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New and Noteworthy Books in the History of the Human Sciences

Book cover for The Cultivation of Whiteness

Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 2002).

In this lucid and original book, Warwick Anderson offers the first comprehensive history of Australian medical and scientific ideas about race and place. In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. The medical profession entertained … Continue reading →

Book cover for Imperial Ecology

Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002).

Peder Anker is the winner of 2000 FHHS Dissertation Award From 1895 to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the promising new science of ecology flourished in the British Empire. Peder Anker asks why ecology expanded so rapidly … Continue reading →

Book cover for Perspectives on the History of Psychology

Wade E. Pickren and Donald A. Dewsbury, eds., Evolving Perspectives on the History of Psychology, (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2002).

Evolving Perspectives on the History of Psychology presents a collection of some of the best historical scholarship that has appeared in APA journals over the last three decades. In articles that explore important milestones, controversies, and transitions in the history … Continue reading →

Book cover for Traumatic Pasts

Mark S. Micale and Paul F. Lerner, eds., Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930, Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

Paul Lerner is the winner of the 1998 FHHS Dissertation Award. Trauma — the psychological consequences of wars, accidents and abuse — has become the subject of heated debate among doctors, psychologists, and lay critics (and activists) in recent years. … Continue reading →

Book cover for Transformation of Psychology

Christopher D. Green, Marlene Shore, and Thomas Teo, eds., The Transformation of Psychology: Influences of 19th-Century Philosophy, Technology, and Natural Science, (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2001).

Eleven chapters consider the elevation of psychology to the status of a natural science, identifying the intellectual, social, technological, and institutional currents influencing this development. Individual chapters examine the place of numerous tendencies within psychology, including eugenics, phrenology, the study … Continue reading →

Book cover for Africanizing Anthropology

Lyn Schumaker, Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks, and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

Lyn Schumaker won the 1995 FHHS Dissertation Award Africanizing Anthropology tells the story of the anthropological fieldwork centered at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) during the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on collaborative processes rather than on the activity … Continue reading →

Book cover for How to Write the History of the New World

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).

Jorge Canizares-Esguerra is the winner of the 2001 FHHS Article Award In the mid-eighteenth century, the French naturalist Buffon contended that the New World was in fact geologically new-that it had recently emerged from the waters-and that dangerous miasmas had … Continue reading →

Book cover for Social Scientists For Social Justice

John P. Jackson Jr., Social Scientists for Social Justice: Making the Case against Segregation, (New York: New York University Press, 2001).

Kenneth Clark’s famous “doll tests” shocked the nation in the 1950s when he was able to demonstrate that when given a choice, Black children preferred white dolls to black dolls. Few remember that these tests were performed within the context … Continue reading →

Book cover for Diagnosing Literary Genius

Irina Sirotkina, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

The vital place of literature and the figure of the writer in Russian society and history have been extensively studied, but their role in the evolution of psychiatry is less well known. In Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of … Continue reading →