Elizabeth Tapscott

Contact Details
Email: et224@st-andrews.ac.uk

Education and Experience

Beth holds a BA in History from Eastern University, an MA in Historical Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and an MLitt (with Distinction) in Reformation Studies from the University of St Andrews. Her PhD research focuses on propaganda and persuasive literature in Scotland during the decades preceding the Reformation Parliament of 1560. By placing these works within their historical context, her thesis explores the ways in which various literary media – e.g. academic discourse, courtly entertainments, poetry and performance, pedagogical tools, and pamphlets – were employed by reformers to persuade and/or educate different audiences within sixteenth-century Scottish society. Central to this study is an examination of the motives that prompted appeals, the nature of the various audiences to which appeals were being made, and the different functions served by different literary genres. Such a study will contribute to our understanding of the means by which reformed ideas were disseminated in Scotland as well as the extent to which Protestantism was an elite movement before 1560.

Thesis Title: ‘Propaganda and Persuasion in the Scottish Reformation, c.1527-1557’
Supervisor: Professor Roger A. Mason

Conference Papers:

• ‘Propaganda and Persuasion in the Scottish Reformation, c.1520-1560’  Presented to the Institute for Scottish Historical Research and The Reformation Studies Institute, University of St Andrews (April 2011).
• ‘Audience and Intention in the Literature of the Scottish Reformation, 1520-1560.’ Presented at the Reformation Studies Colloquium, St Andrews (September 2010).
• ‘Early Evangelical and Lutheran Literature of the Scottish Reformation: 1517-1542.’ Presented at ‘Experiencing Text’ Postgraduate Conference, University of York (July 2009).

Conference Organisation:

• Organiser and participant: ‘Postgraduate Research Session’ at the Scottish Medievalists Conference, Croy (January 2012)
• Organiser: St Andrews/Aberdeen Postgraduate Research Conference, St Andrews (May 2009)

Teaching:
MO1007: The Early Modern Western World, c.1450-1770 (St Andrews): Tutor
MO1005: Early Modern Europe, c.1450-1650 (St Andrews): Tutor
HIST 358: Art and Society in the Renaissance (UMBC): Teaching Assistant
HIST 201: Historiography (UMBC): Teaching Assistant

 

 

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