Since this is my — or, rather, our — blog, I thought I’d take this opportunity to shamelessly trumpet a few things that I’ll be doing at the upcoming APA convention; things, mind you, that I think historians of psychology — both established and aspiring — might be interested in.
A panel discussion entitled, “How to Become a Historian” will take place on Friday at 1:00 (Moscone 236). It has been organized by Kelli Vaughn-Blount of the University of Central Oklahoma and Alexandra Rutherford of York University. The panel will include Jim Goodwin (past Pres., Div 26), Deborah Johnson (Pres-Elect, Div 26), David Baker (Director, Archives of the History of American Psychology, Akron), Jim Capshew (Editor, History of Psychology), Elizabeth Johnston (Sarah Lawrence College), Ann Johnson (U. St. Thomas), and me (Editor, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences). Questions to be discussed by the panel will include “How is historical research any different from the stuff we read in textbooks?”, “What are the academic hazards and benefits of choosing history as your primary research interest?”, “What are the seminal works that are must-reads for beginning students in history of psychology?”, and “How is the Internet impacting historical research?”
A two-hour plenary session on “Technology in the Classroom” will be held on Saturday, starting at 12 noon (Moscone 301). Four presentations are planned. Mine will be on the “This Week in the History of Psychology” podcast series that I produced last year. The other presentations will be “Aligning Instructional Goals and Technologies to Match Student Predispositions” by Gary M. Pavlechko & Greg Siering, “Blogs and Social Bookmarking: How to Develop Information Literacy Skills in Undergraduates” by Chuck L. Robertson, and “Reading Minds: Technology Reveals What Students Believe and Understand” by Bill Hill (who chairs the session) & Randolph A. Smith.
Finally, Sunday at 1:00 (Moscone 250) will see the launch of the second and final part of my video documentary history of American Functionalist psychology entitled, “A School of Their Own.” It covers roughly 1898-1920. I will be distributing DVD copies at the convention (only $5 each!). I will also be posting a small-window copy on Google Video after the convention. The first part of the documentary about the history of functionalism — “Toward a School of Their Own,” — can be found on Google Video now. It covers the years 1859-1898. My first video documentary — “An Academy in Crisis: The Hiring of James Mark Baldwin and James Gibson Hume at the University of Toronto in 1889,” — can be found on Google Video as well. It is a “local” topic, to be sure, that may not be of great interest to many outside of the Toronto area, but it can be presented as an example of how social and political factors have sometimes historically trumped intellectual ones, even in an academic setting.
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