Aside from being a full-time professor of American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies, Amy Farrell is also the current director of the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, a channel at Dickinson College to connect students and faculty to some of the outside world’s most pressing problems.

“As students on campus engage with their studies, it is important to remind them that their academics is by no means removed from the world, instead, students have to see how they can apply such scholarship to their daily lives and the way society functions,” said Farrell.

“Through the Clarke Forum, I have had the opportunity to work with many wonderful students who have successfully put up lectures, seminars for our current professors and visiting guests. It is a great experience talking to the guests and learning so much from them in just one or two days.”

Professor Farrell’s academic research is mainly focused on representations of gender and feminism in popular culture. She has appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss how America’s diet industry is reinforcing the culture of fat shaming. Her book Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture examines the representation of fat in mainstream media since the nineteenth century and how such depiction has shaped modern perceptions of fat. The stigma associated with being fat, Farrell argues, is completely irrelevant to any genuine health concerns about a large body size. Drawing examples from a variety of sources, including political cartoons, postcards and advertisements, Farrell points out that fatness is currently being regarded as a sign of a primitive person and that this idea has been fuelling a 60-billion-dollar industry and our cultural distress over the “obesity epidemic.”

Due to her busy schedule doing research and running the Clarke Forum, Farrell can only offer one class every semester. Nevertheless, her only class this semester, Fat Studies, is at full capacity.

“The fact that there are non-american studies major students in the class confirms how relevant this issue is to our modern society,” said Farrell. “My hope in this class is that the students will be able to use their critical thinking skills to examine one of the most sensitive yet important problems of modern society: fat people.”

Fun fact: Farrell’s mother-in-law is Maxine Bloom, one of the door checkers and monitors of dining services.