The 50th anniversaries of the Stonewall riots and my entry into the field of early childhood education prompt me to reflect both on the initial years of my activist and professional life and on these, the final ones. Feeling historical, increasingly connected to both the past and the future, I am discomforted by traditional notions of legacy,…

Stories live to be told to others, Dan McAdams (2008) writes: "Life stories therefore are continually made and remade in social relationships and in the overall social context provided by culture. As psychosocial constructions, life stories reflect the values, norms, and power differentials inherent in societies, wherein they have their…

Background/Context: Women's sexuality, and the ways they experience it, has been a major topic in feminist theories and movements throughout history. For the more than 20,000 working-class women who participated in the Free Women movement in Spain (the libertarian women's movement, which started in 1936), women's sexuality was also a key topic in…

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J. was elected the 28th superior general of the Society of Jesus in 1965 and served in that role until 1983. As superior general, Arrupe sought to shape the Jesuits in the spirit of the vision of Vatican II, as well as the original charism of the founder of the Jesuit, St. Ignatius. The questions this dissertation seeks to…

The movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler" is an example of a work that is meant not only to entertain but to convey an important attitude and offer important viewpoints. The movie deals with a deep issue in the history of movies and the history of the country: racial inequality. Three issues are discussed in this article: (a) African…

American publishers have published numerous children's books about Barack Obama over the past several years; most take the form of informational biographies. This article reports on a research project aimed at how these books incorporate sociohistorical narratives, particularly those related to the civil rights movement. Though the features of the…

Selig Perlman's influences as a teacher and his writings, including volumes one, two, and four of the History of Labor in the United States and A Theory of the Labor Movement, are appraised. He taught at the University of Wisconsin School for Workers at Madison and supported trade union development. (LH)

The purpose of this paper is to relate the history and growth of the Barberton Public Library (Ohio) as it has been influenced by its founders and its six directors. The biography of prominent persons who have in some way affected the development of libraries is also considered to be part of library history. The following persons and their careers…

Comparing the biographies of individuals is a technique that can be used to illuminate the larger history of a society. As an illustration, comparative biographies of two dissident leaders, Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin, are discussed to show how they reflect the social and political history of the 1930s. (RM)

This paper (in the form of a dialogue) tells the stories of two members of a remarkable family of nine children, the Flexners of Louisville, Kentucky. The paper focuses on Abraham and Simon, who were reformers in the field of medical education in the United States. The dialogue takes Abraham Flexner through his undergraduate education at Johns…

This annotated bibliography lists almost 100 items. It focuses on materials on the social aspects of the history of medicine published after 1981 because there is no other bibliography that does so. The research design relies on the bibliographic method. The end-product is a systematic, enumerative bibliography. The guide includes 13 general…

Women have played an active role in the development of modern American physical education since its emergence in the mid-nineteenth century. Factors which have influenced the course of women's physical education are discussed in this article. Recent biographical, institutional, and social research on the subject is reviewed. (Author/GC)

A junior high level social studies unit designed to determine the characteristics of a real and fictionalized "great" person is described. (DE)

Social historians are taught that historical changes are caused by large social and economic forces, rather than great individuals; and so they study groups of people, broad economic movements, and underlying institutional structures that change slowly over time. But the general public demands information about the individual person told through…

Four authors of young adult literature describe a year off from writing, the manner in which a nonfiction author chooses his subject matter, what impelled a journalist to write his first novel 20 years ago, and how a novelist calls her imagination into play in the writing process and why she does not like to discuss it. (NKA)