Body Problems: Theorizing Fat and Thin in Early Modern English Literature

Undergraduate / Graduate

Whether in the doctor's office or in our TikTok algorithm, messages about body weight, size, and shape are ubiquitous in our current moment. This class tracks the history of this phenomenon through early modern English literary representations of fatness, thinness, and everything in between. Thinking with critical race, trans, and queer theory, we will read widely from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales through William Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor to Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World to unpack how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England theorized fatness and thinness through and with theories of race, gender, sexuality, and class. (Pre-1650, Medieval/Early Modern)