title: Peter Stearns
text: Peter Nathaniel Stearns (born March 3, 1936) is a professor at George Mason University, where he was provost from January 1, 2000 to July 2014.
  
  Stearns was chair of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University and also served as the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (now named Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, he founded and edited the Journal of Social History.  While at Carnegie Mellon, he developed a pioneering approach to teaching World History, and has contributed to the field as well through editing, and contributing to, the Routledge series, Themes in World History. He is also known for various work on the nature and impact of the industrial revolution and for exploration of new topics, particularly in the history of emotions.
  
  He is active in historical groups such as the American Historical Association, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Social Science History Association and the International Society for Research on Emotion.
  
  Early life
  Peter Stearns was born in London, but of American parents (Raymond and Elizabeth) and was an American citizen at birth. He was raised in Urbana, Illinois and attended public grade school and then the University of Illinois High School. After graduating from Harvard College, summa cum laude, he had a traveling fellowship in Europe and then returned to complete his PhD at Harvard. He has four children and a stepson, and five grandchildren. He has held positions at the University of Chicago, Rutgers, Carnegie Mellon, and now George Mason.
  
  Education and career
  He attended Harvard College and later received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. In his prolific career as an author and editor, he has written or edited over 135 different books.  Stearns served as founding chair of the Advanced Placement World History committee and as Vice President for Teaching of the American Historical Association.
  
  Works 
  His books include:
   1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe, Norton, 1974
   American Behavioral History
   
   
  
   Battleground of Desire
   
   
   Cultural Change in Modern World History
   Cultures in Motion
   Debating the Industrial Revolution (2015)
   Documents in World History
   Emotion and Social Change
   Encyclopedia of European Social History
   The Encyclopedia of World History
   
  
   Global Outrage
   
   
   Guiding the American University: Challenges and Choices (2015)
   History of Shame (2017)
   Time in World History (2019)
   
   
   Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History: National and International Perspectives
   Lives of Labour: Work in a Maturing Industrial Society (1975)
  
   
   
   
   The Industrial Turn in World History (2016)
   The Revolutions of 1848 (1974)
   Tolerance in World History 
  
   World Civilizations
   World History in Brief
   World History: Patterns of Change and Continuity
  
  See also
  
  List of Carnegie Mellon University people
  List of Harvard University people
  List of historians
  List of people from Virginia
  
  Notes
  
  References
   Chair, AP World History Development Committee
  
  Place of birth missing (living people)
  21st-century American historians
  21st-century American male writers
  Carnegie Mellon University faculty
  George Mason University faculty
  Harvard College alumni
  Historians of Africa
  Historians of Europe
  Living people
  Social historians
  1936 births
  Canadian Knights Bachelor
  American male non-fiction writers