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| Photo credit: Dede Hatch |
Professor Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Human Development, is a social historian of American childhood and adolescence. Her book, The Body Project, is based on a survey of more than 100 diaries written by adolescent girls between 1830 and 1980.
Over that period of time, more and more young women grew up believing that good looks rather than good work were the highest form of female perfection. What currently absorbs the attention of girls not only constitutes a brain drain, but also can threaten mental and physical health.
Professor Brumberg was instrumental in bringing the exhibition Girl Culture to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. The images of little girls, teenagers, and adult women visually narrate the way in which girls, their bodies, and their psyches entwine with American popular culture.
She teaches “Mind, Body, and Health: Historical Perspectives for Future Professionals.” In conjunction with the college’s Family Life Development Center, she is studying the emergence of cutting as a phenomenon among adolescent girls.
