A Big History Directory, 2009: An Introduction

This Directory began at the end of the summer in 2009, in the wake of the Russian Academy of Sciences‘ Fifth International Conference on Hierarchy & Power in the History of Civilizations. 1 Several professors of Big History participated in this conference, in a series of panels on ―Macroevolution: Hierarchy, Structure, Laws and Self-Organization.‖ These included Fred Spier, Akop Nazaretyan, Esther Quaedackers, and Barry Rodrigue. In contrast to the other papers, which tended to be on research in particular aspects of macro-studies, Fred and Barry‘s presentations focused on the pedagogy of Big History. They described the structure of their courses to their colleagues and, in the process, came to appreciate the need to get a better handle on the teaching of Big History around the world.