Research
Most of
my work has been on eighteenth-century France, with a particular emphasis on
Jewish-Gentile relations from the Enlightenment through the Napoleonic
period. The product of this labor is my book, Obstinate Hebrews:
Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Along the way my interest in
the French Revolution led me to edit an anthology of historical writings on
that much-disputed event, The
French Revolution: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell,
2001), and my interest in Jewish-Gentile relations prompted me to translate and
edit G. E. Lessing's Nathan the Wise
(Boston and New York: St. Martin's
Press, 2004). I am currently working with a crack team of
scholars on a special issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques,
titled Crossing the Line: New Perspectives on the Jews of Modern France,
and scheduled to appear in Spring 2006. Other projects underway include
research on the image of "the Jewess" in modern European culture and
an intellectual/cultural history of terror during the Age of the
Enlightenment. Meanwhile I am working on an exciting new resource called History Compass, which I
encourage you to examine for research or teaching purposes. Blackwell is offering
this service free for 2005. Beginning in 2006 it will be by institutional
subscription.
Teaching
Over the past eight years at William and Mary I've taught Western Civ, modern French history, Europe from 1648 to 1871, as well as seminars on
the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Most of my teaching has been
at the undergraduate level. William and Mary has a graduate program in
American history, and I am working on a graduate class on Atlantic Revolutions
of the eighteenth century (Spring 2006?), but the bulk of my teaching thus far
has made me into something of a generalist in the classroom. The adage
that "you learn the most by teaching" is true, I believe,
particularly when you're a modern European historian and have assigned excerpts
from the Epic of Gilgamesh for the first week of Western Civ.
I don't want to sound too Mr. Chips, but my students are really the thing that
makes teaching worthwhile. I've been fortunate to have talented and
motivated students at William and Mary, and it's a pleasure to work with
them. Over the years we've collaborated on a number of projects, the
links to which are below.
The
Document Discovery Project
The Simplicissimus
Project
The Persian Letters Project
The Encyclopedy
Project
C.V.
Blog
Contact info:
Ronald Schechter
Associate Professor
The Lyon Gardiner Tyler Department of History
The College of William and Mary
P.O. Box 8795
Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
rbsche@wm.edu