Fattening the Field: Fat Studies and Religion

Can religious studies get fatter? With gratitude to pioneering work in fat studies and religion, which establishes the role of religion, particularly Christianity, in morally and racially charging fat bodies, this panel explores new conversations in the field. Fat studies in religion must take new objects of analysis, for example, new religious movements, masculinities, and ecology. And fat studies in religion must extend into constructive encounters with those taking fatness and flesh as crucial for imagining a different world, in partnership with, for example, black studies and disability studies. The participants in this panel–and the others who gather–will together endeavor to see fat bodies, to listen to fat people, to recover fat in historical archives, and to explore the theological mattering of such flesh. Together we pursue a fat subjectivity that spills out, interrogating existing power dynamics, and offering alternate worlds.