The University of Maryland has introduced a course about "fat studies," and there is already a waiting list to enroll.
The course, called "Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness, and Their Intersections," will examine "fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination," according to the official description.
Students will explore "fat liberation," defined as a social justice issue, using performing arts and activism as tools to challenge "fatmisia," a term describing prejudice against fat individuals.
It said it will "particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness."
It will be taught by Dr. Sydney F. Lewis, a senior lecturer at the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Lewis's academic work "strives to blur the boundaries between the academy, art, and activism," according to her profile on the University's website.
Lewis is the author of Love in the time of Trump, a 2020 essay which opens with the line, "the night of the 2016 election I sat in a bathtub and cried."
Newsweek has contacted Dr. Lewis and the University of Maryland via email for comment.
The university charges $420 per credit for local students and $1,645 per credit for out-of-state students, meaning the three-credit course would cost either $1,260 or $4,935.
Local full-time students pay $5,043 per semester, out of state students pay $19,732 per semester
All 20 places for the course have been filled, with eight more students on the waiting list.
Dr. Richard Vatz, a professor emeritus at nearby Towson University, part of the University of Maryland system, criticized the course, telling The National News Desk that its relevance to the job market is "probably pretty questionable" and called the subject matter "ludicrous."
"I don't think if you went into a job interview and the interviewer said 'what have you taken recently?' and the respondent said 'well, I'm taking a course in fat studies, but the intersection of a blackness and fatness,' that this would put you in a position to get much of a job, so the utility of this and the job market is probably pretty questionable," Vatz said.
"I have to be honest with you, this is kind of a laughable, laughable subject," Vatz added. "This stuff is just ludicrous."
The course has made global headlines in right-leaning outlets including Fox News and the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom.
So called "woke" university curriculums have been a key issue in the American culture wars discussions of the past decade, with conservative voices criticizing universities for their promotion of social issues like the Black Lives Matter movement, anti-Israel protests, LGBTQ+ rights, and cancel culture.
President-elect Donald Trump is a vocal critic of progressive academic trends. He has proposed measures such as firing "radical left accreditors," as well as promising to "DEPORT PRO-HAMAS RADICALS AND MAKE OUR COLLEGE CAMPUSES SAFE AND PATRIOTIC AGAIN," in his Agenda 47 policy plan.
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