Dr. Sara Beam

Dr. Beam is an associate professor of History who specializes in the history of early modern Europe (1400-1800).  Her current research focuses on the practice of torture in Europe before the Enlightenment and the reasons for its decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Despite profound political differences, Western European elites shared a broad range of cultural values in the early modern period that led to the development of human rights theory.