cfp.english.upenn.edu

Deadline for receipt of proposals is April 30, 2010

The Fat Studies Area of the Midwest Popular Culture Association/Midwest American Culture Association is soliciting proposals for its joint annual conference. We seek proposals for papers, roundtables, or forms of artistic expression that forward a fat-affirmative agenda. Critical discussions of fat, thin, and body size are welcome, especially those that either consider or counter phobic constructions of the presentday. Topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• cross-cultural or cross-historical consideration of fat, thin, and/or body size;
• considerations of alternate or parodic understandings of fat, especially those that subvert, challenge, or simply ignore a dominant western understanding of obesity
• considerations of the operations of power that circulate around the thin body (i.e. thin privilege);
• considerations of how material circumstances create and stigmatize “fat” and/or “obese” bodies; imaginings of alternative material circumstances that would create a very different understanding of the body;
• considerations of various types of fatphobia, including those in academia;
• considerations of diet discourse, diet industry, and the compulsion it demands of bodies;
• considerations of health/disease and beauty/ugliness in relationship to body size;
• considerations of how concepts of body size intersect with race, ethnicity, ability, sex, gender, class, and/or ability.

Send a brief proposal (100 words) and a brief bio (a paragraph) to Elena Levy-Navarro at levye@uww.edu.

For more information on the conference, go to http://www.mpcaaca.org/conference/.