In this presidential address, the author discusses how to find inspiration when writing about the history of education. He says that while the Muse can sometimes be elusive, we do not have to search far and wide to find her. The author finds his inspiration through reading, writing and talking to his colleagues and students and also by asking the…

In her 2019 address, Ann Marie Ryan, president of the Organization of Educational Historians, examines historical consciousness and educational spaces. Historical consciousness requires historiographical knowledge--coming to an understanding of history after considering multiple historical accounts and interpretations. Historical theorist Jörn…

Delivered as one of the keynote addresses at the International Standing Committee on the History of Education (ISCHE) Conference held in Chicago in August 2016, this paper offers a broad review of how the body and embodiment have been incorporated into histories of education. Based on this historiography, I extend three "inspiring…

This address derives from the intellectual contributions of young scholars and doctoral students, in faded memory of the author's life as a doctoral student and young scholar. This address has three purposes: (1) to define school desegregation; (2) to place--albeit briefly--that definition within the larger context of the literature on school…

Important in the study of rhetorical history, systems theory advocates the reading of rhetorical works in their original climates, employing a macroscopic perspective and defining research problems with reference to rhetorical systems, including the rhetoric embodied in the treatise as well as in other treatises of the place or period. The total…

This historiographic essay discusses and seeks to begin to address the need for a business history of the newspaper. The paper's first section clarifies the terms "business history,""economic history,""political history," and "history of economics," (which the paper suggests have been used interchangeably in…

This paper sets out three criteria for identifying good retrospective accounts of curriculum development projects. A "retrospective account" is a history. Such histories of curriculum development projects help in making sense of the course of deliberation that has produced a curriculum. Making the deliberation intelligible is, in turn, necessary…

Issues of empowerment have led rhetoricians as professionals to reexamine the notion of rhetorical history and to recast what is thought to be known of the past as a collection of histories--each necessarily selective, ideologically biased, and incomplete, many potentially conflicting and all, to some degree, creative fictions. Susan Jarratt,…

This paper provides an overview of qualitative studies' antecedents among historiographers and of the positivist tide which nearly engulfed them. Humans live by interpretations. The task of social science--the basic task of qualitative studies--is to study these interpretations so that we can better understand the meanings which people use to…

In 1921, during the course of a news conference, President Warren G. Harding misinterpreted the provisions of one of the treaties then under consideration by delegates to the Washington Disarmament Conference. His error was corrected in a few hours, but this incident was blown out of proportion by those who were convinced that Harding was an inept…

Until 1960, two types of publications prevailed in the historiography of adult education--the history of individual educational organizations or establishments and biographical studies concerning leading adult education theoreticians or practitioners. The specificity of the development of adult education historiography since the 1960s is due not…

Seal printing is explored as a literary topic in 28 works dating from the third millennium B.C. to A.D. 1613 (from Sumerian times through Shakespeare's). This ancient printing method is mentioned in the literature of the Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, and Arabians. It occurs in the works of Herodotus, Plutarch, and Marco Polo, as well as Chaucer and…

The narrative conventions of romance which flourish in Lawrence Cremin's "Transformation of the School" show that stylization does occur in historical writings. People often talk about stylization in visual forms; but stylization in the verbal arts is relatively undefined. To structure his recounting of the progressive story, Cremin drew…

The failure of journalism historians to address important philosophical and methodological issues has led to a loss of vitality in historical research and teaching. As far back as the early 1950s, this situation attracted considerable concern, but it was not until the late 1960s that complaints were transformed into critical historiographical…

New ways of relating the newspaper to the history of thought are discussed in this paper. It suggests that intellectual and media historians may approach the newspaper either institutionally, as a significant cultural variable in the reception of new thought, or as an analytic probe (both in content and form) by which to assess that process of…