'The fact that possesses my imagination': Rachel Carson,Science and Writing

Rachel Carson is a famous but unknown writer. She is remembered as a pioneering heroine of the ecological movement, but even her Silent Spring is hardly read and the great books about the sea that made her name are unknown to the public. Recent biographical accounts have focused on the problems Carson faced as a woman entering the male-dominated scientific community, and the sexist reception of her books. But her real life was plainly in her writing. Although the accounts of geology in The Sea around Us and of genetics in Silent Spring are outdated, her books remain classics, not only for their lucidity and beauty, but for a vision of the impersonal processes of evolution and geological time comparable to Darwin's. This is especially true of her trilogy of books on the sea: The Sea around Us , describing the biochemistry, history and geography of the oceans and their tides, Under the SeaWind, focusing on the interdependent lives of sea-creatures, while The Edge of the Sea deals with the lives, great and microscopically small, of the intertidal world. The corresponding theme of Silent Spring is the death of nature through man's folly.     

‘ … we congratulate ourselves that reason has not with us yet left its seat’: first generations of American missionary women in the Near East

A reference to insanity among New England Protestant missionary women serving in the Near East from a letter written during the early nineteenth century offers a provocative opportunity to reexamine the motives, experiences, and mental health of these American pioneers to foreign countries. Two paradigms emerge: the married woman who tried to embody the ideals of True Womanhood while helping her missionary husband, maintaining home and children, and serving local women and children in myriad ways; and the single woman who took on missionary work as a professional career to teach, provide health care, administer, and model Anglo-American ideals. One type fared better than the other, both physically and mentally. Both served as prototypes for later secular humanitarians and both formed a dialectical relationship between the male missionary administration and target populations. The stresses of their encounters and how those affected their abilities to cope are the subject of this essay.     

Alliteration in Mate Selection: Does Barbara Still Marry Barry?

More than 30 years ago research found that alliteration is a factor in assortative mating (i.e., marriages). Alliterative matches were even more frequent when using nicknames than when using given names. Subsequently, researchers have confirmed the higher than chance occurrence of alliterative matches for given names. But nicknames have not been examined over the past 30 years. The present research finds support for three hypotheses. As predicted, nicknames are more associated with alliterative matches than are given names. Implications for practice are discussed.