Teaching and learning about gender, sexuality and fatness

Sunniva Árja Tobiasen, who is responsible for the course, will introduce the pedagogical project, followed by a presentation of the student work in a poster session at the University Library. This event is part of SKOK’s commitment to research on and teaching about diversity and universal design.

The course invites students to explore both how various topics related to gender, sexuality, and fatness appear in the world, and how the world changes when one learns to "see" through various theoretical perspectives on gender, sexuality and fatness. Each week, the students submit a photo they have taken themselves and write a short text based on the week’s theme and course readings. The images and texts showcase the students’ learning process, as well as their academic and creative engagement with the syllabus.

The aim of this learning-based pilot project is to contribute to increased competence on diversity thinking that includes body size and weight, for both students and staff. Afterwards, we’ll publish a report based on our experiences with this course. The report will also serve as a resource for those who teach about, research, work with, or are interested in these topics at the University of Bergen.

The event will be in English.

Background

There is already substantial research-based knowledge about why people are discriminated against and excluded based on body size and weight. This happens through prejudice, lack of knowledge, and various physical and psychosocial barriers one may encounter. In contrast to several other countries, where body size and weight are increasingly recognized as part of diversity frameworks, there is no established tradition for this in Norway, including in discussions of universal design. We also have limited research on these topics within the social sciences and humanities in Norway.

In line with established pedagogical and academic practice at SKOK, a variety of theoretical perspectives and critical thinking form a central part of the learning outcomes. In this course, the term perspective is understood in a double sense: It is not only about applying different theoretical perspectives to the themes of gender, sexuality, and fatness, but also about seeing and experiencing the world as part of the learning process and the work with theoretical perspectives. Here, we adopt an interdisciplinary, sociocultural understanding of gender, sexuality, and fatness.

The event has received support from UiB Universal.