Noted sociologist to discuss the campus party culture
Elizabeth A. Armstrong
University of Michigan scholar Elizabeth A. Armstrong will discuss "Partying, Hooking Up, and Sexual Assault on Campus" when she delivers the 2011 Karen L. Coburn Lecture at Skidmore College Wednesday, March 30.
Free and open to the public, the talk will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.
Armstrong is a sociologist with a broad range of research interests. She is the author of Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994 (University of Chicago Press, 2002), and has a new book (with co-author Laura Hamilton) titled Exclusion: Class, Gender, and College Culture under contract with Harvard University Press. The authors explore how class background and the organizational machinery of the university intersect to shape the ways in which young women move through and transition out of the university. The Spencer Foundation supported the research.
In collaboration with Suzanna Crage, Armstrong investigated how the Stonewall riots came to be viewed as the starting point of the contemporary gay movement, while earlier events in other cities have been forgotten. Their paper, "Meaning and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth," was published in the American Sociological Review in 2006.
Armstrong joined the University of Michigan as an associate professor of sociology and organizational studies 2009. Earlier she taught at Indiana University. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and received a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.
She earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology at the University of California-Berkeley and a B.A. in sociology and computer science from the University of Michigan.
The Coburn Lecture honors Karen Levin Coburn, a 1963 Skidmore graduate who is co-author of the well-known book Letting Go: A Parent's Guide to Understanding the College Years. Established in 2005, the lecture series is designed to enrich the Women's Studies curriculum and raise the level of conversations about gender studies on campus.
