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 Vice Provost for Student Success and Dean of the Honors College at UAA. She has called Alaska home since 2012, when she arrived at UAA as a Professor of European and World History. She holds an MA and a PhD in History from Ohio State University and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Ray researches and writes about the early Spanish Empire and the individuals who crisscrossed its vast territories, including actresses, friars, outlaw dukes, Venetian spies, and African healers. Ball is the author of two history books, three poetry books, and numerous articles and reviews. She's been the recipient of a Fulbright Research Award to Spain, an NEH Summer Institute Award, and the UAA Chancellor's Award for Research and for Teaching.

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