Stephen Kern is a Distinguished Research Professor at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of the widely acclaimed 'The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918', in which he discusses the sweeping changes in technology and culture between 1880 and World War I that created new modes of understanding and experiencing time and space.

He obtained his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 1970 with the dissertation 'Freud and the Emergence of Child Psychology: 1880-1910'. Since then, he has been teaching at Northern Illinois University. His areas of specialization include modern European history, phenomenology, technology, the body, time, space, love, the gaze, causality and crime.

His publications include:
1975: Anatomy and Destiny: A Cultural History of the Human Body: Bobbs-Merrill
1983: The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918: Harvard University Press
1992: The Culture of Love: Victorians to Moderns: Harvard University Press
1996: Eyes of Love: The Gaze in French and English Paintings and Novels 1840-1900: London, Reaktion Books