The final sessions of the 2009 Cheiron meeting at Penn St. U. finished on Sunday afternoon. One of the highlights of conference was an evening session sponsored by the Archives of the History of American Psychology (U. Akron) in which were shown several films on child development that had been produced by Walter Mischel Arnold Gesell [thanks Vinny!) between about 1915 and 1930. The films were presented by AHAP director David Baker and two of his assistants, John Bean and Lizette Royer. The complete program can be found on the Cheiron website.
The banquet Saturday night featured the annual Cheiron book auction at which the zany auctioneering of Ian Lubek (and others who shall remain nameless) helped to raise about $1000 for the student travel fund.
Next year’s meeting will be hosted by Vincent Hevern at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. The meeting for 2011 is expected to be held jointly with the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences and a location to be determined, probably on the east coast of the US.
Cheiron is the International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences. It holds a conference each year at which about 50 reseach papers are presented on a wide variety of topics. This year’s attendance was about eighty, hailing mostl from the US and Canada, but representing several other countries as well (China, Spain, Brazil, and Norway, among others)
“…Walter Mischel between about 1915 and 1930….” Wow! I didn’t realize that Mischel was that old. Indeed, wasn’t he born in 1930? Oh, maybe you meant to say “Arnold Gesell”? I think he was the one whose films we were shown.