University of Maryland students will have the opportunity to take a course called “Introduction to Fat Research” during the spring 2025 semester.
The three-credit course, “Introduction to Fat Studies: Obesity, Blackness, and Their Intersections,” examines obesity “as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination,” and the course “highlights The relationship between fatness and blackness,” the course description states.
The course is taught Professor Sidney Lewis, a senior lecturer in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), will also “examine obesity at the intersection.”
“Examining obesity as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability,” the course description reads. “While we look at obesity as intersectional, this course will specifically focus on the relationship between obesity and Black people. and approaches this field of research through a social science lens.”
The course, held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, concludes with an exam on “fat liberation as liberation for all bodies, with special emphasis on performing arts and activities as a means of liberation and challenge to fatness.” There is.”
Fatmisia is defined as “hatred of fatness.”
According to her biography on the University of Maryland, Lewis, who “received her Ph.D. in 2012” from the University of Washington's English Department, is an expert in “20th and 21st century African American culture, Black feminism, and queer and gender studies. ” was focused on. Website:
Lewis' work and teaching strives to blur the boundaries between the academy, art, and activism. Her areas of interest include gender performance and performativity, Black feminist theory and culture, and intersectional Black liberation. She is currently co-authoring a photo book of LGBTQ+ performers from around the country with photographer Chris Jay.
The WGSS department posted on Instagram Recommended Students are being asked to “enroll now” for a course taught by Lewis that will “examine fatness and highlight the relationship between fatness and blackness.”
Lewis previously taught a course entitled “Contesting Bodies” in the winter of 2022 that examines the “bodies” that cause “social discomfort.” According to To the center square. Examples of such bodies include “non-white, fat bodies” and “queer, intersex” bodies, among others.
