Education

• Ph.D., History, The Ohio State University, 2010
• M.A., History, The Ohio State University, 2004
• B.A., History, University of Oklahoma, 2003

Biography

Ray Ball is an Associate Professor of History at UAA. Prior to joining the department in 2012, she taught at Kenyon College and Minnesota State University. Ball's research interests largely focus on the intersections of political culture and popular culture in early modern Spain, England, and the Atlantic World. When not in the classroom or the archives, she enjoys running, hiking, cooking, and traveling. Dr. Ball is also a Pushcart-nominated poet. Her first book of poems, Tithe of Salt, was published by Louisiana Literature Press in 2019.

Teaching Responsibilities

• HIST A101: Western Civilization I
• HIST A102: Western Civilization II
• HIST A308: Europe in the High Middle Ages
• HIST A310: Renaissance and Reformation Europe
• HIST A312: Early Modern Europe
• HIST A336: Latin America to 1800
• HIST A338: Modern Latin America
• HIST A377: Historiography
• HIST A390: Themes in World History
• HIST A406: Medieval Iberia
• HIST A408: Early Modern Iberia
• HIST A418: Tudor and Stuart England
• HIST A477: Senior Seminar

Research Interests

Early Modern Iberia, Early Modern Europe, Colonial Latin America, Atlantic World, Counter-Reformation Piety, Political Culture, Theater History and Historiography, Women and Gender in the Renaissance and Reformation

Publications

Books:

Trinities (Louisiana Literature Press, 2023) 

Cómo ser rey. Instrucciones del emperador Carlos V a su hijo Felipe (Madrid: El Viso 2014).

Treating the Public: Charitable Theater and Civic Health in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Louisiana State University Press, 2017).

Articles:

“Court Cities Celebrate Prince Baltasar Carlos: Loyalty, Status, and Identity in the Early Modern Spanish World,” Royal Studies Journal 5, no. 2 (2018): 129–146.

"From the Spanish Atlantic Archives to the Classroom in the Arctic: Perspectives on Linking Digital Projects and Undergraduate Research in History,” Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 48, no. 1 (2018), Article 5.

"Water, Wine, and Aloja: Consuming Interests in the Corrales de Comedias 1600-1646," Comedia Performance 10, no. 1 (March 2013): 59-92.

"'Beautiful Serpents' and 'Cathedras of Pestilence': Antitheatrical Traditions, Gendered Decline, and Political Crisis in Early Modern Spain and England," Sixteenth Century Journal 43, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 541-563.

Works in Progress:

Book: The Osunas and their Agents: Networks of Intelligence, News, and Patronage in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean