Students at the University of Maryland will be given the chance to take a course called “Intro to Fat Studies” in the spring semester of 2025.
In the three-credit course, “Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections,” fatness will be examined “as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination,” and the course will also “highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness,” according to the course description.
The course, which will be taught by Professor Sydney Lewis, a Senior Lecturer in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), will also “look at fatness at intersectional.”
“Examines fatness 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 said. “Though we will look at fatness as intersectional, this course will particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness. We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social-science lens which emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue.”
The course, which will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays, will close “with an examination of fat liberation as liberation for all bodies with a particular emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia.”
Fatmisia is defined as the “hatred of fatness.”
Lewis, who “received her doctorate in 2012” from the University of Washington’s English Department, focused on “20th and 21st century African-American Culture, Black Feminisms, and Queer and Gender Studies,” according to her biography on the University of Maryland website:
Lewis’s 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 photobook of nationwide LGBTQ+ performers with photographer, Chris Jay.
In a post on Instagram, the Department of WGSS encouraged students to “register now” for the course taught by Lewis that would “examine fatness, highlighting the relationship between fatness and blackness.”
Lewis previously taught a course titled “Bodies In Contention” in the winter of 2022, which “looked at bodies” that cause “societal discomfort,” according to the Center Square. Examples of such bodies were “non-white bodies, fat bodies,” and “queer, intersex” bodies, among others.
