Fasting Girls, Past and Present to be Brumberg's topic

Joan Jacobs Brumberg, award-winning author, will lecture on ?Fasting Girls: Past and Present? when she presents this spring?s Karen Levin Coburn ?63 Lecture in Women?s Studies at Skidmore.

Free and open to the public, the talk is scheduled at 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

Brumberg?s books include Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa (Vintage Books paperback, 2000) and The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls
(Vintage Books paperback, 1998). When Fasting Girls was first published two decades ago, it was hailed for its meticulous historical examination of a poorly understood illness. The book received four awards, reflecting its scope: the Berkshire Book Prize, from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians; the John Hope Franklin Prize, from the American Studies Association; the Watson Davis Prize, from the History of Science Society; and the Basker Memorial Prize, from the American Anthropological Association?s Society for Medical Anthropology.

An emerita professor at Cornell University, Brumberg is currently researching the social history of adolescent boys and violence in the 19th and 20th century, specifically boys who murdered; and continues to study the changing historical experience of female adolescence. She is also looking into the history of children's camps in World War II America.

Launched in 2005, Skidmore?s Karen Levin Coburn ?63 Lecture Series honors Coburn, an English major known for her student leadership while at Skidmore. Currently associate vice chancellor for students and associate dean of the freshman transition at Washington University in St. Louis, Coburn is a leading expert on the college experience.