Macquarie University

Fat Studies: Panic, Politics and Embodiment - CUL324

Fat bodies have increasingly become medicalised in recent times through the disease category of 'obesity', 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 gendered bodily aesthetics in Western cultures, while fatness continues to be positioned as abject, pathological and morally suspect? Drawing on feminist, poststructuralist and critical theories, in this unit we will engage with popular, clinical and activist literature concerned with fat bodies. We examine the socio-cultural, popular and medical constructions of fatness, particularly in the context of the Western 'obesity' epidemic, and we critically engage with pervasive cultural anxieties about excessive bodies. We will look at the intersection of fatness with a range of modes of being (such as gender, class, race, ethnicity and sexuality), and how these intersections reproduce dominant attitudes towards fatness. In response to cultural 'fatphobia', we will examine the political responses to fat stigmatisation, the formation of the Fat Acceptance movement, and other forms of fat activism.

Timetable Information

For unit timetable information please visit the Timetables@Macquarie Website