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Podcast: New Books in Sociology
Episode: May Friedman, "Fat Studies: The Basics" (Routledge, 2025)
Description: Fat Studies: The Basics (Routledge, 2025) introduces the reading of fat bodies and the ways that Fat Studies, as a field, has responded to waves of ideas about fat people, their lives, and choices.
Part civil rights discourse and part academic discipline, Fat Studies is a dynamic project that involves contradiction and discussion. In order to understand this field, the book also explores its intersections with race, class, gender, sexuality, age, disability, ethnicity, migration and beyond. In addition to thinking through terminology and history, this book will aim to unpack three key myths which often guide Fat Studies, sh...