David Christian (historian)

David Gilbert Christian (born June 30, 1946), a historian and scholar of Russian history, has become notable for teaching and promoting the emerging discipline of Big History.[1][2] In 1989 he began teaching the first course on the topic, examining history from the Big Bang to the present using a multidisciplinary approach[3][4] with the assistance of scholars in diverse specializations from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.[3] Big History frames human history in terms of cosmic, geological, and biological history.[5] Christian is credited with coining the term Big History[6][7] and he serves as president of the International Big History Association.[5] Christian's best-selling Teaching Company course titled Big History caught the attention of philanthropist Bill Gates, who is personally funding Christian's efforts to develop a program to bring the course to secondary-school students worldwide.[5][8]

David Christian
Born
David Gilbert Christian

(1946-12-08) December 8, 1946
New York, N.Y. USA
EducationOxford University
University of Western Ontario
Alma materOxford University
B.A., Ph.D.
University of Western Ontario
M.A.
Known forPioneering the field of Big History
AwardsWorld History Association
Book Prize Maps of Time (2005)
Scientific career
FieldsBig History
History of Russia
InstitutionsMacquarie University
in Sydney
San Diego State U.

Early life

Christian was born in Brooklyn, New York, to British and American parents. He grew up in Nigeria, Africa and in England, where he earned his B.A. from Oxford University, an M.A. in Russian history from the University of Western Ontario, and a Ph.D. in 19th century Russian history from Oxford University in 1974.[1][9][10]

Academic career

Christian's early research interests focused on the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, with particular emphases on the Russian peasantry, including their diet and the role of vodka in their lives. He published several books on these subjects. In 1984, he co-wrote, along with REF Smith, a history about the Russian peasantry entitled Bread and Salt which showed, among other things, how such foods along with dairy products were used as seasonings.[11] He taught at Macquarie University in Sydney from 1975 to 2000.[9]

During the 1980s, he read widely, and began a program to describe human history in the context of very large time scales from cosmology and astronomy, covering the almost fourteen billion years since the Big Bang. He began teaching his first course, what he described as Big History, in 1989.[12] It was a novel approach which emphasizes summary findings from biology and cosmology and astronomy and geology and anthropology to show what happened before homo sapiens became prevalent on the Earth; generally, humans are not mentioned much in the course until halfway through the 15-week semester.[1] He wrote the book Maps of Time which mirrored the course content. The course was chosen by The Teaching Company's Great Courses and Christian recorded 48 half-hour lectures.[13]

In 1998 he published A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia in which he studied the steppe and forest peoples of Inner Eurasia as opposed to 'outer Eurasia' – the crescent of agrarian civilizations from Europe, the Middle East and India to China.

Christian transferred to San Diego State University in California in 2001.[9] He taught students in subjects such as world history and the history of the environment, as well as the history of Inner Eurasia.[9] In 2005, his 600-page book Maps of Time was published which a reviewer described as a "remarkable work of synthesis and scholarship."[14] Christian has additional teaching affiliations with the University of Vermont and Ewha Women's University in Seoul.[9] In 2009, he transferred back to Macquarie University.[9][8]

In 2010, Christian predicted that historical scholarship would have less emphasis on document-based research and more on empirical research, and he wrote:[9][14]

...Over the next fifty years we will see a return of the ancient tradition of "universal history"; but this will be a new form of universal history that is global in its practice and scientific in its spirit and methods.

— David Christian in History and Theory, 2010[14]

Philanthropist Bill Gates presented David Christian at the TED 2011 Conference in Long Beach, California. At that time, Christian announced his Big History Project initiative to teach the subject to secondary school students in Australia and the United States. He is currently serving as President of the International Big History Association.

Awards and honors

Publications
  • Bread and Salt: A Social and Economic History of Food and Drink in Russia, 1984, co-written with REF Smith[15]
  • A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, volume 1, 1998
  • Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, 2005, University of California Press[16]
  • Big History: Between Nothing and Everything, 1st edition, 2014, McGraw-Hill Education (co-written by Cynthia Stokes Brown and Craig Benjamin)
  • Origin Story: A Big History of Everything, 2018, Little, Brown and Company, ISBN 9780316392006
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See also

References
  1. Vanessa Thorpe (27 October 2012). "Big History theories pose latest challenge to traditional curriculum: Maverick academic's 'Big History' – which is backed by Bill Gates – is subject of new documentary". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-12-13. Big History, a movement spearheaded by the Oxford-educated maverick historian David Christian,....
  2. Emily Eakin (January 12, 2002). "For Big History, The Past Begins At the Beginning". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  3. Patricia Cohen (September 26, 2011). "History That's Written in Beads as Well as in Words". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  4. Ursula Goodenough (February 10, 2011). "It's Time For A New Narrative; It's Time For 'Big History'". NPR. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  5. Rev. Michael Dowd (May 8, 2012). "Big History Hits the Big Time". HuffPost. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
  6. Craig Benjamin of Grand Valley State University (July 2012). "Recent Developments in Big History". History of Science Society. Archived from the original on 2013-01-09. Retrieved 2012-12-13. Vol. 41, No. 3,
  7. "Mankind: The Story of All of Us". BBC History Magazine. November 14, 2012. Archived from the original on October 2, 2017. Retrieved 2012-12-31. ...a series informed by ideas around ‘big history’, David Christian’s notion that we should look for common themes and patterns .....
  8. Stephen Pritchard (3 November 2012). "For the record". The Observer. Retrieved 2012-12-31. Prof Christian ... left for San Diego in 2001 but returned to Macquarie in 2009.
  9. "Professor David Christian". Macquarie University. Archived from the original on 2013-01-08. Retrieved 2012-12-31.
  10. The Teaching Company, David Christian Great Courses professor reference page. Retrieved Sept. 8, 2014
  11. "Communism Knew Diversity Before Gorbachev..." The New York Times. February 12, 1989. Retrieved 2012-12-31. ...As R.E.F. Smith and David Christian showed in 1984, in Bread and Salt, even dairy products were generally used as seasoning.....
  12. "Speakers David Christian: Historian". TED. 2012-12-30. ...David Christian is by training a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, but since the 1980s he has become interested in world history on very large scales.
  13. "Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity". The Teaching Company's Great Courses. Retrieved 15 May 2013.
  14. David Christian (December 2010). "The Return of Universal History". History and Theory. 49. pp. 6–27. Retrieved 2012-12-31. ...Today, however, there are many signs of a return to universal history....
  15. Roger Munting and Stephen Rashid (4 July 2010). "REF Smith obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-12-31. ...His last monograph ... jointly written with David Christian....
  16. PD Smith (6 May 2005). "Time and headspace". The Guardian. Retrieved 2012-12-31. ...Christian has written a history of Wellsian scale, travelling from the physics of the Big Bang to our current nuclear age....
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