Sarah Betts

Research

Research

After studying court culture and images of monarchy and power during the reign of Charles I and the civil wars for my BA and MA dissertations, I became increasingly interested in the ‘afterlife’ of the period and of the King more specifically. Previous scholarship on ‘memory’ of the civil wars has tended to focus upon the immediate aftermath of the wars in the late seventeenth-century, particularly the Restoration and reign of Charles II, upon more formal (or even official) historiography, or upon a very particular source type. The central underlying question to my thesis is essentially ‘what do the general public know about the English Civil War(s)?’ and, within that, ‘what do they know or understand about the role of the monarchy in the conflicts (military and ideological), and the actions, and particularly motivations, of the ‘Wrong but Wromantic’ Cavaliers who supported them?’ Examining a wide range of different sources from across the period from the raising of the King’s Standard at Nottingham in 1642 to the present day, and utilising a variety of disciplinary approaches and methodologies, the thesis identifies and analyses recurring and transient images, tropes and interpretations of the wars, royalists and royalisms across political tracts, cultural representations, academic and popular scholarship, official commemoration, heritage commemoration and half-remembered schoolroom history.  It will also reflect on the role of emotional engagement in the learning, memory and interpretation of history, especially seeking to understand what I term here ‘retrospective royalism’ in generations far removed both chronologically and ideologically from the theories of monarchical rights and responsibilities that existed in the 1640s.

Wider interests

Early modern History  - Public History – Memory Studies – Heritage and Museum Studies – Commemoration – Memorials - History of Education – Historical Fictions – History for Children – Heroes and Heroism – Reputation Studies - Reception Studies – Television History – History on Television - History of Emotions – History of Monarchy/Royal Studies – History Writing – History Teaching - Performing History – Material and Visual Cultures – Historical Culture – Masculinities - British Monarchy  - Stuart Dynasty – Regicides – Restorations – Conceptualisation of Time (Past/Present/Future) – Royal Dynasticism - Popular Understandings of Monarchy – Modern Monarchy.

Papers and publications

Articles and chapters

• ‘“Something as Passionless as Brilliant Administration”: Royal Sex and Sexuality in 1970s British Historical Television Drama’, Royal Studies Journal, 6:2, (2019), pp.148-182.
• ‘“…where Liberty was fought for”: Civil War Memorials in England’, in Frank Jacob and Kenneth Pearl (Eds.), War and Memorials: The Age of Nationalism and the Great War, (Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019).
• ‘Henrietta Maria, “Queen of Tears”?: Picturing and Performing the Cavalier Queen’, in Estelle Paranque (Ed.), Remembering Queens and Kings of Early Modern England and France: Reputation, Reinterpretation, and Reincarnation, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
• ‘What’s in a name?: Dynasty, succession and England’s queens regnant (1553-2016)’, in Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russell E. Martin and Zita Eva Rohr (Eds.), The Routledge History of Monarchy, (Routledge, 2019).
• ‘Power and Passion: Seventeenth-Century Masculinities Dramatised on the BBC in the Twenty-First Century’, in Katherine Byrne, Julie Anne Taddeo, and James Leggott, Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama, (I.B. Tauris, 2018).
• ‘Matriarchs of the Royal House of Stuart: negotiating personal and dynastic ambition, motherhood and adversity, 1613-1662’, in Elena Woodacre and Carey Fleiner (Eds.), Royal Mothers and their Ruling Children: Wielding Political Authority from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Book reviews

• Betts, S., Paranque and Schutte (eds.), Forgotten Queens in Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-making and Patronage, (Routledge, 2018). Royal Studies Journal (FORTHCOMING)
• Betts, S., 2018. Murray, Imaging Stuart Family Politics: Dynastic Crisis and Continuity (Routledge, 2017). Royal Studies Journal, 5(1), pp.212–213. 
• Betts, S., 2016. Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford University Press, 2015). Royal Studies Journal, 3(2), pp.140–141.

Conference presentations

• “From ‘Black Boy’ to Libertine King: Masculinity and Monarchy in the Life (and Afterlife) of Charles II” at Historicising Masculinities, Newcastle University, 2^nd- 4^th July 2019.
• “‘Something as passionless as brilliant administration’: Royal sex and sexuality in 1970s British historical television drama” at Kings and Queens 7: Ruling Sexualities: Sexuality, Gender and the Crown – The seventh annual conference of the Royal Studies Network, University of Winchester, 9^th-12^th July 2018.
• “Re-inhabiting the ‘Empty Spaces’ of the Past: Soundscapes, audio guides, and recreating England’s Civil War” at History in the Limelight: Performing the Past, c.1850 to the Present, UCL Institute of Education, 8^th-10^th September 2016.
• “Consuming the Historical Child: Reinventing the Civil Wars for Victorian Children” at Consuming the Victorians – Annual meting of the British Association of Victorian Studies, Cardiff University, 31^st August – 2^nd September 2016.
• “Loyal Dukes and Faithful Cities: Constructing Loyalty and the Memory of English Civil War Royalism” at Kings and Queens 5: Dynastic Loyalties – The fifth annual Conference of the Royal Studies Network, Clemson University, Greenville, South Caroline, USA, 8^th-9^th April 2016.
• “Wromance and Royalism: The afterlives of Prince Rupert and Princess Elizabeth in the Nineteenth Century” at The English Civil War in the Romantic and Victorian Period. France-England, 1789-1901, University of Rouen, France, 9^th-10^th October 2014.
• “From Courtier to Comrade and back again: The English Civil War Royalists and their Kings in reality and representation” at Kings and Queens 3: Entourages – The third annual conference of the Royal Studies Network, University of Winchester, 11^th-13^th July 2014.
• “‘…though he was not at the fight, yet [he] gave us a compleat account of the action from his father’s relation’: Anecdotal history and memories of the English Civil Wars” at Early Modern Memory Conference, University of Worcester, 8^th-9^th May 2014
• “‘The many favours passing between each other’: Stuart family visiting at home and abroad 1606-1670” at Kings and Queens 2: Making Connections – The second annual conference of the Royal Studies Network, University of Winchester, 8^th-9^th July 2013.
• “‘ravish’d senses’: Mourning the Death and Celebrating the Apotheosis of Queen Mary II” at Sensing the Sacred: Religion and the Senses. 1300-1800, University of York, 21-22^nd June 2013.
• “‘Our Agamemnon’s Dead’: Rhetoric of revenge in post-regicide English culture” at Annual Cabinet of Curiosities CREMS postgraduate symposium, University of York, 28^th May 2012.
• “‘Spokesman of the body’: the hand as a site of political interaction in Caroline Britain” at The Royal Body Conference, Royal Holloway, 2^nd-th April 2012.
• “‘Her Blameless Memory Upcast’: the Body of Princess Elizabeth Stuart in Nineteenth-century culture” at The Materials of Mourning: Death, Materiality and Memory in Victorian Britain, University of York, 3^rd December 2011.
• “‘The King’s own Hand’: The ‘martyrdom’ of Charles I and cultures of memory in Stuart England” at Representations of Regicide in 17^th century Europe, University of York 12^th March 2011.

Teaching

Teaching

Alongside my research I have enjoyed teaching several cohorts of undergraduates on the first-year survey courses, From Rome to the Renaissance: The Transformation of Traditional Societies, c.400-1650, and Citizens, Comrades and Consumers: The Making of the Modern World Since 1650, as well as the skills based, Making Histories. In addition to History Department teaching I have also designed and/or taught several modules (both accredited and ‘Learning for Pleasure’) for the University’s Centre For Lifelong Learning - The Life and Times of Charles I (1600-1649), Queens and Consorts from Medieval to Modern, Shakespeare in Historical Context, The World of Jane Austen, Historical Drama on Screen,  Heroes and History – as well as a one day study day, How Shakespeare Plays With History.

External activities

External activities

I have organised several academic conferences and symposia at York, both alone and as part of a team, I have also convened (or co-convened) panels for conferences elsewhere. I have previously co-convened the ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ Postgraduate Forum for CREMS and have also been involved in the Postgraduate Forum for IPUP. In 2019 I was the lead organiser of Futures in the Past, a one-day public history career building and networking forum sponsored by the York GSA and IPUP.

I am an active member of the Royal Studies Network, and, as well as contributing a chapter to the final collection, I also served on the initial wider editorial committee (chaired by Elena Woodacre) for The Routledge History of Monarchy.

I have peer-reviewed (double blind) on multiple occasions for academic journal articles in my field.