio
Julia completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Guelph, double majoring in
Psychology and Sociology with a minor in History. She is now a second-year master's student
conducting her research under the supervision of Dr. Kevin James and Dr. Linda Mahood.
Megan Gamble, MA Student, University of Guelph
Voices and Vices: An Emotional Framework for Studying Covenanting Women
Abstract
Megan’s research focuses on the emotional practices of covenanting women during Scotland’s seventeenth-century Covenanting Movement, with particular attention to their use of ego documents to navigate and challenge patriarchal power structures. These sources reveal how women articulated their emotional experiences and justified their transgressive actions in a male-dominated religious and political landscape.
By employing a poststructuralist framework informed by queer and critical theory, this research examines how covenanting women’s self-writings disrupted gendered emotional regimes, asserted spiritual authority, and reshaped public discourse. Highlighting the embodied and performative dimensions of their emotional lives, this analysis situates women’s self-expression within the broader spatiotemporal dynamics of religious and social upheaval. Megan’s work contributes to underexplored areas of Scottish gender history and emotional history, demonstrating how covenanting women’s personal narratives subverted traditional power hierarchies and redefined religious identity within the context of early modern Scotland
Bio
Megan Gamble (she/her) is a master’s student at the University of Guelph, studying the Covenanting Movement through the lens of emotion.
Elizabeth Heaton, MA Student, University of Guelph
The French Court and Mary Queen of Scots
Abstract
Elizabeth's research looks at how the young Mary (15-18) was influenced by the French court and the major players within it. The major components of this influence were the Guise family, Catherine de’ Medici, and court culture. The Guise family was a powerful French family who were highly invested in Mary’s education and religious ideals as they were direct blood relatives. Catherine de’ Medici was queen consort and queen mother during Mary’s time in France and her historically recognized leadership style and ability to hold power would have been seen firsthand by Mary. The French court itself was a place of foreign diplomacy, social hierarchy, religious debate, and more which Mary would have witnessed but would have also been involved in. This presentation will explain how the French court shaped Mary, Queen of Scots into the religious, social, and political figure that she became.
Bio
Elizabeth is a first year MA student at the University of Guelph working with Dr. Peter Goddard and Dr. Cathryn Spence to study the youth of Mary, Queen of Scots. She completed her BA at Dalhousie University and wrote an Honour’s Thesis under the guidance of Dr. Krista Kesselring.
Chair
Dr. Cathryn Spence
Associate Professor, History
University of Guelph
Dr. Cathryn Spence's research examines the economic and social history of women and gender in late medieval and early modern Scotland. Her research interests include urban and economic history, and the impact of gender and socioeconomic status when navigating economic relationships in early modern Western Europe.
Her current research projects include ongoing examinations of credit relationships among early modern Scottish families, neighbourliness in pre-modern Scottish towns, and a project (with Dr Cordelia Beattie, University of Edinburgh) examining married women’s property in sixteenth-century Scottish testaments.