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Proposals in the area of Fat Studies are being accepted for the 2012 PCA /ACA National Conference in Boston, MA (April 11-14, 2012 at the Marriott Boston Copley Place.
We welcome papers and performances from academics, researchers, intellectuals, activists, artists, and others, in any field of study, and at any stage in their career. We also welcome panels and roundtables on a variety of topics under the heading of “Fat Studies.”
Fat Studies is an interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary field of study that confronts and critiques cultural constraints against notions of “fatness” and “the fat body”; explores fat bodies as they live in, are shaped by, and remake the world; and creates paradigms for the development of fat acceptance or celebration within mass culture. Fat Studies uses body size as the starting part for a wide-ranging theorization and explication of how societies and cultures, past and present, have conceptualized all bodies and the political/cultural meanings ascribed to every body. Fat Studies reminds us that all bodies are inscribed with the fears and hopes of the particular culture they reside in, and these emotions often are mislabeled as objective “facts” of health and biology. More importantly, perhaps, Fat Studies insists on the recognition that fat identity can be as fundamental and world-shaping as other identity constructs analyzed within the academy and represented in media.
By December 15, 2011, please send an abstract of 100 - 250 words or a completed paper to Fat Studies Area Co-Chairs Julia McCrossin (jmccross@gwmail.gwu.edu)
and Lesleigh Owen (goddess_les@yahoo.com).
Topics may include but are not limited to:
· representations of fat people in literature,
film, music, nonfiction, and the visual arts
· cross-cultural or global constructions of
fatness and fat bodies
· cultural, historical, inter/intrapersonal, or
philosophical meanings of fat and fat bodies
· the geography and lived experience of fatness
and fat bodies
· portrayals of fat individuals and groups in
news, media, magazines
· fatness as a social or political identity
· fat acceptance, activism, and/or pride movements
and tactics
· approaches to fat and body image in philosophy,
psychology, religion, sociology
· fat children in literature, media, and/or
pedagogy
· fat as it intersects with race, ethnicity,
class, religion, ability, gender, and/or sexuality
· history and/or critique of diet books and scams
· functions of fatphobia or fat oppression in
economic and political systems
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