Laurence D. Smith, ed. and William R. Woodward, ed.
This book is about the eminent behavioral scientist B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), the American culture in which he lived and worked, and the behaviorist movement that played a leading role in American psychological and social thought during the twentieth century.
From a base of research on laboratory animals in the 1930s, Skinner built a committed and influential following as well as a utopian movement for social reform. His radical ideas attracted much public attention and generated heated controversy. By the mid-1970s, he had become the most widely recognized scientist in America, surpassing even Margaret Mead and Linus Pauling. Yet Skinner himself was an unassuming family man with a modest middle-class background, a machine shop tinkerer whose tastes ran to English and French literature.
Drawing on archival research, interviews, and historical styles appropriate to the evidence, the authors assembled in this volume examine Skinner's remarkable rise to prominence in the wider context of America's intellectual, cultural, and social history.
In the book's introduction, William R. Woodward analyzes Skinner's status as a cultural icon. The first section of the book examines Skinner's role as a social philosopher. Skinner as a scientist is then examined in the second section. The third section concerns itself with Skinner's personal world, and the final section treats the extension and diversification of Skinnerian behaviorism.
In his concluding chapter, Laurence D. Smith assesses Skinner's controversial legacy by showing how he represented both a product of American culture and one of its most provocative critics; as such Skinner personified the deeply conflicting values that have characterized much of twentieth-century American life.
" This volume of essays is a wonderful tribute to the scholarly achievements of Professor Baker. "
"The volume is . . . alive with pieces that, rather than uncritically celebrating her achievements, discuss, refine, and sometimes take issue with her views."
"The Wife of Bath in Afterlife is a must-read not only for all serious-minded Chaucerian scholars but also for avid readers who earnestly endeavor to enhance their knowledge about theWife of Bath and to broaden their capacity for learning.”
-- Christina Pinkston, Norfolk State University
Review of Fiddled out of Reason, by John William Knapp
"a valuable contribution to our understanding of the hymn as a literary and cultural phenomenon."
-- Joshua Swidzinski, University of Portland
The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe, by David F. Gaylin, has been "recommended for all readers" by Choice Reviews and was listed in their Community College Top 75 titles.
"This engaging collection redresses the balance of Poe studies to consider his work from the perspective of women, those in his works and those reading them. . . . [It] offers a welcome emphasis on the irrepressibility of women in his work who ‘die but do not stay dead’"
Very much in the spirit of Robertson's many impacts on our field, this collection opens a range of fascinating apertures into the medieval literary world that promise to be useful, both to fellow scholars and in a variety of literature classrooms.
New Directions in Medieval Mystical and Devotional Literature not only makes a fitting tribute to a beloved scholar and teacher; it constitutes a significant contribution to the field in its own right. The essays in this beautifully presented book will be essential reading for anyone interested in late-medieval vernacular theology and its reception, both in England and beyond.
--Nicholas Watson, professor of English, Harvard University
Dolan and Labbe’s wide-ranging yet cohesive collection of essays offers a comprehensive and convincing breadth that succeeds in its mission of placing Charlotte Smith. Beyond Smithian scholarship, the volume comes at a prescient time.
--Heather Heckman-McKenna University of Missouri-Columbia
