Full Time Faculty

Deborah McPhail is an Assistant Professor in Community Health Sciences. A
critical health scholar who studies the social aspects of obesity,
Dr. McPhail's interdisciplinary work has been published in such journals as
Antipode and Social Science & Medicine. Dr. McPhail obtained a PhD in
Women’s Studies from York University in 2010. Her doctoral dissertation, a
feminist history of obesity discourse in twentieth-century Canada, is under
advance contract for publication with the University of Toronto Press. Dr.
McPhail's current work focuses on the interplay among obesity discourse, food
access, traditional eating practices, and social inequalities. Other areas of
interest include: critical theories of health and the body;feminist and
qualitative research methods; gender studies; anti-racist and postcolonial studies;
theories of class distinction and structural oppression; globalization and
health inequity; intersectional experiences of health and illness.

Selected Publications:

McPhail, D., Beagan, B., & Chapman, G.E. (2012). “I don’t really want to be
sexist but–”: Denying and reinscribing gender through food. Food, Culture and Society 15 (3), 473-89.
McPhail, D., Chapman, G. E., & Beagan, B. (2011). “Too much of that stuff
can’t be good”: Canadian teens, morality, and fast food consumption. Social Science & Medicine 73(2), 301-7.
McPhail, D.  (2010). “This is the face of obesity”: Gender and the production of
emotional obesity in 1950s and 1960s Canada. Radical Psychology,
http://www.radicalpsychology.org/vol8-1/McPhail.html.
McPhail, D. (2009). What to do with “The Tubby Hubby”? “Obesity,” the crisis
of  masculinity, and the reification of the nuclear family in early Cold War Canada. Antipode 41(5), 1021-1050.
Sykes, H. & McPhail, D. (2008). Unbearable lessons: Contesting fat phobia in physical
education. Sociology of Sport Journal 25, 66-96.