Degrees: Ph.D. Berkeley (1999), B.A. McGill (1990)

Email: sbeam@uvic.ca | Office: Clearihue B205

Social and cultural history of early modern Europe, with a particular focus on sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century France.

HIST 240 History of Modern Europe
HIST 360 The Italian Renaissance
HIST 361 The European Reformations
HIST 369 France from the Renaissance to Louis XIV
HIST 386 Criminality and Violence in Europe, 1400-1800
HIST 480 Historiography
HIST 504 Religion and the State in Europe, 1400-1700

Born and raised in Toronto, I have since lived in Switzerland, France, India, Japan and the United States. Along the way, I graduated with a B.A. from McGill University in 1990 and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. I began teaching at the University of Victoria in 2002.

Laughing Matters: Farce and the Making of Absolutism in France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007 (bibliography: html , pdf , rtf)
Winner of the 2008 Roland H. Bainton Book Prize for History/Theology awarded by the Sixteenth Century Society.

"La satire dans las farce pendant la Renaissance," in La Satire dans tous ses états: Le "meslange satyricque" à la Renaissance française, ed. Bernd Renner (Geneva: Droz, forthcoming)

"The 'Basoche' and the 'Bourgeoisie Seconde': Careerists at the Parlement of Paris during the League," French History 17 (Dec. 2003): 367-87