ASDAH Conference 2023
Dreaming of New Worlds: Health at Every Size® in the Future
Virtual | Friday & Saturday | June 9-10, 2023
Registration for ASDAH’s 2023 Annual Conference is OPEN TODAY!
We are excited to announce ASDAH’s 2023 Annual Conference that will be held June 9-10 (plus pre- and post- conference sessions!) The theme and focus for our work this year has been Dreaming of New Worlds: Health at Every Size® in the Future. Together with conference attendees, speakers, performers, and facilitators, we will explore this theme with curiosity and hope.
We’re expanding the conference this year to span two days plus breakout sessions (recorded so you won’t miss soaking up any of the wisdom offered). In support of our desire to make this work collaborative from a truly global perspective, we’re including replays so more timezones can join in with others for live community connection and conversation.
Stay tuned for more about that and additional conference details. Watch this space and all of our social media accounts for additional conference developments!
Keynote Speakers
Kiese Laymon
BESTSELLING AUTHOR • SOCIAL CRITIC • ESSAYIST
About Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. In his observant, often hilarious work, Laymon does battle with the personal and the political: race and family, body and shame, poverty and place. His savage humor and clear-eyed perceptiveness have earned him comparisons to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alice Walker, and Mark Twain. He is the author of the award-winning memoir Heavy, the groundbreaking essay collection How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and the genre-defying novel Long Division.
Laymon’s memoir Heavy won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2018 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable—an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family. In a starred review, Kirkus wrote, “Laymon skillfully couches his provocative subject matter in language that is pyrotechnic and unmistakably his own…. A dynamic memoir that is unsettling in all the best ways.” Heavy was named a best book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year.
For more information on Kiese Laymon, please visit him on Instagram, Twitter and at kieselaymon.com.
Dr. Barbara Love
thought leader • Transformation Specialist • Liberation Worker
About Dr. Barbara Love
Dr. Love is Professor Emeritus, Social Justice Education, UMASS- Amherst. She is a speaker, executive coach, thought leader, and writer on Developing Liberatory Consciousness as a framework for JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion) issues related to organizational, individual and societal transformation.
She is recognized globally for her work with a broad range of organizations including business and industry, government, civic, and higher education. Love is an executive coach with corporate leaders, has consulted with clients in Europe, Middle East, Israel, Africa, and South America, with leaders in higher education including, leaders in climate justice, and with national and global organizations focused on the climate crisis. She was the facilitator for the development of the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform. She has led delegations and gave presentations at the United Nations Conferences for Women in Nairobi and Beijing, the UN COP (Conference of the Parties on Climate Change) in Paris and Morocco, and the UN Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and other Related Intolerances (South Africa).
In addition to working with faculty in the development of the first graduate degree program in Social Justice Education in the US, her research and publications appear in academic peer-reviewed journals, and a variety of journals and anthologies. Her pamphlet on “Healing Internalized Oppression” is globally acclaimed for insights into oppression and liberation.
Parent, daughter, sibling, aunty, farmer, teacher, community builder, liberation worker, Love treasures the symbolic guidance of the ‘strongbox’ liberated by great grandfather Miles in 1864 as he departed the plantation, for its direction setting toward the transformation of the world.
Plenary Speakers
Clarkisha Kent
Alechia Dow
Caleb Luna
About Clarkisha Kent
Clarkisha Kent is a Nigerian American writer, culture critic, former columnist, and author of Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto. Committed to telling inclusive stories via unique viewpoints from nigh-infancy, she is fascinated with using storytelling and cultural criticism not as a way to “overcome” or “transcend” her unique identities (as a FAT, bisexual, and disabled Black African woman), but as a way to explore them, celebrate them, affirm them, and most importantly, normalize them and make the world safe enough for people who share them to exist.
As a University of Chicago graduate with a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies and English, she brings with her over eight years of pop culture analysis, four years of film theory training, and a healthy appetite for change.
Her writing has been featured in outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Essence, gal-dem, PAPER, BET, HuffPost, MTV News, The Root, and more. She is also the creator of #TheKentTest and the co-creator of The Kelli & Kat Test—both of which are media litmus tests designed to evaluate the quality of representation that exists for Black women, women of color, and fat [Black] women respectively.
Currently, Kent is working on a novel about a Black female outlaw and a TV comedy pilot about an immortal familiar.
About Alechia Dow
Alechia Dow is a former pastry chef, librarian, author of YA scifi-fantasies: The Sound of Stars (a Junior Library Guild Selection and Hal Clement ALA notable), The Kindred (Indie Next Kids Jan 2022 Pick), A Song of Salvation, several short anthology pieces, and middle grade stories Just a Pinch of Magic and The Cookie Crumbles which she co-authored with Tracy Badua. When not writing, you can find her having epic dance parties with her daughter, baking, reading, taking teeny adventures, and exploring her local food scene.
About Caleb Luna, Ph.D
Caleb Luna is an artist, public scholar and theorist of the body. They are the bestselling author of REVENGE BODY (Nomadic Press, 2022), an award-winning educator and scholar, and co-host of the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back. Caleb holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. They are currently a University of California President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ultimately, they are interested in engaging embodied difference as a generative resource toward fatter understandings of collective freedom. You can follow Caleb on Instagram and Twitter at @dr_chairbreaker, or get in touch with them at caleb-luna.com
Mary Senyonga, Ph.D
professor • researcher
About Mary Senyonga, Ph.D.
Mary Senyonga (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Women’s and Gender Studies at Sacramento State University. Her research and teaching privileges Black feminisms, Critical Race Theory, and Queer of Color Critique to surface alterity to systemic oppression. Her most recent work focuses on Black women organizing during the 60s and 70s to highlight the genealogy of Black lifemaking against domination.
Your 2023 Conference Registration is your ticket to...
- New, innovative, and leading voices bringing lived experience and the lens of liberation to fat justice in healthcare & the Health at Every Size® Framework of Care!
- Time for audience Q&A and guided discussion in every session
- Breaking new research on Health at Every Size® and intersectional liberation topics
- Supporting the labor of fat, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color – every ASDAH presenter is compensated!
- Access to all pre- and post- conference sessions
- Thirty minutes between sessions to dance, stretch, take a brain break, and visit with other conference attendees
- Community zoom rooms available to meet and connect with others
- 30-day access to recorded sessions
- Scholarship opportunities
- Live closed captioning on all sessions
- Language interpretation via Wordly.AI (live sessions only)
Registration Levels
Accomplice Registration | $349.00
This registration level pays for your ticket and can help subsidize scholarships and BIPOC, student, and community registrations.
Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Color Registration | $129.00
This registration level is for any Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Color paying for their own ticket, regardless of profession. This pricing structure is one way ASDAH is working to repair the historic and ongoing marginalization of BIPOC people in our movement. This level is not available for organization-funded tickets.
General Admission (member rate) | $229.00
This registration level is for any ASDAH member, including for those whose tickets are paid for by their organization.
General Admission (non-member rate) | $299.00
This registration level is for any non-ASDAH member, including for those whose tickets are paid for by their organization.
Student and Community Registration | $149.00
This registration level is for students and community members paying for their own ticket who do not use HAES® in their professional lives. This level is not available for organization-funded tickets.
2023 Conference Sponsors
Contact us today about sponsoring the conference as a Planetary Tier sponsor!
Contact us today about sponsoring the conference as a Galaxy Tier sponsor!
Scholarship Opportunities
We will be offering scholarships to attend the conference again this year! Last year we were able to provide over 50 scholarships all thanks to those selecting the Accomplice ticket level. Applications closed on Friday, June 2, 11:59 PT.
Frequently Asked Questions
The 2023 ASDAH Conference is completely virtual! This continues to support accessibility for those most impacted by the ongoing pandemic and for our global membership facing financial barriers to attending an in-person conference. We plan to use Zoom as the platform for our conference again this year.
Yes – unless otherwise noted, all session are being recorded and will be available for viewing for 30 days after the conference.
Yes! We are committed to offering at least 25 scholarships, and hopefully more depending on accomplice registrations. Applications closed Friday, June 2, 11:59 PT.
Yes! We offer group rates for organizations looking to register 5 or more people together. Contact us directly for rates and how to register as a group. Deadline for Group Rates is June 2nd.
Yes! We are accepting sponsors for this conference. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, contact us directly.
Yes! We aim to make conference sessions as accessible as possible. We offer automatic closed captioning as well as automatic interpretation services in 26 languages via Wordly.ai.
If you have additional requests, we will do our best to honor them. Contact us to make a request and discuss options with the ASDAH team.
We are approved for 8.5 live CEUs and have submitted for 9.5 recorded CEUs with the Commission on Dietetic Registration for Registered Dietitians.
We are submitting up to 11.5 CEUs for approval with the American Psychological Association for a range of mental health professionals. Approval is pending and not guaranteed.
Many accrediting bodies will accept pre-approved credits from these organizations. If your profession is not covered by those organizations, you may also be able to submit for credit individually. Check with your accrediting body for requirements. We will provide certificates of attendance to support your submission.