Self-Injury: The Silent Epidemic

Noted ethnographers Patricia A. Adler, professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Peter Adler, professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver, discuss their 2011 book The Tender Cut: Inside the Hidden World of Self-Injury (NYU Press).

Their talk will draw on a 10-year longitudinal study which includes 150 interviews with self-injurers from all over the world, along with an analysis of more than 30,000 Internet posts in chat rooms and other communiqués. Their research traces the practice of self-injury from its early days, when people engaged in it alone, to the present, where a subculture has formed via cyberspace.

The free, public lecture will be the second in an annual series established by the estate of Paul and Eleanora Culver.

The Adlers have written and taught in the areas of deviance, social psychology, qualitative methods, drugs and society, sociology of gender, sociology of children, and the sociology of work, sport and leisure. They are the co-authors and co-editors of numerous books, including Peer Power, Paradise Laborers, and Constructions of Deviance. The Adlers served as co-presidents of the Midwest Sociological Society in 2006-2007. Together, they received the 2010 George Herbert Mead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. They have edited the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography and were the founding editors of Sociological Studies of Child Development.

In 1999, Patricia Adler was named Outstanding Teacher in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 2004, she was awarded the Mentor Excellence Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. In 2005, she received the Outstanding Researcher Award for the Boulder campus.

In 1998, the University of Denver named Peter Adler the University Lecturer, an award that represents outstanding achievement in scholarship and research. Then, in 2005, he received the United Methodist Church Scholar-Teacher of the Year award. Also in 2005, Peter was honored with the Mentor Excellence Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.