Angela McShane
I am a social and cultural historian, researching the political world of the broadside ballad, the cultural history of intoxicants, and the material culture of the everyday. I am currently Honorary Reader in History at the University of Warwick. I am completing a monograph on the history of the ballad trade and its politics for Boydell and Brewer. Recently completed collaborative projects include 1. a co-authored book for McGill-Queens University Press: John Street, Oskar Cox Jensen, Alan Finlayson, Angela McShane and Matthew Worley, Our Subversive Voice: The history and politics of English protest song 1600-2021 (forthcoming in 2025) and a website (www.oursubversivevoice.com); 2. A prizewinning website launched in 2024: Christopher Marsh, Angela McShane and Andy Watts, 100 Ballads (www.100ballads.org - designed and managed by DHI Sheffield), which provides the publication, song, tune, and woodcut histories of 120 of the 'hit' songs of the seventeenth century. See also Phil Withington, Angela McShane, James Brown and Tim Wales, Intoxicants and Early Modernity 1550 - 1750 website (www.intoxicantsproject.org).
I have worked across academia and the heritage sector for much of my career: I was Head of Research Development at Wellcome Collection, London (2017-20); Head of the V&A/RCA Postgraduate Programme in History of Design and Material Culture and Head of Renaissance of Early Modern Studies, based in the Research Department of the V&A, London (2006-17); Senior Lecturer in Early Modern British and European History at Oxford Brookes University (2005-6) and lecturer in early modern British and European History at the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, and Northampton (1999-2005).
I have supervised and examined many MPhil and Doctoral level projects focusing on aspects of early modern social, cultural and material history and still accept research students via the postgraduate programmes at the University of Warwick's Centre for Renaissance Studies or History Department.
Address: University of Warwick
I have worked across academia and the heritage sector for much of my career: I was Head of Research Development at Wellcome Collection, London (2017-20); Head of the V&A/RCA Postgraduate Programme in History of Design and Material Culture and Head of Renaissance of Early Modern Studies, based in the Research Department of the V&A, London (2006-17); Senior Lecturer in Early Modern British and European History at Oxford Brookes University (2005-6) and lecturer in early modern British and European History at the Universities of Warwick, Leicester, and Northampton (1999-2005).
I have supervised and examined many MPhil and Doctoral level projects focusing on aspects of early modern social, cultural and material history and still accept research students via the postgraduate programmes at the University of Warwick's Centre for Renaissance Studies or History Department.
Address: University of Warwick
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Books by Angela McShane
The protest song is, and has always been, a form of political oratory as vital to political representation as it is to performance. Investigating five centuries of English history, Our Subversive Voice establishes that the protest song is not merely the preserve of singer-songwriters; it is a mode of political communication that has been used to confront many systems of oppression across its many genres, from street ballads to art song, grime to hymns, and music hall to punk. Our Subversive Voice traces the history of the protest song, examines its rhetorical forms, and explores the conditions of its genesis. It recounts how those songs have addressed discrimination and inequality, exploitation and the environment, and immigration and identity, and how institutions and organizations have sought both to facilitate and to suppress them. Drawing on a large and diverse corpus of songwriters, this book argues that song does more than accompany protest: it choreographs and communicates it.
The protest song, Our Subversive Voice shows, is an enduring, affecting, and effective means of expression and an essential element in understanding the drive to create political change, in the past and for the future.
The essays in this book reflect not only Bernard Capp’s wide interests, but the authors have also been influenced by his distinctive capacity for empathy and originality and his unique ability to hear the voices of seventeenth-century people in the historical record."
Political Ballads and Cheap Print by Angela McShane
a socially broad national market; secondly, the development of political parties, emerging from the political and religious turmoil of the period, which impinged significantly upon the newly burgeoning popular music industry and its markets; thirdly, a substantial increase in the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks across all social classes, for reasons of sociability rather than health or nutrition. This article explores the unexpected effects of these changes on cultures of politics, drink and song
across the whole period. In particular, it explores the way in which the Cavaliers of the 1650s and the new ‘Tory’ party of the 1680s used the medium of song to encourage excessive drinking and the political and social denigration of sobriety in order to promote loyal obedience
The protest song is, and has always been, a form of political oratory as vital to political representation as it is to performance. Investigating five centuries of English history, Our Subversive Voice establishes that the protest song is not merely the preserve of singer-songwriters; it is a mode of political communication that has been used to confront many systems of oppression across its many genres, from street ballads to art song, grime to hymns, and music hall to punk. Our Subversive Voice traces the history of the protest song, examines its rhetorical forms, and explores the conditions of its genesis. It recounts how those songs have addressed discrimination and inequality, exploitation and the environment, and immigration and identity, and how institutions and organizations have sought both to facilitate and to suppress them. Drawing on a large and diverse corpus of songwriters, this book argues that song does more than accompany protest: it choreographs and communicates it.
The protest song, Our Subversive Voice shows, is an enduring, affecting, and effective means of expression and an essential element in understanding the drive to create political change, in the past and for the future.
The essays in this book reflect not only Bernard Capp’s wide interests, but the authors have also been influenced by his distinctive capacity for empathy and originality and his unique ability to hear the voices of seventeenth-century people in the historical record."
a socially broad national market; secondly, the development of political parties, emerging from the political and religious turmoil of the period, which impinged significantly upon the newly burgeoning popular music industry and its markets; thirdly, a substantial increase in the per capita consumption of alcoholic drinks across all social classes, for reasons of sociability rather than health or nutrition. This article explores the unexpected effects of these changes on cultures of politics, drink and song
across the whole period. In particular, it explores the way in which the Cavaliers of the 1650s and the new ‘Tory’ party of the 1680s used the medium of song to encourage excessive drinking and the political and social denigration of sobriety in order to promote loyal obedience
sorts” in this transitional period for army development. This new “profession” not only marked a direct break from the older system of “estates” which put fighters at the top and
workers at the bottom of society, it was negotiating its place within the social structures of household formation in early modern England.""
Part of a Special Section on Loyalty and Allegiance in Early Modern England, co-edited with Ted Vallance, drawn from our workshop on the topic held at Liverpool January 2007."""