Jerry H. Bentley (born 1949) is a world history professor at the University of Hawaii, USA, and founding editor of the Journal of World History since 1990. He has written on the cultural history of early modern Europe and on cross-cultural interactions in world history. He is one of the cited experts in Annenberg Media's 2004 series of educational videos that are broadcast by satellite on the Annenberg Channel.
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Bentley was born in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, the oldest of three boys. His father was an engineer, and his mother was a homemaker and entrepreneur. He attended Brainerd High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and then went on to the University of Tennessee where he obtained a Bachelors Degree in 1971, and then his Masters (1974) and PhD (1976) from the University of Minnesota. Following this he began working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaii in 1976. He rose to Associate Professor in 1982, and full professor in 1987. In 1990 he was the founding editor of the Journal of World History, with Elton Daniel and Daniel Kwok as editorial board members, and Herbert F. Ziegler as the book review editor. The University released a series of monographs on world history, Perspectives on the Global Past, and then became the headquarters for the World History Association. Bentley and Ziegler were also co-authors of the college-level world history textbook Traditions and Encounters which as of 2011 is in its 5th edition.[1]
In 2002, Bentley became the Director at the Center for World History. [2]
His research on the religious, moral, and political writings of the Renaissance led to the publication of Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (1983) and Politics and culture in Renaissance Naples (1987). His more recent research has concentrated on global history and particularly on processes of cross-cultural interaction.
His book Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (1993) studies processes of cultural exchange and religious conversion before modern times, and his pamphlet Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship (1996) discusses the historiography of world history.
His interests include processes of cross-cultural interaction and cultural exchange in modern times.
In his works, he separates time into the following periods: