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May Friedman

Professor, Graduate Program Director
EducationBA, BA, MSW, PhD
Phone416-979-5000, ext. 552525

May Friedman’s research looks at unstable identities, including bodies that do not conform to traditional racial and national or aesthetic lines. Most recently much of May’s research has focused on intersectional approaches to fat studies considering the multiple and fluid experiences of both fat oppression and fat activism. Drawing on a range of arts-based methods including digital storytelling as well as analyses of treasured garments, May has explored meaning making and representation in relation to embodiment and experience. May works as a faculty member in the School of Social Work and in the Toronto Metropolitan University/York graduate program in Communication and Culture.  

Recent publications explore the impacts of fat on pregnancy and reproduction (Fat Studies Handbook, Routledge); intersectionality as a lens for research (“Doing justice to intersectionality in research”, Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies) and a focus on mothers and COVID (“It feels a bit like drowning”, Atlantis 2021). 

  • SWP 950: Fat Studies and Fat Activisms
  • SK 8102: Anti-Oppression Responses to Marginalization, Policy and Practice
  • SWP 341: Transformative Social Work Practice

  • Arts based methods
  • Digital storytelling
  • Fat studies and fat activisms
  • Motherhood studies
  • Digital media
  • Popular culture
  • Life writing

Selected Publications:

  • Taylor, A., Ioannoni, K., Bahra, R.A., Evans, C., Scriver, A., & Friedman, M. (Eds.). (2023). Fat Studies in Canada: (Re) Mapping the Field. Inanna Press.
  • Friedman, M., Evans, C., & Barry, B. (2023). Intersectionality Gets Fashionably Fat: Arts-Based Approaches to Gender, Fat and Fashion. Art/Research International, 8(1), 173-204.
  • Friedman, M., & Meerai, S. (2022). “Our bodies are more than our bodies”: Expanding social work understandings of race and fat. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 10(1), 69-83.
  • Friedman, M. Pregnancy, parenting and the challenge of fatness. In Cat Pause and Sonya Renee Taylor (Eds.). (2021). Fat Studies Handbook, pp. 150-164. Routledge.
  • Friedman, M., Rice, C., & Rinaldi, J., (Eds.). (2020). Thickening fat: Fat bodies, intersectionality and social justice. Routledge.
  • Rice, C., Harrison, E., & Friedman, M. (2019). Doing justice to intersectionality in research. Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies, 19(6), 409-420.