David Kent Robinson
Professor
of History
Home: 209 East Elliott Drive
Division
of Social Science
Columbia, Missouri 65201
Truman
State University
100
East Normal Street
Home phone: (573) 874-1585
Kirksville,
Missouri 63501
Phone:
(660) 785-4321
Fax:
(660) 785-4337
E-mail:
drobinso@truman.edu
Webpage:
www2.truman.edu/~drobinso
Education
Ph.D.
in History, University of California, Berkeley, May 1987
Dissertation
title: “Wilhelm Wundt and the Establishment of Experimental Psychology,
1875-1914: The Context of a New Field of Scientific Research”
M.A.
in History, University of California, Berkeley, June 1980
A.B.
magna cum laude in History and Science, Harvard College, June 1976
Employment
history
Professor
of European History, Division of Social Science, Truman State University
(formerly Northeast Missouri State University),
1990-present
Assistant
Professor, Department of History, Wright State University, 1988-90, taught
survey of
the Western World since ancient times
Adjunct
Professor, Institute of the Humanities, Antioch College, 1989, taught “Writing
Well”
courses: “History of Women and Work” and “The
Scientist and Twentieth-Century Warfare”
Visiting
Assistant Professor, Center for the Study of Science and Society, Virginia
Polytechnic
Institute and State University (VPI&SU), 1987-88,
taught undergraduate and graduate courses
in history of technology, history of science, science
and the humanities
Teaching
Assistant, Teaching Associate, and Acting Instructor, History Department,
University of California, Berkeley, 1981-86, courses in
modern European history, including an
upper-level seminar on history of social sciences
Research
Assistant (various times), Office for History of Science and Technology,
University of California, Berkeley, 1978-87, mostly
projects on history of modern physics
Courses taught and advising at Truman State University
HIST 120 World Civilizations I (before 1715) (now replaced by HIST-131 and -132)
HIST 121 World Civilizations II (since 1715) (now replaced by HIST-133)
HIST 131 World Civilizations I (ancient, to 500 A.D.)
HIST 132 World Civilizations II (500-1715)
HIST 133 World Civilizations III (since 1715)
HIST 231 Introduction to History and Historiography
HIST 328 Topics: European Social History Since 1700
HIST 328 Topics: Darwinism (in Europe and America)
HIST 356 Modern Germany
HIST 366 Modern European Diplomatic History (research course)
HIST 380 Survey of Modern Europe II (1789 to present)
HIST 400 Senior Seminar in History (capstone course)
HIST 429 Modern European Intellectual History
HIST 436 War, Gender, Business and Technological Change (research course)
HIST 444 Europe: Revolution and Reaction (1750-1871)
HIST 630 Nineteenth-century Europe (graduate class)
HIST 635 Technological Change in Modern Europe
NASC 401 History of Science since 1700
Faculty advisor to approximately 20 students during a given semester; I have advised graduate students, as well.
Committee work and other service at Truman State University
History Institutional Review Board (IRB), 2001-present
Committee for Departmental Honors in History, 1993-1996; 2001-2006
Organizer of Early-Vreeland and Kohlenberg-Towne Lectures, 1998-2000, 2001-2005
Committee for Interdisciplinary Studies Major, 2002-03
Executive Committee of Academic Senate, 1996-97
Chair of Undergraduate Council, 1996-97
Assessment Committee, 1996-97
Division representative on Undergraduate Council, 1995-97; alternate rep., 2005-06
Faculty Summer Workshop on Interdisciplinarity, May 1996
Convener (chair) of History, January 1994 to January 1996
Faculty Fellow, Centennial Residential College, 1999-present
Faculty Associate, Missouri South Residential College, 1990-98
Phi Alpha Theta Advisor, 1991-1992, fall 1995
Served on Higher Order of Excellence, Library Task Force, 1993
Member: Electronic Mail Study Group, Multimedia Study Group (early 1990s)
Mentor to graduate and undergraduate research projects and presentations
From the time I was elected History Convener in 1994 to my sabbatical leave starting summer 1997, History programs and History personnel underwent many changes (some of them because of emergencies, others through careful planning), and a great deal of hard work went into these reforms and into our first-ever Five-Year Review, finished in 1995. The bulk of my activity in Undergraduate Council concerned the drafting and passing of the Liberal Studies Program, which has now replaced our previous core curriculum.
Professional memberships and offices held
Cheiron (The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Social Sciences)
member of Review Committee, 2002-05; chair of Review Committee, 2004-05
program chair, 2004 annual meeting, Akron OH
member of program and local organizing committees, 2005 annual meeting, Berkeley CA
Forum for History of Human Science (FHHS)
chair 2006 to present
newsletter editor 2001- 2003
website editor <http://www.fhhs.org> 1997-2001; 2004-06
FHHS Dissertation Prize Committee, 2001-2002, 2006
FHHS Burnham Early Career Prize Committee, 2002-2004
Midwest Junto for the History of Science
President 2006-07
council member 1999-2000, 2001- 2003
member of local organizing committee, 2004 annual meeting, Kansas City
program chair and organizing committee, 2005 annual meeting, Kirksville MO
Editorial Board, PATH in Psychology, Kluwer/Plenum Press
American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
president, Truman chapter, 2003-2006; chapter secretary, 2006 to present
member at large, Executive Committee, Missouri Conference of AAUP, 2005 to present
American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM)
member of local organizing committee, 2002 annual meeting, Kansas City
American Historical Association (AHA)
History of Science Society (HSS)
Division 26 (History of Psychology) of American Psychological Association (APA)
Phi Alpha Theta (history honors society)
Phi Kappa Phi (general honors society)
Fulbright Alumni Association
Fellow of the Truman Library Institute
Adair County Historical Society
Fellowships and grants, including work abroad
Fulbright Senior Scholar, 2000-2001, teaching at Kherson State Pedagogical University, Ukraine
Paid Sabbatical Leave, Truman State University, 1997-98
July-November, 1997, guest of Institute for History of Science and Technology “S.I. Vavilov,”
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow
January-June, 1998, Visiting Scholar, Department of the History of Science,
Harvard University
Faculty Summer Research Grant, Truman State University, 1991-93, 1995
Faculty International Travel Stipend, Truman State University, summer 1991,
research and conference in Leipzig and Berlin, Germany
University of California Regents Fellowship, 1984-85
University of California Regents Traveling Fellowship, 1983-84,
dissertation research in Passau, West Germany
IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board) grant for doctoral research in Leipzig,
East Germany, October 1983 to February 1984
Rotary Foundation Fellowship for International Understanding, 1976-77, for language and
cultural studies in Freiburg and Munich, West Germany
Consulting
Program review, Discipline of Psychology, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri, March 2006
Program review, Department of History, Western Kentucky State University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, January 2003
Referee for various journals, including Isis, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, History of Psychology, as well as for publishers, especially in history of psychology and for textbooks on history of world civilization.
Languages
Russian: good reading, writing, and speaking ability
Ukrainian: ability to read and understand
French: good reading ability; some ability to speak and understand
Articles and books published
An article: “Wilhelm Wundt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychologie der Vereinigten Staaten,” in Hundert Fünf-und-zwanzig Jahre Psychologie an der Universität Leipzig, ed. Klaus Udo Ettich (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005).
An article: “After the Fulbright: Continuing Work in Ukraine,” published on-line, Fulbright-Ukraine website: http://www.fulbright.org.ua/62_1_e.html
Editor, with Robert Rieber, The Essential Vygotsky (NY: Kluwer/Plenum Press, 2004)
An article: “Wilhelm von Humboldt and reform of the university [in Russian],” in Kharkivs’kyi istoriohrafichnyi zbirnyk, Vypusk 7 (2004), pp. 50-58.
An article: “Integration and disintegration of Europe: Problems of Periodization,” in Problemy periodyzatsiyi istoriyi ta istoriografichnogo protsesu, Kharkivs’kyi istoriohrafichnyi zbirnyk, Vypusk 5 (2002), pp. 45-58.
Editor, with Robert W. Rieber, Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology (NY: Kluwer/Plenum, 2001), author of
an article, “Reaction-time Experiments in Wundt's Institute and Beyond” pp. 161-204;
and also, “Bibliography of Wundt's Writings” pp. 261-295.
“Europe—Unity, divisions, and dynamism” in Zbirnyk naukovikh prats’ “Pivdennyi arkhiv” (Istorychni nauky), Vypusk IV (Kherson, 2001), pp. 5-10.
“Scheduling Fulbright courses in Ukraine,” Fulbright Newsletter, No. 6 (May 2001), published by the Fulbright Program in Ukraine, pp. 11-12.
“Computerization and the professor: Teaching, scholarship, and service,” in Informatsiina infrastruktura vyshchykh zakladiv osvity, Zbirnyk prats’ mizhnarodnoi naukovoi konferentsii, Tom I (Kherson State Pedagogical University, 2000), pp. 273-276.
“Wihelm von Humboldt and the German University,” in A Pictorial History of Psychology, ed. Wolfgang G. Bringmann et al. (Chicago: Quintessence Publishing Co., 1997): 85-89.
“Zoellner, Wundt, Geometrical-optical Illusions, and Psychological Explanation,” History of Psychology 19 (1987).
“Wundt and Ebbinghaus: What the Letters Say,” History of Psychology 17 (1985).
“Fechner on the Soul Life of Plants,” History of Psychology 15 (1983): 96-101.
Collaboration on a major bibliography published by the Office for History of Science and Technology, U.C. Berkeley: J.L. Heilbron and Bruce Wheaton, with the assistance of J.G. May, Robin Rider, and David Robinson, Literature on the History of Physics in the 20th Century (Berkeley Papers in History of Science, V), Berkeley, 1981.
Works in progress
Translated edition: Gustav Fechner, Elements of Psychophysics, 2 vols. (original 1860).
A book: Early Experimental Psychology in Germany: Wilhelm Wundt and his Students.
A book of translated essays: Wilhelm Wundt and Vladimir Bekhterev on Hypnosis.
Invited book reviews
Review of Frank-Rutger Hausmann, ed., Die Rolle der Geisteswissenschaften im Dritten Reich 1933-1945 (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 53) (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 2002) in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, forthcoming.
Review of Daniel Philip Todes, Pavlov's Physiology Factory: Experiment, Interpretation, Laboratory Enterprise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) in Isis 96 (2005): 138-139.
“Pol’ski lemky i karpato-slov’iany: Narody, shcho zahubylysia v tsentri IEvropy [Lemkos of Poland and Carpatho-Slavs: Lost peoples from the center of Europe],” book review of The Lemkos of Poland: Articles and essays, ed. Paul Best and Jaroslaw Moklak (Cracow and New Haven: Carpatho-Slavic Studies Group, 2000), in Ukrains’kyi humanitarnyi ohliad, Vypusk 5 (2001), 293-294; translated into Ukrainian by Yaroslav Andreev and Natalya Parfyonova
Review of Jack D. Pressman, Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) in Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 30 (2000): 487-488
Review of Suzanne L. Marchand, Down From Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) in Isis 88 (1997): 525-526
Review of Christopher Fox et al., eds., Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-century Domains (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) and Immanuel Wallerstein et al., Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) in Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 33 (1997)
Review of Katherine Arens, Structures of Knowing: Psychologies of the Nineteenth Century (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989) in The Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 29 (1993): 174-177
Review of Emil Kraepelin, Memoirs (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1987), in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64 (1990): 126-127
Refereed conference papers
“Reaction-time studies in Wundt’s Institute of Experimental Psychology in Leipzig,” part of a symposium, “Research Apparatus in Psychology’s History: From Brass Instruments to Mazes to Skinner Boxes to Akron,” annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, 24 May 2006
“German influences on Russian psychology,” annual meeting of European Society for the History of the Human Sciences, Moscow, Russia, 15 September 2005
“Vladimir Bekhterev and the Psychiatric Subject: Early Work in Hypnosis,” annual meeting of History of Science Society, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 20 November 2003
“Historiography of Russian Psychology,” annual meeting of European Society for the History of the Human Sciences, Berlin, Germany, 26 August 2000
“Reaction-time Experiments in Leipzig and Beyond,” part of a symposium, “Wilhelm Wundt in History,” which I organized with Robert W. Rieber, Arthur L. Blumenthal, and Miki Takasuna, annual meeting of Cheiron, Portland, Maine, 23 June 2000
“Psychological Laboratories at Moscow University, 1889-1914,” annual meeting of Cheiron, Ottawa, Canada, 10 June 1999
“The Psychiatrist V.F. Chizh and Early Russian Experimental Psychology,” annual meeting of the Midwest Junto for the History of Science, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 10 April 1999
“History of Psychology in Russia, Then and Now,” part of a symposium, “Psychology in Russia,” which I organized with Michael Cole and Lina Fine, Cheiron, San Diego, California,
20 June 1998
“The German Reich, Educational Politics, and Psychology in Wundt's Time,” part of a symposium, “Political Contexts of German Psychology,” which I organized with Edward Haupt and Franz Samuelson, Cheiron, Richmond, Virginia, 21 June 1997
“A Stink in the Mental Hospital: The Disastrous Early Career of Emil Kraepelin,”
Midwest Junto, Ames, Iowa, 5 April 1997
“Teaching History of Behavioral Science,” with Deborah Johnson, workshop at Cheiron, Richmond, Indiana, 28 June 1996
“Wilhelm von Humboldt and the German University,” Midwest Junto, Kansas City, Missouri,
29 March 1996
“Migration from Laboratory to Classroom: Early Experimental Psychology and German Schoolteachers,” Second International Summer Institute in Berlin, 28 June 1991
“Exploring the Links between Psychiatric and Nervous System Research in the 1930s: Ralph Gerard's Diary for the Rockefeller Foundation,” with Joy Harvey, Cheiron, Princeton,
New Jersey, 17 June 1988
“The Actual Purpose of the First Journal of Experimental Psychology,” Cheiron, Philadelphia,
14 June 1985
“Zoellner, Wundt, Geometrical-optical Illusions, and Psychological Explanation,” Cheiron, Toronto, Canada, 18 June 1983
Selected invited presentations
“Reaction-time studies in Wundt’s Institute of Experimental Psychology in Leipzig,” part of a symposium, “Research Apparatus in Psychology’s History: From Brass Instruments to Mazes to Skinner Boxes to Akron,” annual convention of the Association for Psychological Science, 24 May 2006
“Wilhelm von Humboldt and reform of the university [in Russian]” at a conference “Obrasy universytetiv v publistystysti ta istoriografii (VIII. Astakhov’ki Chitannia),” Faculty of History Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, 25 June 2004
“W. Wundt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychologie der Vereinigten Staaten [W. Wundt and his Importance for Psychology in the United States],” Symposium of 125 Years since the First Institute of Psychology at Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany, 27 March 2004.
“Fulbright as a Life-changing Experience,” anniversary panel of the German-American Fulbright Commission: Celebrating 50 Years of Berlin Seminar, Berlin, Germany, 23 March 2004.
“History of psychology in Russia and the Soviet Union,” lecture to a graduate course in history of psychology, New School University, New York, 11 March 2002
“Integration and divisions in Europe: Problems of periodization,” at a conference, “Problemy periodyzatsii istorii ta istoriohrafichnoho protsesu (V. Astakhov’ki Chitannia),” Faculty of History, Kharkiv National University, Ukraine, 2 June 2001
Panel member, “Student motivation and examinations,” Zaporizhzhia Business Institute, Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, 21 May 2001
Panel member, “Academic corrosion or administrative corruption?” part of a Fulbright conference entitled “Scholar, teacher, civic leader: From chance to choice,” Kyiv, Ukraine, 19 May 2001
“Studying and teaching abroad, including the Fulbright Program,” at a conference celebrating five years since the establishment of the Faculty of History, KSPU, Ukraine, 25 September 2000
“Using fine arts as aids to teaching world history in the USA,” at a conference, “Formation of national education of the youth in the culture of the arts,” Faculty of Fine Arts and Pedagogy, KSPU, Ukraine, 21 September 2000
“Is Russia an exception to the rules of history?” participant in “Teach-in on the New Russia?” Truman State University, 30 November 1994
“Experimentalpsychologie bei Wundt: Naturwissenschaft oder Philosophie?” invited talk to the Colloquium in History of Psychology at Humboldt University, Berlin, 27 June 1991
“Nineteenth-century experimental psychology: Experimental and institutional foundations for a new discipline,” invited talk to the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Brooklyn College, 8 December 1988
“The professor and the counselor,” presentation (with Clydia Case) at FIPSE Advising Workshop, Truman State University
“The Harvard House System,” presentation at International Residential College Conference, Truman State University
“Teaching courses using library resources,” presentation (with Karen McClaskey) Faculty Development Committee's Wednesday Lunch Series, Truman State University
Academic references
Douglas Davenport douglas@truman.edu (Interim Dean, Division of Social Science,
Truman State University)
Lynn Rose lynnrose@truman.edu (Associate Professor of History, Truman State University)
Peter Barker barkerp@uo.edu (Department of History of Science, University of Oklahoma)
Sergei Ivanovich Posochov Sergej.I.Posochov@univer.kharkov.ua (Dean, Faculty of History,
National University of Kharkov, Ukraine)
Philippe Bourgois bourgoi@itsa.ucsf.edu (Chair, Department of Anthropology, History,
and Social Medicine, University of California, San Francisco Medical Center)
Clydia Case profcase@yahoo.com (Head, emeritus, Division of Humanities,
Blue River Community College, Independence, Missouri)
John E. Lesch (dissertation advisor), Roger Hahn, John Heilbron (Department of History,
University of California, Berkeley)
Robert W. Rieber rwrieber@yahoo.com (Professor of Psychology, emeritus, John Jay College,
City University of New York)
Irina Sirotkina isiro@history.ihst.ru (Institute for History of Science and Technology “S.I. Vavilov,”
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)