Jeffrey S. Ravel
Professor of History
Jeffrey S. Ravel studies the history of French and European political culture from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. He is the author of The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth Century France (Houghton Mifflin, 2008); and The Contested Parterre: Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680-1791 (Cornell University Press, 1999). He is currently working on a history of French playing cards and political regimes from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
He co-directs the Comédie-Française Registers Project, a collaborative digital humanities venture between the Bibiliothèque-musée of the Comédie Française theater troupe, MIT, Harvard University, the University of Victoria, the Sorbonne, and the Université de Paris-Nanterre. Ravel has co-edited an online, open access, bilingual, volume of essays inspired by this project: Databases, Revenues, and Repertory: The French Stage Online, 1680-1793 (MIT Press, 2020). He also directed the Visualizing Maritime History Project, a digital archive of two maritime history collections conserved by the MIT Museum.
Ravel was the President of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies in 2019-2020. From 2004-2006 he edited the Society’s annual journal, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. He served as Co-President of the Society for French Historical Studies in 2012-2013. He organizes the Boston-Area French History group, which meets several times a year to discuss works-in-progress by local and regional scholars of the French past. He is a Co-Director of MIT’s Beaver Press Print Shop, located in Barker Library. Since April 2015, he has been the Faculty Lead for the MIT-Nepal Initiative.
Teaching interests include Old Regime and Revolutionary France, European cultural and intellectual history, the history of the book and comparative media studies, and World history.
Articles on SHASS-MIT News
The History of Making Books: Building a Printing Press at MIT
Computing and AI: Humanistic Perspectives from MIT
Bringing Data to Cultural History
Publications
Subjects Offered
Offered Fall 2022
Catalog | Subject | Faculty | Level | HASS | Category |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
21H.141 | Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1300-1800MW 2-3:30, E51-385 |
Jeffrey S. Ravel | Introductory | HASS-H | CI-H |
21H.343 CC.120 | Making Books in the Renaissance and TodayProf. Ravel: TR 2:30-4, 4-251Prof. Zimmer: TR 2:30-4, 2-151 |
Jeffrey S. Ravel
Erica Zimmer |
Seminar | HASS-A |
Not Offered This Term
Catalog | Subject | Faculty | Level | HASS | Category |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
21H.241 21G.054 | France: Enlightenment and RevolutionTR 2-3:30, 4-253 |
Jeffrey S. Ravel | Intermediate | HASS-H |