Joan Jacobs Brumberg (born April 29, 1944) is an American

social historian Social history, often called the new social history, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in his ...

and writes and lectures in the fields of women's history and medical history. Her first appointment at Cornell University (1979) was in Women's Studies and Human Development. From that point, her research, teaching and writing have been interdisciplinary and focused on gender. She is a Professor Emerita of

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, and lectures and writes about the experiences of adolescents through history until the present day. In the subject area of

Gender Studies Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field ...

, she has written about boys and violence, and girls and

body image Body image is a person's thoughts, feelings and perception of the aesthetics or sexual attractiveness of their own body. The concept of body image is used in a number of disciplines, including neuroscience, psychology, medicine, psychiatry, ps ...

. Her 1987 book, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as A Modern Disease won four major disciplinary awards: the Berkshire Book Prize (in women's history); the John Hope Franklin Prize ( in American Studies), the Eileen Basker Prize (in medical anthropology) and the Watson Davis Prize (in history of Science writing).

Book Riot A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

included it as one of the 100 best books in the history of medicine. The Body Project: A History of American Girls (1997) was based on diaries written by adolescents from the pre Civil War Era until 1980s. Although the author admired certain Victorian protections for girls, she also urged a new code of sexual ethics for a post virginal age. The book received special recognition from

Voice of Youth Advocates ''Voice of Youth Advocates'' (''VOYA'') is a bimonthly magazine that provides book reviews and information for librarians with a focus on young adult materials. History and profile ''VOYA'' was established in 1978. The founders are Dorothy Brode ...

. Brumberg has also worked collaboratively with photographer

Lauren Greenfield Lauren Greenfield (born 1966) is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published four photographic monographs, directed four documentary features, produced four traveling exhibitions, and published in ma ...

on Girl Culture (2002) and Thin (2006). In light of the contemporary debates over the juvenile death penalty, she wrote Kansas Charley: The Boy Murderer (2004) which explored the case of an immigrant adolescent murderer who was hanged in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1898. Brumberg research shows boys in early adolescence are not psychologically developed enough to be liable for their actions to the extent of an adult. Her work was used in arguments against the juvenile death penalty. Her first book, Mission for Life: The Judson Family and American Evangelical Culture (1978) won Honorable Mention from The Society of Church History. Brumberg was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and also had awards from the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She was twice a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and is a fellow of the Society for American Historians. Brumberg was named a Stephen Weiss Presidential Fellow and Professor, an award given for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brumberg, Joan Jacobs 1944 births Living people Cornell University faculty Fasting researchers Gender studies academics Social history