Sick, Fat, Ugly, Useless: Disability and Fat Studies

Keridwen Luis is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in gender, sexuality, identity, queer theory, and the body. Her most recent publication, Herlands: Exploring The Women's Land Movement in the United States (2018, University of Minnesota Press) examines the contemporary women's land movement through lesbian identity, body praxis, and ideas about community and race. Her current research project, Fandom's Rainbow: Community, Identity, Affect, Queerness (upcoming, Bloomsbury Press) explores body and identity performance among science fiction fans using interviews, participant observation, and internet fieldwork. This project examines the intersections between fandom identity and other identities such as queerness and sexuality, gender, race, class, ethnicity, and body shape, ability, and presentation. She holds a doctorate in anthropology and an MA in anthropology and women's, gender, and sexuality (WSG) studies from Brandeis University, where she teaches in the Anthropology and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies departments.