This presentation outlines and critically reflects on the methodological framework for my current postdoctoral research project. My project, titled “Fatness and/as Disability: An Arts-Based Exploration of Disability and Weight Discrimination as Barriers to Women’s Public Participation in Ontario,” uses photovoice and multimedia storytelling methodologies to explore how women who identify as both disabled and fat experience barriers to public participation—via a focus on public resources, services, and spaces—because of intersecting disability and weight discrimination. Accordingly, in this presentation I discuss the potential and limits of using arts-based methodologies to generate alternative and liberatory knowledges about fat and disabled embodiments and experiences. I suggest that, in the context of my current research, arts-based methodologies have unique potential to challenge oppressive ideas about disability and fatness that create barriers to public resources, services, and spaces by providing disabled and fat women opportunities for self-representation and disseminating firsthand, embodied knowledges about their experiences.
This presentation starts from 15 secs to 12 mins 18 secs.
Presenter
Allison Taylor is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow working under the supervision of Dr. Carla Rice at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice. She holds a PhD in Gender, Feminist, and Women’s Studies from York University. Taylor’s dissertation, titled “Fattening Queer Femininities: The Pitfalls, Politics, and Promises of Queer Fat Femme Embodiment,” explored queer fat femme identities, embodiments, and negotiations of femmephobia, fatphobia, and other oppressions in Canada. Her postdoctoral research will use arts-based methods to examine how intersecting disability and weight-based discrimination constitute barriers to public resources, services, and spaces for women in Ontario.
