Studying Fat at the Popular Culture Association Conference
Image Description: PCA Fat Studies Area Scholars enjoy a no-dieting dinner at the Annual Conference in San Antonio, TX. Far left is longtime Fat Studies Area Chair Lesleigh Owen. Far right is Fat Studies photog Ramanpreet Annie Bahra, the author is the Black blonde, third from the right.
By Rev. Dr. E-K Daufin
If you walked by at just the right moment, you would have heard a woman yell, “F-you!” followed by thunderous applause. It wasn’t a barroom brawl, but rather me at the 2023 Popular Culture Association’s annual international conference, Fat Studies Area, in San Antonio, Texas last month. It was an Author Spotlight on my new book, On Fat And Faith: Ending Weight Stigma in Yourself, Your Sanctuary and Society. For a session sample see here or here. For the “French,” as in excuse-my… you’ll have to read the book (OnFatAndFaith.com, that section’s free under the “Look Inside” feature here)!
The Fat Studies Area offerings were as robust as ever in this first year of face-to-face meeting since the pandemic became endemic. Though we know Lizzo is not (yet) a HAES® aligned Fat Activist, Associate Professor of Art & Design Erin “Z” Zerb Comer showed us some of the positive changes the twerking flutist’s show, poised for a second season, is making in, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls: Shifting Perceptions of Fatness in Lizzo’s Reality TV Show.”
York University Sociology Doctoral Candidate Ramanpreet Annie Bahra blew our minds with Fat interspecies theory in, “Our Excessively Fat World-Making,” as well as announcing her and her Canadian colleagues’ book, Fat Studies in Canada: (Re)Mapping the Field (for those with the means to purchase, you can find it here). Fat and Lesbian Novelist Susan Stinson was honored for her lifelong body of work. “Even” for this straight Fat Black blogger, Stinson’s Martha Moody is marvelous!
Rev. Dr. E-K. Daufin Burnt Sienna colored, Fat, Black woman with past-shoulder-length, blonde dreadlocks, small burgundy framed glasses, a clear crystal nose stud, in a red top, with a red flower in her hair and red lipstick wearing a necklace of gold trimmed leaves of multicolored translucent gems.
Rev. Dr. E-K Daufin is the Visionary Social Change Artist 2023 Award winning author of the book On Fat And Faith: Ending Weight Stigma in Yourself, Your Sanctuary and Society. She earned doctorate and Master’s degrees at The Ohio State University in multimedia, cinema and visual sociology. Her undergraduate degrees are in communication, theatre and French from the historically Black Morgan State University. Dr. Daufin has decades of experience as an award-winning scholar, university tenured full professor, ordained multireligious minister; artist; “edutainer”; and community activist. She has melted in sweat lodges, bayous, and currently in Montgomery, Alabama.
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