Research Fridays @ Intersections of Gender - Feeling Fat: Embodying Excess Through the Fat-Feminine Grotesque
22 October 2021
Research Fridays @ Intersections of Gender presents Feeling Fat: Embodying excess through the fat feminine grotesque with Cindy Baker and Kristin Rodier, moderated by Nat Hurley, on October 22 @ 12:15 P.M. MST.
Fat studies and feminist scholars have a shared interest in understanding nuances of oppressive shame targeted at feminine bodies. This shame is often wrestled with in feminist art practices that engage in the grotesque, specifically the grotesque fat body. In order to sidestep questions of authentic fat experience, this paper develops a theory of fat feminist art practices that celebrate and revel in the grotesque. In doing so, we develop a critical fat phenomenology that transforms descriptions of fearing fat and feeling fat.
Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work is based in queer, gender, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker's interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon 25 years working and organizing in her diverse communities, moving fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally, and continues to maintain a lifelong commitment to the strength and vitality of her communities.
Kristin Rodier holds a PhD in feminist philosophy from the University of Alberta (Treaty 6, Metis region 4) and is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Athabasca University (Treaty 6, Metis region 5). Her current writing employs a critical phenomenology of the body that intersects fatness, gender, ability, and race.