Peter Stearns to Lecture on World History at Smithsonian

Professor Peter Stearns will deliver four lectures on world history at the Smithsonian Institute this March in a series titled "The World in the Early Modern Centuries: New Perspectives on History." The Smithsonian Associates offers this description of the course:

Vigorous scholarly debate backed by new research is shaking up our traditional view that the early modern centuries from 1450 to 1750 can be tidily summed up as "the rise of the West." Instead, historians are taking a more global perspective, which opens up new ways to understand this seminal time period, grounded in a realistic appraisal of the new sources of the West’s strength, as well as its limits. Peter N. Stearns, a professor of history at George Mason University, offers a sweeping view of the significant events in Europe, Russia, Asia, and the Americas in an era of unprecedented change.