Peter Stearns

Peter Stearns is University Professor of History at George Mason University, where he long served as Provost. He has also taught at Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate degree and doctorate, the University of Chicago, Rutgers, and Carnegie Mellon. He has previously been a Vice President of the American Historical Association and founded and long edited the Journal of Social HIstory. He has written widely on American and European social history and on world history. He helped establish the Advanced Placement program in world history, and has published several thematic books in the field on topics ranging from globalization to human rights to childhood. Over the past thirty years he has participated in developing the new field of the history of emotion, and currently co-chairs the North American Chapter on the History of Emotion. He has published numerous books and articles on this field in general, and on specific emotional areas such as fear, anger, grief, gratitude and happiness. A recent book, from the University of Illinois press, is Shame: a brief history, which Choice magazine listed as one of the Outstanding Academic books for 2018.