CURRICULUM VITAE: JEFFREY S. RAVEL

DEPARTMENT: History DATE: October 2009

DATE OF BIRTH: 23 April 1959

CITIZENSHIP: United States

EDUCATION

University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. 1991

University of California, Berkeley M.A. 1987

Colgate University B.A. 1983

TITLE OF DOCTORAL THESIS: The Police and the Parterre: Cultural Politics in the Paris Public Theater, 1680-1791

FELLOWSHIPS AND HONORS

2000 Barnard Hewitt Award for Best Book on Theater History in 1999, awarded by the American Society for Theatre Research

1995-96 Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies

1995-96 Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities-Newberry Library

1995 Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities

1993 East-West Seminar Fellowship, International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

1993 Bernadotte E. Schmitt Travel Grant, American Historical Association

1990-91 Fellowship, Josephine de Kármán Trust

1988-89 Bourse Chateaubriand (Government of France)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Academic Positions

2002-Present Associate Professor with Tenure, MIT

1999-2002 Associate Professor of History, MIT

1997-1999 Assistant Professor of History, MIT

1995-1997 Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

1994-1995 Visiting Assistant Professor, Oberlin College

1993-1994 Visiting Assistant Professor, SUNY Binghamton

Spring 1993 Lecturer, Hobart & William Smith Colleges

Fall 1992 Lecturer, Colgate University

Spring 1992 Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley

1989-1990 Teaching Assistant, Harvard University

Non-Academic Positions

1998-1999 Consultant, Digital Learning Interactive, Inc., online Western Civilization textbook.

1986-1988 Legal Assistant, California Attorney General's Office, San Francisco

1983-1985 Paralegal, Sullivan & Cromwell, NYC

SEMINARS, COLLOQUIA, CONFERENCES, ETC.

May 2009 “Interpreting War Games in the fin-de-règne,” North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, New York City.

Mar. 2009 “Old Regime French Theater and Digital Humanities: The CESAR Project and the Comédie-Française Registers Project,” Society for French Historical Studies, St. Louis.

Jan. 2009 “Was There a Culture of Fraud in Old Regime France?” American Historical Association, New York City.

Dec. 2008 “How to Assassinate Your Husband and Become a Christian Heroine: The Tiquet Affair, 1699,” Harvard Humanities Center, Women in Early Modern Europe Seminar.

Apr. 2008 “How to Assassinate Your Husband and Become a Christian Heroine: The Tiquet Affair, 1699,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Portland, OR.

Apr. 2008 “The Would-Be Commoner,” Invited Lecture, University of Portland.

Nov. 2007 “A Notorious Case of Imposture in Late Seventeenth-Century France,” Harvard Humanities Center, Eighteenth-Century Studies Seminar.

Nov. 2007 “Was There a ‘French’ Culture of Imposture During the Old Regime?” Western Society for French History, Albuquerque NM.

Sept. 2007 “The Would-Be Commoner,” Yale seminar on Old Regime and Revolutionary France, New Haven CT.

July 2007 “Théâtre de Société en Angleterre et en France à l’époque révolutionnaire,” International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Montpellier, France.

Dec. 2006 “The Would-Be Commoner: Comic Certainty and Judicial Doubt In France Ca.1700,” Invited Speaker, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Indiana University.

Oct. 2004 “Imposture in Late Seventeenth-Century France,” Clark Library Workshop on Imposture: Identity and Pretense in Europe and the Atlantic World, 1600-1800, Los Angeles.

June 2004 “CESAR: History and Current Contents,” CESAR Conference, Oxford, UK.

Mar. 2004 “CESAR: History and Current Contents,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston MA.

Feb. 2004 “Comment assassiner son mari et devenir héroïne chrétien. Le cas de Madame Tiquet, 1699, ”  Colloque internationale sur les Causes célèbres, Paris.

Apr. 2003 “The Coachman’s Bare Rump: An Eighteenth-Century French Cover Up,” Invited Speaker, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of New Mexico.

Apr. 2003 “’Nous doutons de tout dans cette cause.’ The Limits of the Law in 1699,” Society for French Historical Studies, Milwaukee, WI.

Jan. 2003 “Le Derrière du cocher: Une soirée interrompue au XVIIIe siècle,” Lecture delivered at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris.

Nov. 2002 “The Coachman’s Bare Rump: Theatrical Exposure in Eighteenth-Century France,” Invited Speaker in the Distinguished Lecture Series “Performance as Public Practice,” Department of Theater and Dance, University of Texas at Austin.

Oct. 2002 “Comic Certainties and Judicial Doubts: The Pivardière Affair, 1698-99,” Northeast Section, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, New York City.

June 2002 “Certitudes Comiques et doutes judiciaires. L’Affaire La Pivardière, 1698-99,” Colloque International : Représentations du Procès, University of Paris.

Apr. 2002 “The Would-Be Commoner: A Case of Late Seventeenth-Century Imposture,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Colorado Springs, CO.

Feb. 2001 “Les Pratiques du parterre au XVIIIe siècle,” Collège de France, Paris (Seminar of Professor Daniel Roche, Chair of Enlightenment History).

Feb. 2001 “Les Pratiques du parterre au XVIIIe siècle,” Université de Paris-X, Nanterre (Graduate Seminar in Theater History, directed by Professor Cristian Biet).

Jan. 2001 “The Murdering Adulteress or the Would-Be Commoner? Two French Narratives ca. 1700,” American Historical Association, Boston.

Oct. 2000 “The Missing Husband Recovered: A 1698 Cause Célèbre Onstage,” Northeast Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Portland, ME.

Sept. 2000 “The Missing Husband Recovered: A 1698 Cause Célèbre Onstage,” Workshop on Law and Literature in Old Regime France, University of California, Berkeley.

Apr. 2000 “Gender, Enlightenment, and Revolution in Two Eighteenth-Century Biographies,” Society for French Historical Studies, Tempe AZ.

July 1999 “Playing in Private: The Print Repertory for Private Theatricals in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” International Congress on the Enlightenment, Dublin, Ireland.

June 1999 “The Playwright Versus his Mother-in-Law: Theater, Legal Briefs and Divorce in Eighteenth-Century France,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Rochester, NY.

May 1999 “The Midwife, the Transvestite, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century France,” MIT History/Literature Workshop.

Mar. 1999 “Pierre de Morand (1701-1757): Transvestite Actor, Disgruntled Son-in-Law, and Provençal Playwright in the Eighteenth-Century French Literary Field,” Milwaukee.

Mar. 1998 “Paris 1763: The Coachman's Bare Rump,” Society for French Historical Studies, Ottawa.

Dec. 1997 “A Burlesque Flight: Images of the 1697 Expulsion of the Italian Actors from Paris,” Northeast Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Boston.

Apr. 1997 “Bayonets and Blood: Theater Riots at the End of the Old Regime,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Nashville, TN.

Feb. 1997 “Progress, Decadence, or Gaiety? Theater and National Identity in Eighteenth-Century France,” Western Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Berkeley.

Apr. 1996 “Policing the Parterre, 1697-1751,” University of Chicago, Group on Modern France.

June 1995 “Debating a National Theater: Rousseau and Provincial Playhouses, 1760-1789,” North American Association for the Study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Crawfordsville, IN.

Feb. 1995 “Policing Opera in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Conference, Center for 17th and 18th-Century Studies, UCLA.

Jan. 1995 “Seating the Public,” European History Colloquium, University of Michigan.

Oct. 1993 “Performing Society: Provincial French Theater Audiences, 1750-1789,” New York State Association of European Historians, Rochester NY.

Aug. 1993 “Actress and Activist: Mlle Clairon in the Public Sphere of the 1760s,” East-West Seminar, International Society for 18th-Century Studies, Wassenaar, Netherlands.

Feb. 1993 “The Mariamne Moment: Paris Theater and the Problem of the Public, 1724-1725,” Workshop, Center for 17th and 18th-Century Studies, UCLA.

Oct. 1992 “Staging Masculinity: Public Theater Audiences and Political Culture in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Stony Brook.

Apr. 1992 “Cultural Politics and Public Theater in Old Regime France,” Humanities Institute, UC Davis.

Nov. 1991 “Parterre Performances, 1725-1770,” History Department Colloquium, Cornell University.

June 1991 “Définir le parterre au XVIIe siècle,” Centre méridional de rencontres sur le XVIIème siècle, Marseille, France.

Mar. 1991 “Staging the Public Sphere: The Pre-Revolutionary Debate Over Seating the Parterre,” Society for French Historical Studies, Vancouver BC.

Nov. 1990 “From Disciplining the Parterre to Serving the Public: The Crown Polices Eighteenth-Century Theater Spectators,” Western Society for French History, Santa Barbara.

Oct. 1989 “Le Public vengé: Allegory and April Foolery on the Eve of the French Revolution,” International Conference on Representing the Revolution in Literature and the Visual Arts, Atlanta.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SERVICE

Memberships

American Historical Association

Society for French Historical Studies

American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

American Society for Theatre Research

Service

2008 Co-Organizer, Third Biennial CESAR Conference on “Visions of the Stage: Theater, Art, and Performance in France, 1600-1800,” Clark Art Institute,Williamstown, MA. http://www.clarkart.edu/visit/event_detail.cfm?ID=9703&nav=3

2007-Present Co-Director, Comédie-Française Registers Project, a joint project undertaken by MIT’s HyperStudio, Oxford Brookes University and the Bibliothèque-musée de la Comédie-Française to digitize data from the daily receipt registers of the Comédie-Française theater troupe from its founding in 1680 to 1800. http://web.mit.edu/hyperstudio/cfr/

2004-2006 Editor, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

2004-2005 President, Society for Eighteenth-Century French Studies.

2004 Co-Organizer, Clark Library Workshop on Imposture: Identity and Pretense in Europe and the Atlantic World, 1600-1800, Los Angeles.

2002-2004 Associate Editor, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

2002-2003 Member, Nominating Committee, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

2000-2002 Member, Board of Directors, Northeastern Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

1999-2002 Member, Editorial Board, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

2000-2002 Screener, SSRC-ACLS International Dissertation Fellowship Program.

1999-Present Co-Founder and Advisory Board Member, Calendrier Electronique des Spectacles de l'Ancien Régime (CESAR), a database containing information on French plays, actors, playwrights, performance and performance venues, 1600-1800. http://www.cesar.org.uk.

1996-1997 Screener, Newberry Library Fellowship Competition.

Referee for Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Cornell University Press, The University of Rochester Press, The University of Nebraska Press, Bedford Books, American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, French Historical Studies, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, Theatre Survey, Eighteenth-Century Studies, and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

MIT ACTIVITIES AND COMMITTEES

Department and School

2008-2009 Member, HASS Overview Committee

2007-2008 Chair, HASS Overview Committee

2009, 2007, 2004

History Faculty Undergraduate Essay Prize Committee (Chair 2009, 2007)

2005-2006 Major, Minor and Concentration Advisor for Latin American Studies

Jan. 2005 Organizer, IAP Film Series “Varieties of Religion in Contemporary Latin America”

2005-Present and 1997-2003

History Faculty Undergraduate Officer and Minor Advisor

2004, 2001 History Faculty Transfer Credit Advisor

1998-1999 and 2003-2004

History Faculty Sahin Lecture Series Coordinator

Spring 2003 Member, Kelly-Douglas Essay Prize Committee

2003, 1997-2000

History Faculty Concentration Advisor

2002-2003 Member, HASS Overview Committee

Fall 2002 History Faculty UROP Coordinator

2002-2003 Chair, Colloquium Committee, Comparative Media Studies

Spring 2001 History Faculty Transfer Credit Advisor

Jan. 2000 Organizer, IAP Film Series “Modern Latin America: Revolution and Memory on Film”

1999-2001 History Faculty Reading Group Organizer

1998-Present Member, Curriculum Committee, Comparative Media Studies

1997-1999 Member, History Faculty Curriculum Committee

1997-1998 United Way Campaign Coordinator

Institute-Wide

2009-Present Chair, CUP Sub-committee on implementation of the new HASS GIRs

2007-2008 Member, Sub-committee on the Communications Requirement

2005-2008 Member, Faculty Committee on Library Services

2004-2006 Member, Committee on Campus Race Relations

1998-2001 Freshman Seminar Leader and Advisor

PUBLICATIONS

Books

2008 The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder, and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, xxx + 288 pp.

1999 The Contested Parterre; Public Theater and French Political Culture, 1680-1791. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, xii + 256 pp.

Articles in Refereed Journals

Forthcoming “How to Assassinate Your Husband and Become a Christian Heroine: The Tiquet Affair, 1699”, Seventeenth Century French Studies, 27 pp.

2007 “The Coachman’s Bare Rump: An Eighteenth-Century French Cover-up,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 40: 279-308.

2002 “Le Théâtre et ses publics: pratiques et réprésentations du parterre à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 49 (3): 89-118.

2002 “Allegory and April Foolery on the Eve of the French Revolution,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 25: 113-21.

2001 “Theater Beyond Privilege: Changes in French Play Publication, 1700-1789,” Studies on

Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 12: 299-347.

2001 “Gender, Enlightenment, and Revolution in Two Eighteenth-Century Biographies,” French Historical Studies, 24: 359-78.

1996 “La Reine boit! Print, Performance and Theater Publics in France, 1724-1725,” Eighteenth Century Studies, 29: 391-411.

1994 “Actress to Activist: Mlle Clairon in the Public Sphere of the 1760s,” Theatre Survey, 35: 73-86.

1993 “Seating the Public: Spheres and Loathing in the Paris Theaters, 1777-1788,” French Historical Studies, 18: 173-210.

1988 “Language and Authority in the Comedies of Boursault,” Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 28: 177-99.

Other Publications

2009 “Editor’s Introduction,” in Online Proceedings of the Third International CESAR Conference, http://cesar.org.uk/cesar2/conferences/conference_2008/confintro08.html.

2008 “The Playwright v. His Mother-in-Law (1738),” in Ris, Masques et tréteaux. Aspects du théâtre du XVIIIe siècle: Mélanges en homage à David Trott, Marie-Laure Girou Swiderski, Stéphanie Massé et Françoise Rubellin, eds., Presses universitaires de Laval, pp. 273-85.

2007 “From Orthodoxy to Reform,” in Etre dix-huitiémiste II, Carol Blum, ed. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre internationale d’étude du XVIIIe siècle, pp. 109-13.

2006 “The Abderitian Craze: Prescriptions for Playing Private Theatricals in Eighteenth-Century France and Britain.” http://www.cesar.org.uk, click on “conferences”.

2004 “CESAR: History and Current Contents,” http://www.cesar.org.uk, click on “conferences.”

2003 “Certitudes comiques et doutes judiciaries. L’Affaire de La Pivardière, 1699,” Actes du colloque, Reprèsentations du procès, pp. 437-43.

2003 “France,” Oxford Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment Oxford University Press, Vol. 2, pp. 60-65.

2001 “Cultural History, Cultural Studies, and Eighteenth-Century French Theater,” EMF: Studies in Early Modern France, 6: 86-9.

1997 “Rousseau and the Construction of French Provincial Playhouses,” Pensée Libre, 6:183-90.

1992 “Définir le parterre au XVIIe siècle, ” in Ordre et contestation au temps des classiques. Actes du XXIe colloque du CMR 17, Vol. 2, Biblio 17: Paris, Seattle & Tübingen, pp. 225-31.

Book Reviews

Forthcoming Michael R. Lynn, Popular Science and Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century France (Manchester, 2006). Enlightenment and Dissent, 4 pp.

2008 Susan Maslan, Revolutionary Acts: Theater, Democracy, and the French Revolution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Journal of Modern History, 80 (1): 148-150.

2007 Matthew S. Buckley, Tragedy Walks the Streets: The French Revolution in the Making of Modern Drama (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). H-France Discussion List, 7 (134).

2007 Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England (Yale University Press, 2004). Journal of Modern History, 79 (1): 181-182.

2006 Melissa Hyde, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). H-France Discussion List, 6 (111).

2004 Lenard Berlanstein, Daughters of Eve: A Cultural History of French Theater Women (Harvard University Press, 2001). Social History, 29 (1): 107-109.

2003 Paul Friedland, Political Actors: Representative Bodies and Theatricality in the Age of the French Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2002). H-France Discussion List, 3 (70).

2003 Jeffrey Freedman, A Poisoned Chalice (Princeton University Press, 2002). H-Law Discussion List (Feb.).

2002 Christian Biet, Droit et littérature sous l'Ancien Régime. Le Jeu de la valeur et de la loi (Honoré Champion, 2002). ASECS Book Reviews Online.

2002 George Taylor,The French Revolution and the London Stage, 1789-1805 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). Theatre Survey 43 (2): 268-270.

2002 Sophia Rosenfeld, A Revolution in Language: The Problem of Signs in Late Eighteenth- Century France (Stanford University Press, 2001). The American Historical Review, 107 (3): 948-949.

2002 Pierre Jourda, Le Théâtre à Montpellier, 1755-1851 (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 2001). H-France Discussion List 2 (16).

2001 Larry F. Norman, The Public Mirror: Molière and the Commerce of Social Depiction

(University of Chicago Press, 1999). Journal of Modern History, 73 (3): 680-682.

2001 Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter, eds., Toleration in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2000). Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 31 (4): 615-617.

1998 Abby Zanger, Scenes From the Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the making of Absolutist Power (Stanford, 1997). H-Net Reviews (Nov.):1-5.

1997 Emmet Kennedy, et al., eds. Theatre, Opera, and Audiences in Revolutionary Paris (Greenwood Press, 1996). Theatre Survey, 38 (2): 197-201.

1997 Laura Mason, Singing the French Revolution: Popular Culture and Politics, 1787-1799 (Cornell University Press, 1996). H-Net Reviews (Aug.).

1995 F.W.J. Hemmings, Theatre and State in France, 1760-1905 (Cambridge, 1994) and Hemmings, The Theatre Industry in 19th-Century France (Cambridge, 1993). Theatre Survey, 36 (1): 114.

1992 Virginia Scott, The Commedia dell'Arte in Paris, 1644-1697 (Virginia Univeristy Press, 1990). Theatre Journal, 44 (4): 553-554.

1991 Joseph Bergin, Cardinal Richelieu: Power and the Pursuit of Wealth (Yale University Press, 1985; Paperback Reissue, 1990). Journal of Economic History, 51 (4): 968-969.

LIST OF THESES SUPERVISED

Ph.D.

2008 John Pannill Camp, “Le Premier Cadre: Theatre Architecture and Objects of Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century France,” Brown University Theater Studies Department (Committee Member).

2002 Anne Verdier, “Poétique de l’habit du théâtre en France (1606-1680). Contribution à l’histoire du theater,” University of Paris-X (Nanterre) (Committee Member).

2001 Martin Nadeau, “Théâtre et esprit public: le rôle du Théâtre-Italien dans la culture politique parisienne à l'ère des révolutions (1770-1799),” McGill University History Department (Outside Reviewer).

M.S.

2003 Heather Miller, “The Book as Looking Glass: Death and Children’s Reading in Early Modern England,” MIT Program in Comparative Media Studies (Director).

B.S.

2009 Sam Hollander, History (Director).

2007 Christine McEvilly, History (Reader).

2006 Miranda Knutsen, History (Reader).

2006 Ben Kochan, History (Director).

2005 Morgan Sonderegger, History (Director).