The lecture, also the keynote address of the 30th annual Mr. and Mrs. Spencer T. Olin Conference, will be followed by a panel discussion from 2-4 p.m. in the Women's Building.

Faludi is the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, and Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Male.

In Backlash, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1991, she challenged the notion that women feel miserable and conflicted because they now have too much equality with men, can't take the pace and are desperately seeking a return to the familial nest.

In Stiffed, Faludi examines a perceived masculinity crisis plaguing our culture at the end of the 1990s. According to Faludi, as much as the culture wants to proclaim that men are made miserable — or brutal, violent or irresponsible — by their inner nature and their hormones, even in the world they supposedly own and run men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness. As traditional masculinity continues to collapse, the once-valued male attributes of craft, loyalty and social utility are no longer honored, much less rewarded.

Faludi has written for The New York Times, The Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Wall Street Journal. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1991 while at The Wall Street Journal for an article on the human impact of the leveraged buyout of the Safeway supermarket chain.

Faludi earned a bachelor's degree in history and literature from Harvard College in 1981.

For more information, go online to assemblyseries.wustl.edu or call 935-5285.