Anthropology Professor to Speak on Breastfeeding Feb. 25

Dr. Katherine A. Dettwyler, associate professor of anthropology and nutrition at Texas A&M University, will lecture Wednesday on the cultural context of breastfeeding in the United States. "Beauty and the Breast," sponsored by Baylor University's gender studies program, will begin at 3:30 p.m. in room 149 of the Hooper-Schaefer Fine Arts Center on the Baylor campus.
Dettwyler received her bachelor's degree from the University of California at Davis and her master's degree and doctorate from Indiana University in Bloomington. She has been a member of the Texas A&M faculty since 1987.
A zealous proponent of breastfeeding, Dettwyler is co-editor of Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, which includes her own two chapters "Beauty and the Breast: The Cultural Context of Breastfeeding in the United States," and "A Time to Wean: The Hominid Blueprint for a Natural Age of Weaning in Modern Human Populations."
Dettwyler also is the author of Dancing Skeletons: Life and Death in West Africa, which recounts tales of her fieldwork on child health in Mali and was the winner of the 1995 Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. She currently is writing a book on research methodology in the study of infant/child feeding and is a frequent speaker at universities, La Leche League conferences, and lactation consultant conferences.
Dettwyler's lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call the department of history at 710-2667.