When and why did Laurel Furumoto become a historian of psychology?

Abstract

Laurel Furumoto was a pioneer in establishing the history of women in psychology as a research specialty. Knowing Laurel and her work, the author was surprised to read recently in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences that for the 1974 EPA meeting, "Laurel Furumoto was recruited [by Tom Cadwallader] to research Mary Whiton Calkins since she taught at Wellesley College where Calkins spent her career." Although it was probably inadvertent, this attribution erased Laurel's interest in Calkins as a graduate student and her 4 years of historical research. Instead, she was portrayed as being given an assignment by a male colleague in 1973 because she taught at Wellesley. Fortunately, the author recently unearthed a letter that Laurel gave him long ago in which John Popplestone acknowledged her plan to work exclusively on Calkins beginning in 1969 and suggested she collaborate with someone scheduled to present a paper on Calkins. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).