Katherine A Phelps

Pronouns:  she/they
Kate Phelps has a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She has been teaching with the GWS department at UW-Madison since spring of 2017. She teaches body politics, feminist theory, fat studies, food politics, global health, and survey courses. Their central research interests include body politics, girlhood studies, digital sociology, fat studies, feminist theories, and feminist pedagogies.

Courses:
Gen&WS 102: Gender, Women, and Society in Global Perspective
Gen&WS 320: Food for Thought: An Intersectional Approach
Gen&WS 423: The Female Body in the World: Body Politics in Cross Cultural Perspective
Gen&WS 449: From Past Feminisms to Postfeminism: Feminism for the 21st Century
Gen&WS 523: Framing Fatness: Gender, Size, Constructing Health
Gen&WS 535: Women’s Global Health and Human Rights

Publications:

Phelps, K.A. 2025. Digital Girlhoods. (Forthcoming from Temple University Press)

Phelps, K.A. 2018. “Am I Pretty Enough for You Yet?: Resistance through Parody in the Pretty or Ugly YouTube Trend” in Body Battlegrounds. Edited by Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.

Phelps, K.A. 2016. “Taking Up Digital Space: Power and Potentialities of Fatness on Social Media.” Spring. Blog post for American Sociological Association section on Body and Embodiment.

Phelps, K.A. and Narby, C. 2013. “As Big as a House: Representations of the Extremely Fat Woman and the Home.” Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary of Body Weight and Society 2(2):147-159.