Stern Center, Great Room, 7 p.m.
Love Your Body Week Keynote
Out of Time: Fatness, Disability, and Fat Crip Time
April Herndon, Winona State University
This talk explores the ways fat and/or disabled bodies are often depicted as being part of the past but not of a collective future because they are deemed too expensive, too much a reminder of vulnerability, too much in general. As a result, those of us living in fat and/or disabled bodies are often disciplined and pushed to pursue imagined futures—where many of us do not exist—through “treatments” and “cures,” robbing us of the present. Using my personal experiences as a fat and disabled woman and an intersectional Fat Studies and Disability Studies lens, I’ll explain how fat and/or disabled bodies challenge normative concepts of time. I’ll also suggest that Fat Crip Time, which acknowledges that fatness and disability can mean a person experiences time differently, can help us live in the present, know fat and disabled bodies as potential sites of joy rather than only hardship, and offer a framework for justice and liberation.
The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and by the Women’s & Gender Resource Center and co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation ‘Beyond the New Normal’ Grant.” The program is part of Love Your Body Week programming.
Topic overview written by Sarah Ruschak ’27
Biography (provided by the speaker)
Dr. April Herndon earned her Ph.D. in American studies at Michigan State University. She currently teaches in the English department at Winona State University. Her published work addresses fatphobia and ableism in American culture from an interdisciplinary and intersectional perspective. Her book, Fat Blame: How the War on Obesity Victimizes Women and Children, specifically examines how America’s obsession with fatness is especially harmful to women and children—even more so if those women and children are also marginalized via race, class, socioeconomic status, and/or disability. Herndon loves cats, gardening, cooking, and playing her ukulele and singing on her screen porch.
Love Your Body Week
Love Your Body Week (LYBW) is February 10 through 15 this year. LYBW’s annual celebration of our diverse bodily experience is a great time to learn more about the cultural messages we receive about bodies, consider our own relationship with our bodies, and to care for our bodies in a variety of ways. The list of events this year includes an opportunity to get expert nutrition information, guidance on strength training, celebrations of bodily difference and neurodivergence, a beginner-friendly dance class, and an all-bodies-welcome swim session at the Kline, among many other events. All events are open to students, staff, and faculty. For more information or to register, please visit EngageD and search for LYBW or contact the Women’s and Gender Resource Center.