FAT PANIC! Keynote Panel

program schedule | full descriptions | keynote | performance! | presenter bios

How do we strategically counter the hype that is FAT PANIC!? Most of us have noted the severe escalation of anti-fat villainizing and fear-mongering not just from the media, the medical field and academia - but in our personal lives and even from progressive areas of social change, such as environmentalism, slow food and food justice movements, as well as other areas of social justice organizing. How do we deal with fat hatred overload and misinformation?

Fat activists from different regions and areas of expertise will come together to address this on a panel discussion covering approaches from Health At Every Size (HAES), food justice, fat studies, media activism, and arts activism.

Panel speakers and discussants:

Deb Burgard: Health at Every Size (HAES) Deb Burgard, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, creator of the BodyPositive.com and ShowMeTheData websites, coauthor of Great Shape: The First fitness Guide for Large Women, and columnist for the Health at Every Size Journal. She does research on the ways that everyday people across the weight spectrum integrate sustainable, self-nurturing practices into their lives.

Galadriel Mozee: Food Justice Galadriel Mozee is a writer, community educator, radical gardener, rain water collector, seamstress and is getting ready to buy the farm, literally, in a yet to be decided quaint country town with her sweetie Lisa and super dog jack. She is the founder of We Make the Path Consulting which offers Compassionate and progressive training, mentoring and support for businesses and nonprofits who strive to incorporate their beliefs into their practices, walk their talk and make their own path. She is currently developing an anti-bullying training for Portland area schools which she hopes to distribute nationally. She has worked within food justice movements for many years including most recently working for two and a half years with Sisters Of The Road, a nonprofit café working to end poverty and hunger through alternative monetary systems and the teachings of Nonviolence.

Charlotte 'The Beefer' Cooper: Fat Studies Charlotte Cooper is based in London, UK, and is currently a Government of Ireland Ph.D scholar at the University of Limerick, courtesy of the Irish Social Sciences Platform, where she's writing a thesis about fat activism. Charlotte started out as a zine-maker and she continues to publish and be active in various punk and third wave feminist DIY-culture projects, on- and offline. She published Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size (1998) and a novel, Cherry (2002), which was busted for obscenity by Canada Customs and was voted Best Book in Diva's Lesbian Excellence Awards. Charlotte has worked as a journalist, her writing has been published in many other magazines, zines and anthologies, and now she's invading academic life. Charlotte has her own gang, The Chubsters, she lectures and facilitates workshops around fat stuff and is a trained psychotherapist. She is not at all straight. She makes miniscule films and blogs about fat activism and Fat Studies at www.obesitytimebomb.blogspot.com.

Bianca D.M. Wilson: Fat Studies Bianca D.M. Wilson, Ph.D., is a community psychologist currently working as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at California State University , Long Beach . Prior to this post, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California , San Francisco Institute for Health Policy Studies and the Lesbian Health and Research Center. Her research focuses on the relationships between culture, oppression, and sexual health among African American same-gender loving people.

photo credit: Caldwell Linker Nomy Lamm: Media Activism Nomy Lamm is a San Francisco-based writer, performer and musician. She first "came out" as a fat activist at age 17 when she wrote the ground-breaking zine "i'm so fucking beautiful," and her essay "It's a Big Fat Revolution," published in 1995 in Listen Up: Voices of the Next Feminist Generation, is now regularly used in Women's Studies classes. She has co-written a post-apocalyptic genderqueer rock opera ("The Transfused"), released two solo albums ("Anthem" and "Effigy") and toured with Sister Spit and The Sex Workers Art Show. She currently writes an advice column for Make/Shift magazine (makeshiftmag.com), performs with Sins Invalid (sinsinvalid.org), and is working on her first novel, The Best Part Comes After the End, as a grad student at SF State.

Naima Lowe: Arts Activism Naima Lowe is a Fat, Queer, African-American artist and scholar currently living in Philadelphia, PA. Her creative work includes films, videos and performances that deal with collective memory, hidden histories, identity formation and love. She's been coming to NOLOSE since 2005 and loves the community with all her heart.