Big History: Between Nothing and Everything
DAVID CHRISTIAN (DPhil, Oxford University) is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union. He has spent most of his career at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, apart from an eight-year period teaching at San Diego State University from 2001 to 2008. Christian has published histories of modern Russia and also a study of the role of the trade in vodka in nineteenth-century Russia. In 1998, he publishedA History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, the first volume in the Blackwell History of the World Series. He began teaching courses on big history in 1989 at Macquarie University. He first used the phrasebig historyfor such courses in an article published in the Journal of World History in 1991 titled “The Case for ‘Big History.’ ” In 2010, with Bill Gates, he founded the “Big History Project,” which is building a free online high school course in big history due for release in late 2013. Christian is a member of the Australian Academy of Humanities and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He is the founding president of the International Big History Association.CYNTHIA STOKES BROWN (PhD, Johns Hopkins University) spent most of her career directing the secondary teaching credential program at Dominican University of California. She taught selected courses in the history department and wrote books about civil rights history and teachers, Brown’s bookBig History: From the Big Bang to the Presentwas published in 2007. Since then her interests have been consulting with the big history program at Dominican, serving on the board of the International Big History Association since its inception, and writing big history essays for high school students through the Big History Project funded by Bill Gates.CRAIG BENJAMIN (PhD, Macquarie University) is an associate professor of history in the Meijer Honors College at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Like both his co-authors, Benjamin is a frequent presenter of lectures at conferences worldwide, and the author of numerous publications including books, chapters, and essays on ancient Central Asian history, big history, and world history. In addition, Benjamin has recorded lectures for the History Channel, The Teaching Company, and the Big History Project. He is currently a member of both the Advanced Placement and SAT World History Test Development Committees, vice president (president elect) of the World History Association, and has been treasurer of the International Big History Association since its inception in January 2011.