University of Maryland to offer ‘Fat Studies’ course about the ‘intersection’ of ‘blackness’ and ‘fatness’

The University of Maryland is slated to offer an “Intro to Fat Studies” course in the upcoming spring semester that will focus on “Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections.”

The three-credit class, which is offered through the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), “[e]xamines 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.”

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The course description states that the class will highlight “fatness” as “a social justice issue,” and will conclude with a focus on “fat liberation as liberation for all bodies” and on methods of fighting “fatmisia,” which means “hatred of fatness.” 

Sydney Lewis, a senior lecturer with the Department of WGSS, will lead the introductory course this spring in Susquehanna Hall.

Lewis’s research experience consists of topics including “African American/African Diaspora,” “Black Feminist Thought,” “LGBTQ Studies,” and “Queer Theory.”

Lewis’s teaching methods aim to “blur the boundaries between the academy, art, and activism,” as mentioned in her university biography. “Her areas of interest include gender performance and performativity, black feminist theory and culture, and intersectional black liberation.”

“Intro to Fat Studies” also serves as an approved general education credit for students across various majors. The course fulfills requirements in the university’s “Distributive Studies-Humanities” and “Diversity-Understanding Plural Societies” categories. 

The University of Maryland’s “Diversity” mandate “emphasizes the promises and problems of plural societies and the challenges that must be addressed to achieve just, equitable, and productive societies.”

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The Fat Studies course succeeds a similar class taught by Lewis in the winter semester of 2022 titled “Bodies in Contention” in which students studied “marginalized and non-normative bodies in order to think about how these bodies that cause [sic] societal discomfort,” specifically considering “non-white bodies, fat bodies, disabled bodies, queer, intersex, and trans gender bodies.”

A Nov. 5 Instagram post advertising the class was posted by the Department of WGSS encouraging students to sign up for the new course that takes place Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Campus Reform has contacted the University of Maryland and Sydney Lewis for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.