Fat Studies: South Asian Texts and Contexts
Fat has been ever-present in public imagination in various forms. Fat is perceived as a
public enemy and “demonized in medicine and public policy” (Blank 2020). It is “adored by chefs
and nutritional faddists, desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a
multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry” (Blank 2020). Yet, ‘Fat’ as an area of
academic research has remained remarkably underdeveloped in the Humanities and Social
Sciences domain. Only recently, it has emerged as a vibrant interdisciplinary field that interrogates
