By Jocelyn Visnov, Senior Writer
Members of the history department and related programs gathered in Miguel Hall for the latest event in the history Brown Bag lecture series. The discussion was led by Jeff Horn, Ph.D., who spoke about one of his more recent publications, “A People’s History of the World, 1400 to the Present.”
Horn has been a member of the history department at MC for the last 23 years. He has taught a wide range of courses covering European and world history from 1500 to the present. Horn has written or edited a total of nine books, with his previous publications focusing on the French and industrial revolutions.
Horn led the recent Brown Bag discussion with an adapted version of a lecture previously done on a webinar with Oxford University. Horn gave an overview of “A People’s History of the World, 1400 to the Present” in an interview with The Quadrangle.
“So it’s a textbook that covers 1400 to the present,” Horn said. “I have some chapters that talk about central issues and they cover the whole time period. So things like trade, agriculture, community, religion and enslavement, those cover the whole period. And then I have other topics that I divide and try to think about the process of change. So there are paired chapters that talk about imperialism, paired chapters that talk about decolonization, paired chapters that speak about manufacturing.”
Horn originally signed the contract to write the textbook back in 2016. He began researching and writing the book in 2017 and it was ultimately published by the Oxford University Press in 2022. He noted that when access to libraries was suddenly restricted due to COVID-19 in 2020, he went to the library and checked out nearly 300 books at once so he could continue his research during the pandemic.
What differentiates this history textbook from others is the focus on studying the people from a social science perspective.
“So the people’s history part was one element of it, trying to think about different kinds of issues,” Horn said. “It’s also about sociology, economics and anthropology. It’s a much more of a social science-oriented version of how to think about change over time. So I’m trying to give a sense that, yes, politics matters, but that if you don’t put it into the context of social change and economic development, that you can’t really understand politics at a global level.”
Amongst the students in attendance at the event was senior Joshua Whipple, a double major in history and international studies.
“It [the history Brown Bag event] was really interesting to attend,” Whipple said. “As somebody who obviously studies history, I really enjoyed it, but just as somebody who is interested in academics in general, I learned a lot about how to write for academics.”
Adam Arenson, Ph.D., professor and chair of the history department, commented on Horn’s work following the history Brown Bag event.
“Dr. Horn’s presentation showed how much thought and how much expertise goes into creating a textbook—something I don’t think students think about!” Arenson wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “His textbook shows the hard work he put in, during the pandemic, thinking about the best ways to teach world history, and how to go beyond what other books did.”