Re: a rowdy interruption
vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 09:23:26 -0700 (MST)
Diane,
Tell us more about about D. Smith; and why she is the "smartest woman in
America?"
And about "hands up" : I date back to the time that Jerome Bruner brought
Thought and Language to the US after he had met with Luria in Moscow.
The two of them decided that the book should be available in the US,
it was first published in the US in 1962. It changed my professional life
as I have done my doctoral work on "verbalization and problem solving"--the only way to approach
only way to approach the issues that interested me with my behaviorist
committee. (There was one exception, Bill Soskin.)
For years, I was pretty isolated with my discovery that there was a place
in psychology for the issues that interested me, but at Harvard Vygotsky
took hold, and slowly a community started to develop. Later. in the
seventies Mike, Sylvia Scribner,and a young collegue of mine Ellen
Souberman and I, started to edit Mind in Society. By then I was in New
Mexico,connected but also isolated. So when our e-mail, organizational and
journal community came into being,(thanks Mike and Peggy and all you
San Diego folks) I found that the slow move toward a
larger thought and discourse community --xmca--became my intellectual
home. (Refugees are always looking for a home.)
I teach psycholinguistics at the U. of New Mexico, I am more of a
psychologist than linguist, but the language challenges in this part of
the world are exciting. Currently I am writing about cognitive pluralism
amd interdisciplinary collaboration,
Vera
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Vera P. John-Steiner Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu
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