Associate Professor Dolly MacKinnon (University of Queensland, IASH Fellow): Emotional Landscapes: Covenanters, Trauma, and memory 1679-1714
I investigate the Scottish Covenanter memorials erected between 1679 and 1722 and analyse how memory was negotiated in the Kirk Session witness statements about the ‘Killing Times’ (1680s), in order to isolate the living memories of the first generation who had been present at, subjected to, or witnessed these events. Using an analytical framework drawing on trauma studies, generational memory, and emotions, I analyse the intersections of landscape, material culture and archives at the close of the 17th century, in order to demonstrate how and why memories were kept, circulated, and marked into this emotional landscape.