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MLA
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Social Sciences
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English (U.S.)
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Topic:

Biography of a Founder. Provide a brief historical biography

Essay Instructions:

Either from the very short list of founding contributors to a field from class, or from a longer list (there are many available online), select an individual who made a major, early contribution to the field you selected and explore both their personal lives and at least one of their major contributions. Report back on the connection between these two topics.

 

Paper Disciplinary Areas: You have the option to write paper on any of the three disciplinary areas that we focus on this quarter.
Psychology Cognitive Psychology Sociology
Specific Tasks and Questions:)
Task: Identify an individual who made a major contribution to a field of research in roughly the first third of that discipline's history. So, for CogSpj, for example, this would be roughly the period roughly 1960-1980. For Sociology, it might be roughly 1800-1875. You could also, however, focus on major contributions to a sub-field that came later. So, for example, if you wished to write about Urban Anthropology, this period would be roughly 1960-1980. A little quick background research should help you establish rough dates for the emergence of a field and key personalities affiliated with the early days of a new path of inquiry. Select one, and then conduct a more detailed investigation into their life. Using biographies, autobiographies, obituaries, personal speeches, web resources, and whatever else you can locate, answer the questions below about this individual and their work:
Specific Questions:
— Provide a brief historical biography, including place and date of birth, major childhood events, and other aspects of the persons early "formative" years. Note that for all parts of your biography you must paraphrase and completely re-write any information that you obtained from other sources. I expect citations to be used as well, when necessary. If you have questions about citing sources, please ask. Copy-and-paste scholarship will not be accepted!
— How did this person come to the topics that later led them to help establish a new field of study? What initial questions were they trying to answer? Why was the answer difficult to find with the existing theories of the time?
— Talk about 1 or 2 of this individual's major contributions (books, papers, etc.). Why is it considered important today and what was the reception at the time?
— What was this persons everyday life like, outside the research world? What did they do to "pay the bills" and what social position did they hold? Were they poor, wealthy, a socialite, a hermit?
— Comment on your own feelings toward this individual and their contributions to a field. Do you own them a debt of gratitude, or did they make it more difficult for you to pursue your own goals (say, by positing an unworkable theory that held back advancement for decades).

Essay Sample Content Preview:
Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course
Date
Ulric Neisser
Born to a Jewish father and Catholic mother in Kiel, Germany on December 8, 1928, Ulric Neisser is considered to be the father of cognitive psychology (Hyman). His father anticipated the rise of fascism in Germany and as a result he immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1933. As a kid, Neisser was chubby and was nicknamed “Dick” (Brennan and Houde 374). In the U.S. young Neisser wanted to fit in and be successful (Brennan and Houde 374). He became an ardent baseball fan and as informed by Brannan and Houde, he developed a soft spot for the underdog, a feature that would later affect his career interests. When he later joined Harvard University as an undergraduate, he found himself in a department dominated by mechanistic behaviorism but decided to focus his attention on the less popular Gestalt psychology. Under George Miller’s supervision, Neisser completed his psychology bachelor’s degree in 1950. He completed his master's degree in Swarthmore College in 1953 and doctorate from Harvard in 1956 and landed a teaching job at Brandeis.
Prior to publishing his groundbreaking book Cognitive Psychology in 1967 that established a new field, Neisser conducted studies on visual search. For Neisser, behaviorist assumptions were wrong and thus limited the extent to what psychologists could study (Hyman). His emphasis was on constructive processing and information processing. Given that he was not comfortable with behaviorism, Neisser decided to offer a compelling alternative in his book Cognitive Psychology. His academic journey that involved working George Miller helped him appreciate information theory. His working with Gestalt psychologists Hans Walach and Wolfgang Kohler contributed to his development of the book. Dissatisfaction with behavioral psychology in understanding mental processes gave rise to cognitive psychology, with Neisser’s book marking the official beginning of the field. While behaviorists believed that internal behaviors could not be studied, Neisser sought to ...
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