Dr Alex Shepard

Reader in Early Modern History
Department of History
Room 210A
2 University Gardens
GLASGOW
G12 8QQ

Telephone: 0141 330 5909
E-mail: a.shepard@history.arts.gla.ac.uk

Office Hours:  Thursday 10am - 11am and Thursday 11am - 12noon

Research Day: Monday

Teaching

Undergraduate:

• History 2EM: Government, culture and society in Europe 1550-1715
• Honours module: Patriarchy, sex and gender in early modern Europe
• Special subject: Law, crime and society in England, c.1580-c.1700

Postgraduate:

• Gender, politics and power

Research Interests and Current Projects

My research broadly addresses the social, cultural and economic history of early modern Britain. My work to date has focused principally on gender relations, with particular emphasis on the history of masculinity in England between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries. This has involved extensive work with court records, leading to an interest in the period’s legal history. I am currently exploring ways of doing comparable work on Scottish masculinity in the eighteenth century. I am also completing a book-length project on perceptions of worth and social status in early modern England, using the responses of witnesses appearing in the church courts to the frequently asked question of what they were worth. Supported by a Research Grant from the ESRC, this book will explore both the distribution of wealth (in relation to social status, gender, and the life course) and the language of social description in early modern England.

Scholarly activities

Grants and prizes

• 2001 AHRB Award for Research Leave, April-June
• 2003 Huntington Fellowship, additionally supported by the British Academy Exchange Library Scheme
• 2004 Philip Leverhulme Prize
• 2005-07 ESRC Research Grant (RES-000-23-1111): ‘Perceptions of worth and social status in early modern England’

Editorial positions

• Member of editorial collective, Gender and History
• Founding editor of Cultural and Social History

Visiting appointments

• August 2003 Visiting Fellow, Huntington Library, California
• Jan-July 2007 Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh

Fellowships and societies

• Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• Member of the Executive Committee of the Social History Society

Recent conference papers

• Oct 2009 – Conference on ‘Women’s Voices: The Power of Words in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, University of East Anglia:
  ‘The worth of female witnesses and the language of self-description in the English church courts, c.1550-c.1750’
• May 2008 – Plenary speaker at conference on ‘What is Masculinity? How Useful is it as a Historical Category?’, Birkbeck College, University of London:
  ‘The uses and abuses of masculinity as a category of analysis in early modern history’
• Feb 2007 – Early Modern Seminar, University of Exeter:
  ‘Wealth, credit and social status in early modern England’
• Nov 2006 - Plenary Panellist, ‘Attending to Early Modern Women - and Men’, Centre for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, University of Maryland:
  ‘Manhood, patriarchy and gender in early modern history’
• Nov 2006 - North American Conference on British Studies, Boston:
  ‘“Worth little or nothing”: poverty, agency and the language of self-description in the early modern English church courts'
• Mar 2006 - Sixth European Social Science and History Conference, Amsterdam:
  ‘The “worth” of witnesses and the language of self-description in early modern England’

Publications

Books

• Gender and Change: Agency, Chronology and Periodisation, edited with Garthine Walker, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009
• Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, Studies in Social History, Oxford University Press, 2003
• Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, edited with Phil Withington, Manchester University Press, 2000

Journal articles

• ‘Poverty, labour and the language of social description in early modern England’, Past and Present, 201 (2008)
• (with Garthine Walker), ‘Gender, change and periodisation’, Gender & History, 20:3 (2008)
• ‘From anxious patriarchs to refined gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, circa 1500 1700’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (April 2005)
• (with Karen Harvey) ‘What have historians done with masculinity? Reflections on five centuries of British history, circa 1500-1950’, Journal of British Studies, 44:2 (April 2005)
• ‘Litigation and locality: the Cambridge university courts, 1560-1640’, Urban History (2004)
• ‘Manhood, credit and patriarchy in early modern England, c.1580-1640’, Past and Present, 167 (2000)
• ‘Legal learning and the Cambridge university courts, c.1560-1640’, Journal of Legal History, 19:1 (1998)

Chapters in edited collections

• ‘Student masculinity in early modern Cambridge’, in Barbara Krug-Richter and Ruth-E. Mohrmann (eds), Frühneuzeitliche Universitätskulturen in Europäischer Perspektive, Böhlau-Verlag 2009
• “‘Swil-bolls and tos-pots”: drink culture and male bonding in England, c.1560-1640’, in Laura Gowing, Michael Hunter, Miri Rubin (eds), Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe, 1300–1800, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
• ‘Honesty, worth and gender in early modern England, 1560-1640’, in H. R. French and Jonathan Barry (eds), Identity and Agency in English Society, 1500-1800, Palgrave, 2004
• ‘Contesting communities? “Town” and “gown” in Cambridge, c.1560-1640’, in Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds), Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, Manchester University Press, 2000
• (with Phil Withington) ‘Introduction: communities in early modern England’, in Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (eds), Communities in early modern England: networks, place, rhetoric, Manchester University Press, 2000