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Gender Studies

The study of gender as a fundamental category of social and cultural analysis.

About

Welcome to the Gender Studies subject guide for Indiana University Bloomington

We're glad you're here. This guide contains information and resources pertaining to the field of gender studies. Here you'll find featured content, new titles, helpful resources and services for scholarsinstructional support information, research & writing tips, and curated, subject-specific resources for performing research in gender studies. You will also find a list of campus & community resources for women and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning, and more (LGBTQ+) people. For a description of what you'll find in each section of this guide, just hover over each item in the navigation menu on the left-hand side of this page; if you're using a mobile device, you'll also find a summary on each page.

The subject specialist and collection manager for this area is nicholae cline. If you would like to contact them, please use the profile box located on the left-hand side of this page. If you would like to request a purchase for our collections, you can use this form.

To learn more about who we are and the services we offer, including links to key general library services, take a look at the About Us page of this guide.


About Gender Studies

The study of gender as a fundamental category of social and cultural analysis, while also considering the intersection of gender with other substantive categories of identity, including sexuality, race, religion, class, disability, and nationality. Gender studies encourages scholars to think beyond common sense accounts of gender to examine its complex construction in a range of historical epochs, cultural arenas, and global processes. The field of gender studies utilizes a wide variety of innovative approaches and methodologies, broad in reach, yet unified through a critical angle of vision.

To learn more about the IU Department of Gender Studies, visit their website.

Transmasculine Worlds: Works by Trans Men & Other Masc Folk

Introduction

In recognition of Pride Month in June, we have curated a selection of materials and resources from our collections to honor the contributions of transgender men and transmasculine folks across the arts—from fiction and poetry, to feature films and documentaries, to podcasts and music. In many of the tabs of this feature, we have included links to articles by and interviews with the authors at the top of the lists. We have also put together a sampling of important transgender studies texts, to help ground an understanding of transgender identity and embodiment. For more academic texts, please see our Recommended Resources for Gender Studies and Transgender Resources guides. This is a sibling guide to our Transfeminine Worlds: Works by Trans Women & Other Femme Folk feature.

About the Playlist

As an introduction to this feature, we have also created a playlist of music by trans men and other artists who explore and embody masculinity outside of cisnormative conceptions of gender. In this extensive, genre-spanning mix, you'll find a variety of musical styles and sounds, including hip hop, electronic, ambient, and indie rock, among others. To learn more about this, feel free to explore the following articles that highlight some of the artists on our playlist:

Note: To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.

Beyond the Playlist

Articles:

For more resources, see our additional curated guides:

Interviews

Books

Poetry

Stories/Essays

Feature Films

Documentary

TV & Shorts

Podcasts

Substacks

Organizations

Archives

Featured | Fatness & Fat Liberation

This guide is a collection of resources related to the Fat Liberation movement. Like other marginalized groups, fat activists have reappropriated and reclaimed the word fat, a previously derogatory term used to pathologize people of larger sizes. As opposed to medical terms like obese or overweight (which are rooted in the flawed science of the BMI scale and racism), fat activists utilize the adjective fat as both a positive descriptor and identity category grounded in solidarity and community. The Fat Liberation movement is widespread and far-reaching. This guide offers an introduction in a variety of genres and mediums written by and about fatness and fat liberation. You will find introductory books about fat discrimination (and how it continues to worsen), fiction that celebrates fat bodies and lived experiences, and Substack blogs by fat activists and writers, among many other resources. 

If you would like to begin to learn about Fat Liberation, explore some of the articles below:

 

Video: Activism: Profiles In Fatness. Desiree Burch and Dr. Sabrina Strings (author of Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia). (2022). 

Further Reading:

This tab contains selected articles and academic books in the field of Fat Studies. Articles are listed chronologically while books are listed by sub-discipline (Readers & Introductory texts, Intersectionality, and History).

Articles

Sourced from the following syllabi:

Books: Introductions & Readers

Books: Intersectionality

Books: History

Movement

Read the "Health at Every Size Principles" here.

Poetry

Photography & Art

Further reading and lists:

Podcasts

Maintenance Phase: Selected Episodes

  • Anti-Fat Bias  To celebrate the release of her new book, Aubrey takes Mike on a tour through the statistics and debates surrounding weight bias. Anyone interested in body positivity, airline seats, 'skinny shaming' or the sugar content of melons is legally obligated to join us.
  • The Body Mass Index  The BMI is EVERYWHERE. But is it scientific or scientif-ish? While many Americans think of the body mass index as an objective measure of health, its history reveals a more complicated story.
  • The Obesity Epidemic  Over the last 30 years, fatness has been defined as a risk factor for disease, then a disease in itself, then a global epidemic. What caused this rapid shift?
  • Is Being Fat Bad For You?  For nearly four decades, Americans have heard a simple story about health, longevity and obesity. This week, we learn it's a little more complicated. 
  • Fat Camps  How America's oldest fat camp — and the inspiration for Disney’s "Heavyweights" — became the symbol of a health intervention that enjoys worldwide popularity despite no evidence that it improves anyone's health.

And read this article about Maintenance Phase ("Breaking Down the ‘Wellness-Industrial Complex,’ an Episode at a Time") from the New York Times.

Podcast Episodes


Blogs

  • NotBlueAtAll "On this blog you’ll find me talking about a range of topics both personal and not. I write a lot about fat acceptance, self-acceptance, self-care, my own abuse survival, fatshion, activism, events and so very much more. This blog is a process, a journey. It helps me sort out my thoughts and share my story. Through this blog, I have met good friends, made connections with fellow abuse survivors and so many badasses."
  • Fluffy Kitten Party "I started this blog as a personal project in 2018, as I quit Weight Watchers for the very last time and embarked on a journey to root diet culture out of my life. Since then, I’ve developed a following of people looking to do the exact same thing."
  • Two Whole Cakes Lesley Kinzel has been engaging with body politics and social justice activism both as an academic and as an everyday upstart for over a decade
  • Your Fat Friend In 2016, Aubrey Gordon began writing anonymously about the social realities of life as a very fat person, publishing under the name Your Fat Friend.
  • Extra Inches - Male Plus Size Blog All about plus size fashion for men – enriched with some tips about grooming, beard care and lifestyle topics.
  • Chubstr A style destination for big and tall or plus size men. We’re pushing back against the myth that bigger guys don’t care about style by creating compelling content that runs the spectrum of fashion, lifestyle, politics, travel, food, and relationships.

Substacks

Video: Film & TV: Profiles In Fatness. Desiree Burch (2022). In this episode, Desiree is joined by an expert, Aubrey Gordon, to reflect on the harmful stereotypes of fatness found in film and TV, while also celebrating the overlooked heroes from the big screen. 

To read more about fat representation in the media, click the links below:

Television

Films

Read the Fat Liberation Manifesto here. By Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran, November, 1973. Published by the Fat Underground.


Writers & Journalists

A list of writers who focus on fat liberation along with a selection of their publications.


Organizations

New Titles in Gender Studies

cover art for book, image links to catalog record for title

The Black Reproductive: Unfree Labor and Insurgent Motherhood

How Black women's reproduction became integral to white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy--and remains key to their dismantling. In the United States, slavery relied on the reproduction and other labors of unfree Black women. Nearly four centuries later, Black reproductivity remains a vital technology for the creation, negotiation, and transformation of sexualized and gendered racial categories. Yet even as Black reproduction has been deployed to resolve the conflicting demands of white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, Sara Clarke Kaplan argues that it also holds the potential to destabilize the oppressive systems it is supposed to maintain. The Black Reproductive convenes Black literary and cultural studies with feminist and queer theory to read twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts and images alongside their pre-emancipation counterparts.

cover art for book, image links to catalog record for title

The Future Is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled - and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation? Building on the work of their game-changing book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Piepzna-Samarasinha writes about disability justice at the end of the world, documenting the many ways disabled people kept and are keeping each other - and the rest of the world - alive during Trump, fascism and the COVID-19 pandemic. Written over the course of two years of disabled isolation during the pandemic, this is a book of love letters to other disabled QTBIPOC (and those concerned about disability justice, the care crisis, and surviving the apocalypse); honour songs for kin who are gone; recipes for survival; questions and real talk about care, organizing, disabled families, and kin networks and communities; and wild brown disabled femme joy in the face of death. With passion and power, The Future Is Disabled remembers our dead and insists on our future.

All Gender Studies Guides