Professor Watchlist

Christopher Forth is the Dean’s Professor of History at the University of Kansas. According to his university profile, Forth also “holds courtesy professorships in the departments of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies.”

He has a variety of publications, including Masculinity in the Modern West, Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (London: Reaktion, 2019), The Fat Imaginary in Trump’s America: Matter, Metaphor, and Animality, and more. 

According to Campus Reform, Forth taught an “Angry White Male Studies” course in the fall semester of 2022. The class analyzes the distinguished “angry white male.” According to the description, the course also explores “the deeper sources of this emotional state while evaluating recent manifestations of male anger.” Students also look into “how both dominant and subordinate masculinities are represented and experienced in cultures undergoing periods of rapid change connected to modernity as well as to rights-based movements of women, people of color, homosexuals and trans individuals.” 

Additionally, Fox News reports that the course has attracted criticism on social media for various matters. Kansas Republican Congressman Ron Estes suggested “that the class could violate Title IX.”

Instead of a course to unite people and empower women, KU has decided to offer a class that divides the student population and could pose a Title IX violation by creating a hostile campus environment based on gender. #ksleg https://t.co/XhUNfpFUcW

— Rep. Ron Estes (@RepRonEstes) April 3, 2019

 

Additional courses Forth has taught include “Sex in History,” “History of Women and the Body,” a “Colloquium in the History of Gender,” and more. 

 

Published: January 17, 2023