Richard Ravalli, Ph.D.

Bio

Professor Ravalli has been teaching History courses at Jessup since 2011. His areas of expertise are the Western frontier, California history, and American film and television. He enjoys making history relevant for students from a variety of backgrounds and majors.

Work/Publications

Books

• Lucas: His Hollywood Legacy. University Press of Kentucky (2024)
• Sea Otters: A History. University of Nebraska Press (2018)

Recent Articles and Chapters

• With Cameron La Follette, Peter Hatch, Douglas Deur, and Ryan Tucker Jones. The Invisible Slaughter: Local Sea Otter Hunters on the Oregon Coast. Oregon Historical Quarterly 124:3 (Fall 2023): 298-323
• A Transpacific Perfect Storm: The Arrest of George Washington Eayrs and the Oceanic Context of the Mercury Case of Late Spanish California. Journal of the West 62:1 (Winter 2023): 26-32
• “Everyone wants to have this California body”: West Coast Glamazons and the Muscular Woman of the 1980s. Journal of the West 60:2 (Spring 2021): 48-69
• The Bodybuilding and Entertainment Careers of Cory Everson. In Kusha Tiwari, ed., Gender and Popular Culture: Identity Constructions and Representations (UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019)

Book Reviews

• Jurgen Martschukat, The Age of Fitness: How the Body Came to Symbolize Success and Achievement (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021). Journal of Sport History 49:1 (Spring 2022): 91-92.
• Charles Acland, American Blockbuster: Movies, Technology, and Wonder (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020). Business History 64:8 (2022): 1154-1155.
• David Blanke, Cecil B. DeMille, Classical Hollywood, and Modern American Mass Culture, 1910-1960 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Enterprise & Society 23:2 (2022): 590-591
• Danielle Friedman, Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022). Sport in American History, February 19, 2022, https://ussporthistory.com/2022/02/19/review-of-lets-get-physical/
• Haley Shapley, Strong Like Her: A Celebration of Rule Breakers, History Makers, and Unstoppable Athletes (New York: Gallery Books, 2020). Sport in American History, May 30, 2020, https://ussporthistory.com/2020/05/30/review-of-strong-like-her/
• Suzanne M. Stamatov, Colonial New Mexican Families: Community, Church, and State, 1692-1800 (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2018). Journal of the West 59:2 (Spring 2020): 71-72
• Dane A. Morrison, True Yankees: The South Seas & The Discovery of American Identity. Itinerario: International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction 42:2 (August 2018): 321-322.