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Assistive technologies (AT) perform an important social role, interacting with cultural systems to produce or hinder accessibility to biosocial environments. This interaction profoundly shapes not only how an individual body can be experienced by users but also produce and hinder accessibility to biosocial environments. AT users have historically been viewed through a medical model, which deems them disabled by their impairments and by dominant ableist narratives. Therefore, this paper serves to provide an insight into the importance of ageing with and into AT. This paper aims to investigate polio survivors' and diabetic amputees' experiences of assistive technologies in order to better understand impacts upon narrative and identity. By applying an anthropological and sociological lens, a holistic view of the experiences of polio survivor and amputee AT users is developed. This paper draws on 16 in-depth interviews with polio survivors and diabetic amputees in the United States (US) and Australia, which were analysed using an experience-centered narrative approach. Both projects were approved by ethics boards. All participants provided written consent. Five themes were identified: a) disruption to biographies, which reflected AT impact on how narratives become altered; b) impacts to autonomy, which reflected the importance of regaining previous daily activities; c) re-engaging with community life, which highlighted how AT supported participation in valued activities; d) self-perceptions of assistive technologies, which act in opposition to external perspectives and challenge ableist narratives; and e) an intergenerational comparison of new and older AT users highlights the importance of temporalities. This paper offers new perspectives on ageing with assistive technologies, with a focus on identity and narrative. The importance of this paper is to contribute to the existing literature that demonstrates the cultural implications that arise through embodiment and assistive technologies. The use of assistive technology can help individuals regain function, but the individual circumstances require consideration The use of assistive technology is a complex entanglement of bodies, environments, biographies, and imagined futures. The use of assistive technology can provide participants autonomy over their narratives and assist with maintaining their identities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the intellectual trajectory of Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. By reviewing his memoirs and the various interpretations of his work, it puts forward the particular conditions and circumstances that shaped Georgescu-Roegen's theoretical developments. His way from neoclassical consumption behaviour to the entropy law and the economic process was a very exciting intellectual journey. Born in Romania, having experienced four dictatorships in the 1930s and 1940s, he confronted with the problems of a rural, overpopulated economy. The paper shows that his practice in Romania was the rain that made grow the seeds planted in his mind by Schumpeter at Harvard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an anatomy of an inquisition. It examines the Cold War persecution of Edwin Berry Burgum, a university professor and literary theorist. Whilst his professional competence was consistently applauded, his academic career was abruptly destroyed. His 'fitness to teach' was determined by his political beliefs: he was a member of the American Communist Party. The paper argues that New York University, an institution that embodied liberal values, collaborated with McCarthyism. Using previously overlooked or unavailable sources, it reveals cooperation between NYU's executive officers and the FBI, HUAC and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Though its focus on one individual, the paper illuminates larger themes of the vulnerability of academic freedom and the bureaucratic processes of political repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 1884 Charles Francis Adams (1857-1893) left Illinois, USA, by train for San Francisco and crossed the Pacific by ship to work as taxidermist at Auckland Museum, New Zealand, until February 1887. He then went to Borneo via several New Zealand ports, Melbourne and Batavia (Jakarta). This paper concerns a diary by Adams that gives a daily account of his trip to Auckland and the first six months of his employment (from January to July 1885). In this period Adams set up a workshop and diligently prepared specimens (at least 124 birds, fish, reptiles and marine invertebrates). The diary continues with three reports of trips Adams made from Auckland to Cuvier Island (November 1886), Karewa Island (December 1886) and White Island (date not stated), which are important early descriptive accounts of these small offshore islands. Events after leaving Auckland are covered discontinuously and the diary ends with part of the ship's passage through the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), apparently in April 1887. Adams's diary is important in giving a detailed account of a taxidermist's working life, and in helping to document the early years of Auckland Museum's occupation of the Princes Street building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the close resemblances evident in their major works, their critical stance and their politics, C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner have received strikingly different responses from their sociological peers, and they now occupy very different places in the collective memory of the discipline. This intriguing discrepancy provides the basis here for a comparative case study that examines both ongoing commemorative practices and historical evidence. This paper shows how the sociological community has frequently and approvingly commemorated Mills through introductory textbooks, as well as reading lists for doctoral comprehensive examinations, awards in Mills' honor and biographies of Mills, while doing much less to preserve and promote the memory of Gouldner and his contributions to the field. In an effort to attain a better understanding of such differences, I compare the prescriptions that each advocated for the discipline, especially as these are expressed in Mills' Sociological Imagination and Gouldner's Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. The analysis emphasizes how Mills explicitly sought to move beyond sociology, in a narrow academic sense, and called for well-honed empirical endeavors with relevance for a variety of publics, whereas Gouldner proceeded largely as an academic theorist who demanded sociological-theoretical reform. Unlike Mills, he did not breach the gap between academia and the general public. These findings illustrate an apparent paradox, namely, that American sociology in the twenty-first century may reserve its most esteemed positions for internal critics who advocate movement beyond its contemporary confines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Deckert (born in Germany in 1878, immigrated to New York in 1887, died in Florida in 1971) was a polymath with great enthusiasm and wide ranging interests in natural history. His collections and publications did much to document the reptiles, amphibians, and land snails of Florida. His contributions to natural history illustration were equally important, as his carefully detailed line drawings and water colour paintings delineated the intricate details of snails, fishes, amphibians, and reptiles (particularly snakes and turtles), as well as fossil vertebrates, and were used in a wide range of systematic publications. Deckert also contributed to the modernization of fish taxidermy, leading to the current methods for creating lifelike fish mounts. This paper documents his scientific and artistic work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns Arl Walter Fulcher of Terlingua, Texas. The primary emphasis is on his tour in the Army Mobile Veterinary Hospital during World War I and his voluntary service as the Captain of Company C in the Texas State Guard, stationed in Terlingua during World War II. The former period is illuminated through 25 letters written by Fulcher to his family during World War I, documents now housed in Sul Ross' Archives of the Big Bend. The letters started immediately after he left for duty in Europe and ended just days before he arrived home. These letters provide an account of his interactions with his fellow soldiers and the local French residents. A narrative of Fulcher's participation in the Texas State Guard during World War II was constructed by utilizing the Texas State Archives and the Archives of the Big Bend. Among his many accomplishments, his leadership and training style provided a great foundation for non-English speaking recruits to the Texas State Guard. It is noteworthy that many of these Terlingua-based guardsmen went on to serve in the regular United States Army during World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harry Alpert (1912-1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The career of W Raymond Wood is reviewed in terms of his contributions to interdisciplinary studies in archaeology. This paper contends that his academic training at the University of Nebraska and the University of Oregon influenced this holistic approach to archaeological research. Examples of his interdisciplinary approach to research are described for projects ranging from Quaternary studies in the western Ozark Highland of Missouri to ecological approaches for understanding village life among the Indians living along the Missouri River of the eastern Great Plains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This research aims to examine the inclusion of biographies of presidential candidates in library collections. Design/methodology/approach - OCLC's WorldCat database was used to search for biographies of presidential candidates that were held by libraries. Only biographies from the two years preceeding and the actual year of a presidential election were included in the analyses. Findings - The results show that although candidate biographies are plentiful, most are owned by only a few libraries. Recent elections have seen the greatest number of these biographies, many of which have been produced by special interest groups. Analyses show that libraries collect these biographies without regard to party affiliation of the candidate or whether the candidate was victorious. Research limitations/implications - Only major party candidates were included in the analyses. Originality/value - Although such campaign materials may seem ephemeral, the paper shows that this material provides the raw material for future research on presidential campaigns and its associated advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the early American bookseller, minister and author "Parson" Mason Locke Weems' relationship with cultural nationalism, popular literature and print materials in the early U.S. antebellum period. An overview of the book trade during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, including in regard to the role that curiosity played and popularity of biographical books on the U.S. President and military leader General George Washington, is provided.

A biography is presented for American publisher Joseph Hamblen Sears. He was born in Boston in 1865 to ship captain and merchant J. Henry Sears, was educated at Roxbury Latin School and Harvard University. In 1891 he married Anna Wentworth Caldwell. He was an author of two non-fictional books and entered the literary world working for various magazines including Harper’s Weekly. He was a publisher at Harper & Brothers, and then became president of publishing house Appleton, retiring in 1919. He later started his own printing company J.H. Sears & Co from 1922 until 1934. He died in 1946.

The article discusses U.S. statesman John Dickinson (1732-1808) and four works either wrongly attributed to him, or works by him wrongly attributed to someone else. These include: "A Receipt to Make a Speech, by J---- G----, Esquire," attributed to John Galloway; "Remarks on a Late Pamphlet entitled Plain Truth," signed Rusticus; and "Common Sense," signed Fabius.

The article discusses presentations on the history of psychology at two conferences, the 2010 annual meetings of the Southeastern Psychological Association in Chattanooga, Tennessee in March, and the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Atlanta, Georgia in April. Paper topics discussed include the lives and work of U.S. psychologists such as Irwin Jay Knoft, Dorothy W. Seago, and Lula Stevens.