SAD: University No Longer Offering Class on ‘Weight-Based Oppression’
By WND. Despite a major push to make “fat acceptance” the next frontier in social justice, Washington State University simply couldn’t attract students to a new course in “fat studies,” and has canceled the class.
Campus Reform first reported on the class earlier this year, after WSU announced that they would be creating specific curriculum to help students better understand “fat stigma, weight bias, and thin privilege,” as well as how many in our society are subjected to “weight-based oppression.”
At the time, WSU announced that the class would be part of the school’s gender studies department, and would even feature a segment on “fat fashion pedagogy” where students would design and manufacture their own line of plus-sized swimwear. (Read more from “SAD: University No Longer Offering Class on ‘Weight-Based Oppression'” HERE)
_____________________________________
Washington State Discontinues ‘Plus-Size Swimwear’ Course
By Campus Reform. . .The school’s “Fat Studies” class, taught by Debbie Christel, aimed to explore “weight based oppression as a social justice issue with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability,” according to the course description.
Though the course was primarily offered through the Women’s Studies Department, it could also be taken for credit by students in the school’s Design and Textiles Program since a significant portion of the coursework was oriented around creating “plus-size swimsuits.”
Christel led the students in creating plus-size swimsuits as part of the “fat fashion pedagogy” that she was trying to pioneer, later publishing an article on her experiences with the class in the peer-reviewed academic journal Fat Studies.
Fat fashion pedagogy, Christel wrote, is a teaching method that uses “critical feminist and narrative pedagogies” to fight fat-stigma by “promoting activism to erode the thin-centric orientation” among her students. (Read more from “Washington State Discontinues ‘Plus-Size Swimwear’ Course” HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
