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Professor Barbara Ravelhofer (Durham)

Barbara Ravelhofer is Professor in English Literature at Durham. After a degree in English and German Literature from the University of Munich she continued for her Ph.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at St John’s College. She has also held Visiting Fellowships at the Universities of Bologna, Princeton, and Harvard.

Apart from her general interest in English Literature and Renaissance Studies, Prof. Ravelhofer has written on European spectacle from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, editing and book history in comparative perspective, as well as oral forms of literature. Her edition of the French dance treatise Louange de la danse (2000) explores the life and professional practices of dancers and musicians in early modern London and Paris. Her book The Early Stuart Masque: Dance, Costume, and Music (2006) studies illusionistic theatre of the Renaissance. Drawing on a massive amount of documentary evidence relating to English productions as well as spectacle in France, Italy, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, the book elucidates professional ballet, theatre management, and dramatic performance at the early Stuart court. Currently she is working on a book about English court theatre, iconoclasm and the dawn of the Civil War.