The University of Maryland is offering a course that examines the connections between “fatness” and “Blackness” as a “social justice issue.”

In the spring semester, students will have the opportunity to take the course “Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections.” The course will satisfy the university’s Distributive Studies or Diversity course requirements that are needed to graduate. According to its description, 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.”

“Though we will look at fatness as intersectional, this course will particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness,” the description stated. “We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social-science lens which emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue. The course closes with an examination of fat liberation as liberation for all bodies with a particular emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia.” 

The concept of the course has already drawn criticism. Richard Vatz, a retired professor from the nearby Towson University, mocked the course in comments to The National News Desk.

“I don’t think if you went into a job interview and the interviewer said ‘what have you taken recently?’ and the respondent said, ‘Well, I’m taking a course in fat studies, but the intersection of a Blackness and fatness,’ that this would put you in a position to get much of a job, so the utility of this and the job market is probably pretty questionable,” Vatz said.

“I have to be honest with you, this is kind of a laughable, laughable subject,” he added. “This stuff is just ludicrous.”

This piece first appeared at TPUSA.