The mindset literature is a longstanding area of psychological research focused on beliefs about intelligence, response to challenge, and goals for learning (Dweck, 2000). However, the mindset literature's applicability to the context of college physics has not been widely studied. In this paper we narrow our focus toward students' descriptions of their responses to challenge in college physics. We ask the research questions, "can we see responses to challenge in college physics that resemble that of the mindset literature?" and "how do students express evidence of challenge and to what extent is such evidence reflective of challenges found in the mindset literature?" To answer these questions, we developed a novel coding scheme for interview dialogue around college physics challenge and students' responses to it. In this paper we present the development process of our coding scheme. We find that it is possible to see student descriptions of challenge that resemble the mindset literature's characterizations. However, college physics challenges are frequently different than those studied in the mindset literature. We show that, in the landscape of college physics challenges, mindset beliefs cannot always be considered to be the dominant factor in how students respond to challenge. Broadly, our coding scheme helps the field move beyond broad Likert-scale survey measures of students' mindset beliefs.

This article surveys the wave of new historical and political-science literature exploring humanitarianism and the ‘pre-history’ of human rights in the long nineteenth century, noting the presentist assumptions underpinning much of this literature. On the one hand, histories of humanitarianism have focused on the origins of present-day humanitarian concerns, paying particular attention to the anti-slavery movement. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of this literature has explored Anglo-American (and usually Protestant) humanitarianism to the exclusion of the humanitarian campaigns and ideologies of other nations and faith traditions. A more properly historical approach is required, which would pay greater attention to the fusion of religious and secular traditions of activism, to the particular role of women in constituting these traditions, and to the different national contexts in which they bore fruit. Such an approach would also expand our understanding of ‘humanitarian’ activity to incorporate causes with less obvious present-day relevance, such as the temperance movement and Josephine Butler's campaign against the state regulation of prostitution. It would certainly prompt deeper reflection on the contingency of humanitarianism as a topic of historical inquiry, at least as currently constructed.

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The review examines the recent literature on German federalism. This literature has identified a decentralized, federal tradition in German history, dating back at least to the eighteenth century and in striking contrast with the ‘unitary’ traditions of the Prussian state. The review questions the extent to which centralization was indeed a Prussian phenomenon in German history by examining the relatively decentralized nature of the Prussian state and the strongly centralizing tendencies of smaller German states in the nineteenth century. The review also examines the origins of the new ‘federal’ historiography, both in terms of contemporary German politics and in terms of the political debate surrounding German unification in the 1860s. It concludes that the idea of a ‘unitary’ Prussian state tradition is simplistic and reflects the inherent anti-Prussian bias of German federalism in the unification era. In this sense, it is the federal counterpart of the better-known Borussian approach to German history.

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