A major university is offering its students a course on “fat studies” that it claims will help them examine the “intersection” between “fatness” and “blackness.”
A course description on the University of Maryland registration site says the course “examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class , sexual orientation and ability”.
Students will also “consider fatness as intersectional” and the material will “particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and blackness.”
Titled ‘Introduction to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness, and Their Intersections,’ the course is worth three credits and is part of the university’s diversity quota, and most students are required to take two diversity courses before graduating. .
For part-time out-of-state students, the university charges $1,645 per credit. For full-time out-of-state students, one semester, which includes taking 12 or more credits, costs $19,732.
The course is led by Dr Sydney Lewis, Senior Lecturer, who saying online that after Donald Trump’s first presidential victory she “sat in the bathtub and cried” and was left fearing for her citizenship.
Intro to Fat Studies is completely full, with all 20 seats claimed by students planning to take the class in the spring 2025 semester. There are also eight people on the wait list.
Dr. Richard Vatz, a professor emeritus at a nearby university, criticized the course as “laughable” and said it was “unlikely to help anyone get a job.”
Dr. Sydney Lewis, Senior Lecturer, is behind the course titled: “Introduction to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness, and Their Intersections.”
The Towson University expert said The national news desk: ‘I have to be honest with you, this is a pretty ridiculous topic. This is just ridiculous.’
Others have responded online, criticizing the course saying “the madness is real” and saying “maybe exercise courses would be a good idea.”
The course is offered by the University’s Harriet Tubman Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
It is open to all students, regardless of their area of study, including engineering, economics and computer programming.
There is no syllabus available for the course, but reading material includes books. What we don’t talk about when we talk about fat and The belly of the beast: anti-fat politics as anti-blackness.
The ‘Planet Terp’ website, which helps University of Maryland students choose their courses, says that 70 percent of students in the course typically earn an A.
The class description posted online continues: ‘We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences lens that emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue.
“The course ends with an examination of fat release as liberation for all bodies, with special emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia.”
There are 20 places in the course and they are all already occupied, with another eight students on the waiting list
Dr. Lewis authored the essay ‘Love in the Time of Trump,’ which was published after 2020 on the website Rooted, which says it works to ‘build affirming and healing spaces for the Black LGBTQ community.’
In the essay, she wrote: “On election night 2016, I sat in a bathtub and cried.
“I knew that as a queer Black woman, I was already teetering toward non-citizenship, and I wanted — no, deserved — every privilege I could get.”
He added: “I am afraid that my health is not good enough to beat the virus (Covid), in case I contract it.” I’m afraid there won’t be enough ventilators and my fat body will have to be put down.’
Lashing out, Dr. Vatz added: “I don’t think if you went to a job interview and the interviewer said “what have you had recently?” and the respondent said, “Well, I’m taking a course on fat studies, but the intersection of blackness and fatness,” that this would put him in a position to get a great job.
“So the usefulness of this and the labor market is probably quite questionable.”
Dr. Lewis is described online as a professor at the University of Maryland interested in 21st century African American culture, black feminism, and queer and gender studies.
Her thesis was titled: “Looking Backward: Queering Black Female Sexuality in “Neo” Cultural Productions.” A description said that it combines Black feminist theory with cultural studies and queer theory.
The University of Maryland has 40,000 students, and the average length of study lasts four years and costs undergraduates around $40,000 in academics alone.
DailyMail.com has contacted the University of Maryland for comment.