Fat Studies in Wellington and Oakland calls for papers

Calls for papers have just been announced for two Fat Studies gatherings that are taking place this year.

Fat Studies: Reflective Intersections
Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
12-13 July 2012

This conference is being organised by Cat Pausé and Samantha Murray is delivering the keynote.

Key areas of interest for abstract submissions include, but are not limited to:

• Intersections between Fat Studies and other academic disciplines
• Interdisciplinary work on fat, fat identity, and fat embodiment
• Fat activism as intersection
• Useful methodologies for intersectionality in Fat Studies teaching and research
• Theoretical frameworks related to Fat Studies intersectionality and interdisciplinary work
• Critical reflections on intersectionality within Fat Studies

The abstract submission deadline is 31 March.

More information: Fat Studies: Reflective Intersections

Fat Studies Interest Group
The National Women's Studies Association (NWSA)
Oakland, California, USA
8-11 November

Papers on any topic at the intersection of women's studies/feminism/womanism/gender/sexuality and fat studies will be considered.

At minimum, your submission should fall under one of the following themes for NWSA 2012:

• Revolutionary Futures
• Traveling Theory
• Social Networks, Power, and Change
• Decolonising Knowledge
• Creative Awakenings

While this is an open call, topic suggestions from last year's meeting include:

Fat intersections (including race, nationality, disability, sexuality, appearance/beauty)
Fatopias/Fat utopias
Transnational fat bodies (immigration, globalisation)
Teaching Fat Studies (professorial bodies, student bodies, resistance)
Knowledge-sharing/de-colonising
Fat feminist research methods (including role of the researcher body)
Fat feminists theorising the body
Fat performance/performing fatness/fat icons
Fat activism and feminism/Fatosphere

13 February is the submission deadline. Send the following to Michaela A. Null and Candice Buss.

• Name, institutional affiliation, address, email, phone
• NWSA Theme your paper fits under (and fat studies topic area/s if yours fits any of the above)
• Title for your talk, a one-page, double-spaced abstract in which you lay out your topic and its relevance to this session
• AND a 100 word truncated abstract

Papers should last 15 minutes, and there will be questions afterwards.

NB. In order to present you need to register for the conference and be a member of the NWSA - it all costs money, baby!

NWSA

Call for contributions: Fat Mook

Jackie Wykes and Jennifer Lee are editing a mook - a hybrid magazine-book - about fat. They're looking for contributors, so get busy.

Everything you could possibly want to know about the project is here.

Call for DIY fat fatshion crafty zine contributions

Kirsty is putting together a zine, it looks really good and you should contribute, if you can.

MAKE IT WORK: A DIY fatshion craft zine

She says:

"Make It Work" has been a mantra within fatshion communities since I can remember, and I'm interested in exploring it as a radical premise of fat positive politics. [...] I want this zine to be about sharing the resources, skills and knowledge that we've gained, and for it to provide strategies for people to move forward with.

Call for Submissions: Fat Positive Anthology

Deadline: November 15, 2011

Virgie says: I'm seeking personal essays of 1500-3000 words for a fat positive anthology to be released in 2012. I’m seeking essays that either (1) focus on a specific event/experience that was truly flabulous or (2) tell the story of how you became a fierce fatty. I encourage contributors to hone in on a particular theme—like romance, parenting, family, fatshion, dating, performance—to use as a lens through which to tell your story. Fierce, sassy, thoughtful, authentic, non-fiction, previously unpublished, autobiographical stories from fatties who identify as women are welcome. The vision for this anthology is one of fun, unapologetic fat celebration and love!

Envision the book you would have wanted to read when you started out on your journey to fat positivity. This will be that book for a lot of people. So, share what you know and what you’ve learned, the way you navigate the world, your experiences, and don’t leave out the juicy parts!

Some guiding questions that may help as you’re writing:
-how did you become a fierce fatty?
-how do you create positive spaces in your life?
-what was a pivotal moment or experience that led to fat positivity for you?
-how do you talk to friends/family about being a fatty/fat pos?
-how do you "do" fatshion?
-how does being a fatty impact dating, sexuality and romantic relationships for you?
-has performance (e.g., fat belly dance or fat burlesque) impacted your body love experience?
-what people/communities make you feel fabulous?
-what role does your fierce fatness play into your friendships or family relationships?

Don’t feel limited by this list of suggestions, please!

Please send electronic submissions only. Attach your submission in MS Word (.doc) format to fatposanthology@gmail.com. Please include a short bio and your contact information in the body of the e-mail. Please direct questions to the abovementioned email. Also, if you feel you have a great fat pos tale but maybe don't feel ready to take on writing your story, I'm doing a limited number of interviews.

Contributors of accepted submissions will be paid $50 and receive a writing credit in the book.

Please feel free to distribute this call.

xo,
Virgie Tovar
Author, fat activist/lifetime fat girl, and MA, Human Sexuality

www.VirgieTovar.weebly.com

Call for papers - HAES UK Fat Studies seminar

Call for papers - Health at Every Size UK [HAES UK] Fat Studies seminar
Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 November 2011

The School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, is pleased to host a Fat Studies seminar on behalf of HAES UK.

Academics, clinicians and other practitioners or performers are invited to submit Abstracts to be considered for inclusion in the above seminar.

Deadline for submission of Abstracts: Wednesday 14 September 2011.

Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words. Please add the name and contact details for the lead author and a brief biography for each author.

Submit abstracts to: diversity@soas.ac.uk Please include "HAES UK Abstract" in your email title.

Call for Papers: Queering Fat Embodiment

Submit your work for inclusion in a proposed book that is being edited by Samantha Murray, Jackie Wykes and Cat Pausé, and be part of the exciting work that's emerging from Fat Studies in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Here are the details:

Against the backdrop of the ever-growing medicalisation and pathologisation of fatness, the field of Fat Studies has emerged in recent years to offer an interdisciplinary critical interrogation of the dominant medical models of health, to give voice to the lived experience of fat bodies, and to offer critical insights into, and investigations of, the ethico-political implications of the cultural meanings that have come to be attached to fat bodies. This focus on the regulation, discipline and representation of fat bodies make it critically invaluable to the advancement of scholarship on embodiment.

This edited collection seeks to publish recent scholarship that embraces 'queering' as a mode of critical engagement in examining fat embodiment. Queer is a heterogeneous and multidisciplinary practice aimed at ‘bringing forth’ and thus denaturalising the taken for granted, the invisible, the normalised. This collection seeks to challenge and destabilise existing ideas of fat and fat embodiment both outside of and within the emerging field of Fat Studies. This volume will bring together scholarship from various disciplines in order to examine the ways in which fat embodiment is lived, experienced, regulated and (re)produced across a range of cultural sites and contexts. In queering established ideas about fat bodies, and presenting challenging inquiries/inqueeries into these notions, this collection will represent an innovative and critically invaluable contribution to the advancement of scholarship on fatness, and indeed on embodiment more generally.

Topics may include but are not limited to:
• fat activism and embodiment
• fat mental and physical health
• queer(y)ing ‘hard data’ on fatness/obesity science
• queer(y)ing health policies related to fat
• cross-cultural or global constructions of fat bodies
• cultural, historical, or philosophical meanings of fat and fat bodies
• fat embodiment in literature, film, music, nonfiction, and the visual arts
• fat as queering sex, beauty, gender, and other embodied performances
• fat sexuality
• fat materialities
• fat and space
• fat and biopolitics
• fat and citizenship
• fat and neoliberalism
• fatness and consumption

Please note that we are already in the process of completing a proposal to submit to publishers, which we will complete based on the submissions we receive. We have had some preliminary interest from publishers, but as yet, we have not secured a contract.

Full paper submissions are due January 15, 2012. Articles should range between 15 and 20 double-spaced pages. Please send submissions, along with an abstract of your paper and a brief biographical sketch, directly to Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au.

Contacts:
Samantha Murray - Samantha.murray@mq.edu.au (Main contact)
Cat Pausé - c.pause@massey.ac.nz
Jackie Wykes - wykesj@unimelb.edu.au