Weighty issues in academe
A new field of academic study is gaining popularity on American campuses. Students at the University of Wisconsin, for example, can now take “The Social Construction of Obesity” with Professor Margaret Carlisle Duncan. Other academics are taking a different route, incorporating “fat studies” into such traditional subjects as history, English literature and sociology.
Thanks to political activism, the subject is finding a home between the traditional humanities and social sciences. Thus it tends to be taught as an examination of victimhood, with at least one college looking at “weightism”. A Fat Studies Reader, an anthology on the discipline, is being offered to universities, with chapters such as “Jiggle My Walk: The Iconic Power of the Big Butt in American Pop Culture”.
Some professors, however, see fat studies as emblematic of a decline in standards. Stephen Balch, the president of the National Association of Scholars, which campaigns for traditional higher education, told The New York Times: “In one field after another, passion and venting have come to define the nature of what academics do.” But proponents say that obesity is a subject ripe for rigorous academic consideration.