Ryan Frace

• Assistant Professor
• Founders 202B
• rfrace@wellesley.edu
• (781) 283-2912

Having recently joined the History Dept. in 2005, I am very excited to be here, and look forward to making significant contributions to Wellesley College. I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where I taught courses on Early Modern/Modern Europe and Colonial America. I also spent five summers teaching Comparative Modern Revolutions at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth (CTY).

The courses I teach at Wellesley, which range from 1300 to 1900 and span most of Western Europe, focus on the most vibrant elements of intellectual history (the history of ideas), along with their political, cultural, and socio-economic contexts. I like to explore the material landscapes that give rise to powerful and important ideas, and the new world that is left in their wake. I especially enjoy teaching: the transformation of religious beliefs (especially toleration); imperialism; revolutionary ideologies; the rise of consumer societies; and debates over natural rights, equality, and identity (including issues of gender, class, and race). Please feel free to stop by my office if you have any questions regarding courses, research projects, or graduate study in Early Modern Europe.

Though my personal outlook is global, my research interests are centered in Early Modern Britain and Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. My dissertation, which was supported by the Wodrow Wilson Foundation and several travel grants, will form the basis of my current book project, entitled "The Foundations of Enlightenment and the Advent of Modernity: Religious Transformations in Early Modern Scotland."

Outside of the classroom and British archives, I am a member of the General Judiciary Committee, and I serve as the faculty advisor to Clio (the history club).

History Department