Harvey Warren Zorbaugh


Harvey Warren Zorbaugh was Professor of Educational Sociology, at New York University. he was born in East Cleveland, Ohio and educated in sociology at the University of Chicago. He married Geraldine Elizabeth Bone on September 7, 1929, and they had two children: a son, Harvey Jr., and a daughter, Harriet. His classic text, first published in 1929, was The Gold Coast and the Slum, a book based on his PhD thesis completed under the direction of Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago.
In the late 1940s, Dr. Zorbaugh also hosted one of the first game shows on American TV. Titled Play the Game, the show aired from September 24, 1946 to December 17, 1946 and from August 20, 1948 to November 6, 1948.
Also during the 1940s, he published some sociological comments about the comic book craze then prevalent among young Americans.
Zorbaugh's primary interest in urban sociology concerned the causes and effects of social and geographical segregation within the city and the issues created by the tensions between the need for social and community cohesion and those boundaries that inevitably emerge between different social groups rooted in geography, race and economic status. Consequently, he was interested in the fluid changes in city life and how any boundaries we see are always transient, unstable and changing. He spent the bulk of his career on the faculty of New York University becoming a leading specialist in the social adjustment of gifted children. He worked with clinics, committees and other public services around the problems of children and was an outspoken opponent of racial prejudice in public schools.

Publications

  • 1926: The Natural Areas of the City
  • 1929: The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
  • 1951: Steel! edited by Harvey Zorbaugh; story by Frank Kolars; produced by Johnstone and Cushing. Information Rack Service, General Motors Personnel Staff, 1951, 16pp: col. ill; Caption title: Jimmy gets his story.
  • 1956: Steel! edited by Harvey Zorbaugh; story by Frank Kolars. 2nd revision. New York: American Iron and Steel Institute, 1956. 16 pp.: col. ill. Caption title: Jimmy Gets His Story. Educational giveaway comic book on the steel industry.
  • 1960: The Empire State Audio tape of educational television program presented by the Board of Education - Garden City, New York, February 24, 1960. Thoreau Society, Lincoln, Mass

Papers and articles

The Dweller in Furnished Rooms: an Urban Type, Papers and Proceedings of the American Sociological Association, 1925The Urban Community, 1926, Chicago University PressTopical Summaries of Current Literature, Educational Sociology, American Journal of Sociology, 1927 - University of Chicago PressResearch in Educational Sociology, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1927Educational Sociology, American Journal of Sociology, 1927Personality and Social Adjustment, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1928Mental Hygiene's Challenge to Education, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1932Adolescence: Psychosis or Social Adjustment? Journal of Educational Sociology, 1935
  • 1935: Sex Education, The Journal of Educational Sociology: February 1935, New York: The Journal of Educational SociologySalvaging Our Gifted Children, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1936Sociology in the Clinic, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1939The Comics as an Educational Medium, 1944 - The Payne Educational Sociology
  • with Mildred Gilman, What Can YOU do about Comic Books? Journal of Education, 12, 1944, pp. 14–15
  • The Comics—There They Stand! Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 18, Nr. 4, pp. 196–203Are You Throttling a Future President? The American Magazine, Dec 1945What Can You do about Comic Books? Family Circle, Feb 1949, pp. 61–63What adults think of comics as reading for children. Journal of Educational Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 4,, pp. 225–235Some Observations of Highly Gifted Children, with RK Boardman in The Gifted Child,, 1951Television–Technological Revolution in Education, Journal of Educational Sociology, 1958Closed-circuit Television as a Medium of Instruction at New York University, 1956-1957: A Report on New York University's Second Year of Experimentation, HL Klapper, TC Pollock, HW Zorbaugh, New York The University, 1958