Announcing the 2015-16 David K. Sengstack Award Recipients

The Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers University, Camden, is delighted to announce the selection of Brandi Venable and Jamie Dunaev as the 2015-16 David K. Sengstack Graduate Fellows. These doctoral candidates were selected as Sengstack Fellows based on their outstanding academic work and leadership within the Department of Childhood Studies.

Brandi’s dissertation explores representations of American childhood in relation to food and food-related products in advertising trade cards and popular periodicals from the late nineteenth century. She is interested in investigating the dynamic between desire and innocence in respect to children, the child’s body and disciplining tactics, and the way that childhood innocence was used to legitimize brand name food products for use in the middle-class household.   Jamie’s research looks at methods to reduce weight bias among adolescents. Weight bias can be understood as general prejudicial attitudes toward overweight individuals that often results in social injustice and impaired quality of life for individuals who experience it.  The overarching goal of her research is to find ways to incorporate understandings of the psychosocial aspects of health and weight into obesity intervention and prevention programming.

The Department is pleased to add these Fellows to the growing number of Sengstack scholars supported by the generosity of Mrs. Alice Sengstack, who has endowed this fellowship to honor the memory of her husband, David K. Sengstack, Rutgers College Class of 1944. Our deepest thanks are owed to Mrs. Sengstack for her generosity in endowing this fellowship in Mr. Sengstack’s name and for her commitment to making a reality of her vision of a better world through understanding children and childhood.