British Society for Literature and Science Winter Symposium 24/25: ‘Fat Fictions’
University of Strathclyde
‘Fat Fictions’ is a free one-day digital symposium hosted by the British Society for Literature and Science and the University of Strathclyde. The symposium will take place on Saturday 25th January 2025. Participation is encouraged from PGRs and ECRs. Abstracts are welcome until 20 December 2024.
Fat studies scholars argue that biomedical and public health research positions fatness “as a disease”, “a public health crisis” (Manokaran et al, 2021). Fat people are seen “as subjects to be cured and ignored, with no rights of our own” and are “characterised as being broken thin people, with weight loss as the only path to self-actualisation” (2021). As a discipline, fat studies rejects the pathologisation of fatness and the apocalyptic framing of the “obesity epidemic” and “the war on fat” on the grounds that such pathologisation strips fat people of personhood (Murray, 2008) (Farrell, 2011, 2023) (Dark, 2021). Samantha Murray argues that the pathologisation of fatness creates a societal “lipoliteracy”, wherein we view the fat body as a readable text and a shorthand for laziness, a lack of morality, and excesses of indulgence (Murray, 2008). In essence, the fat body has been objectified, used as a canvas upon which fictions are projected – fictions which reaffirm or are used as justification for systematic social and medical fatphobia. Fat studies pushes back against the objectification of fat people and toward fat justice through embodiment – the recentering of research on the lived experiences of fat people.
This symposium seeks to take an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to examining fat fictions – that is, both historical, medical, and social fictions about fatness that we find systematically embedded within society, and narratives of fatness within fiction. ‘Fat Fictions’ aims to facilitate discussions over a wide range of topics within the fields of science and literature, including the medical humanities, health history, disability studies, the environmental humanities, and more.
Proposals
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers and/or panels of 3-4 speakers. We particularly encourage submissions from PGRs and ECRs working on intersections of fatness and literature, and intersections of fatness and medicine. Proposals may address (but are not limited to) intersections with science and literature in the following topics:
- Fatness and disability
- Medical fatphobia and anti-fat bias in medicine
- Fatness, blackness and colonialism
- Fat activism and advocacy
- Fatness, queerness and gender-affirming care
- Fatness, climate justice and the Anthropocene
- Fat narratives in genre fiction
- Fatness and monstrosity
- Embodied fatness, autoethnography and research methods
How to Submit
Please submit your 200 to 300-word abstract, paper or panel title, and bio here: https://forms.gle/t3PAENzuFP4odRRZ9
Submission deadline: 20th December 2024
Organiser:
Rachel Cairns (she/her) is a second-year PhD researcher at the University of Strathclyde. Her research focuses on fatness and monsters who eat in 19th-century fairy tales and monster fiction. Also at Strathclyde, Rachel received her BA Hons in English, Creative Writing and Journalism and MLitt with Distinction in Interdisciplinary English Studies. Rachel is a recipient of the Peggy Grant Prize and the Global Research Award. In 2019-2021, Rachel served as a Sabbatical Officer, where she rooted her work within liberation work, and received the Strathclyde Women in Leadership Network Committee’s Choice Champion Award.
