Sylvester Graham was a nineteenth century author and health reformer whose name is forever associated with the Graham Cracker (although he probably wouldn’t endorse the cracker as we know it today).  He lived in Northampton from 1839 to 1851, and is buried in the Bridge Street Cemetery.  Come hear a historian, a scholar of religious life and a novelist illuminate Graham’s own life and work, as well as his legacy in U.S. culture.

Stephen Nissenbaum, Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the author of Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform.  His other books  include The Battle for Christmas , which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (with the late Paul Boyer), which won the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning Prize.

Lynne Gerber’s  talk will focus on Graham's legacy in American culture, discussing two contemporary Christian organizations concerned with food and sex: First Place, a Christian weight loss program and Exodus International, the country's largest ex-gay organization. A scholar in residence with the Beatrice Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, Gerber is author of Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual Reorientation in Evangelical America .

Susan Stinson is Writer in Residence at Forbes.  Author of five books, including Fat Girl Dances with Rocks, and forthcoming Spider in a Tree, which is about Jonathan Edwards,  she will be reading from a novel-in-progress about Sylvester Graham.