Brown offers pre-college summer course on 'emerging academic field' of Fat Studies
Students will look at ‘the pathologization of fatness in the medical community and the rising prevalence of eating disorders, as well as how fatphobia intersects with other systems of oppression.’
One of the goals of the course is for students to be able to ‘[a]pply major theoretical lenses to the study of fatness, including the feminist/gender lens, reader-response lens, historical lens, and race lens.’
An Ivy League university in Rhode Island is offering a pre-college summer program on the “politics of fatness” in an effort to make students confront how they view “fatness.”
The Brown University course, titled “The F-Word: Examining the Science, Culture, and Politics of Fatness,” will take place over one week, from July 8-12, and will introduce students to “Fat Studies,” which the course page describes as an “emerging academic field.” The course is being offered as part of Brown’s pre-college programs, and the status for the class is marked as “closed,” indicating it is at full capacity.
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The course will make students examine “the pathologization of fatness in the medical community and the rising prevalence of eating disorders, as well as how fatphobia intersects with other systems of oppression.”
“Ten years ago, you could hardly open a magazine without seeing an advertisement for a fad diet,” the course description reads. “Today, you can hardly open TikTok without seeing a self-proclaimed ‘body-positive’ influencer, with some even going as far as to call themselves ‘fat-positive.’ Despite these creators’ best efforts, the word ‘fat’ still holds an overwhelmingly negative connotation.”
The course will also focus on intersectionality, saying that students who finish the class will be able to “[a]pply major theoretical lenses to the study of fatness, including the feminist/gender lens, reader-response lens, historical lens, and race lens.”
The instructor for the course is listed as Victoria Lonardo, who, according to her LinkedIn profile, has been a pre-college course instructor at Brown since June 2022.
“The F-Word” is not the only pre-college program Lonardo is teaching this summer. She is also teaching a course called “Women and Leadership,” which invites high schoolers to study “concepts of gender, feminism, intersectionality, and inclusive leadership.”
The description promises that students who complete the course will have “[e]xamined emerging and transformative girls’ and women’s movements that have galvanized a new wave of female activism” and “[p]roposed strategies to facilitate inclusion and social justice for women.”
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Other schools besides Brown also have courses focused on “Fat Studies,” such as the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which offered a “Fat Studies” course this spring semester that required students to assemble a “plus sized outfit.”
In 2022, Campus Reform compiled a list of “Fat Studies” courses at different universities, including “Fat Studies: Bodies, Culture, and Politics” at Southern Oregon University, “Fat Studies & Health at Every Size” at the Lewis and Clark Graduate School, and “Embracing Size Diversity” at Portland State University.
Campus Reform contacted Brown University and Lonardo for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
