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CUL324: Fat Studies: Panic, Politics and Embodiment
Fate bodies have increasingly become medicalised in and through the disease category of óbesity, but for more than a century in Western cultures, fat flesh has been considered an aesthetic failure, particularly in relation to women's bodies. how and why has slenderness become emblematic of 'health'and normative gender/bodily aesthetics in Western cultures, with fatness positioned as abject, pathological and morally suspect? Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist and critical theories, in this course we will engage with popular, clinical and activist literature concerned with fat bodies. We examine the socio-cultural, popular and medical constructions of fat bodies, particularly in the context of the Western obesity epidemic, and critically engage with óbesity' moral panic, pervasive cultural anxieties about excessive bodies, as well as the intersection of medical and moral discourses in the construction of fatphobia'. In response to these negative discourses, we will examine the political responses to fat stigmatisation, the formation of the Fat Acceptance movement, and other forms of fat activism.
| Credit Points: | 3 |
| Contact Hours: | 3 |
| When Offered: | D2 - Day; Offered in the second half-year |
| Staff Contact(s): | Dr Samantha Murray |
| Prerequisites: |
40cp including 3cp in CUL units at 200 level |
| Corequisites: | |
| NCCW(s): | CUL307 |
| Unit Designation(s): | |
| Assessed As: | Graded |
| Offered By: | Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies |
Timetable Information
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