Due by 2:20pm Thursday Nov 17, in lieu of class.
Everyone should read through all posts before next Tuesday’s class. Now’s your chance to check out what your peers are planning to work on.
Post a photo and tell us a little about your plan for your final project. This isn’t too formal: how’d you get to this topic? Explore some of the theoretical approaches you anticipate using to explicate the issue. One substantive paragraph about how your plan is developing.
Take a look at a fashion blog (this could be one of the assigned ones, or a different one)-- choose a picture that sparks a thought about what's going on here.
Performance of self? Analyze the blog in one of the terms we've been discussing: identity created through commodity/consumption? Performance of age, subculture, gender, sexuality? (And how those things are enacted through commodity...)
Unit 3: Performing Fashion
10/25 Art and the Museum
>>> “Fashion is the art that, in its proximity to the body, comes to be understood as supplemental and purely decorative. But fashion is now marked by its increasing ambivalence, as Elizabeth Wilson writes: ‘when we dress we wear inscribed upon our bodies the obscure relationship of art, personal psychology and the social order.’”
–Rizvana Bradley.
*MIDTERM PAPER DUE
10/27 HALLOWEEN! Costume
Tour of Brown University Costume Shop
*assign final paper
11/1 Subculture
*Photo assignment #7: HALLOWEEN
11/3 Subculture 2
11/8 Representing Fashion (or, are there other ways to consume fashion than wearing it?)
11/10 Blogging
*Photo Assignment #8
11/15 Fashion on TV
With guest discussant, Hunter Hargraves.
11/17 NO CLASS – WORK DAY
*Photo Assignment #9: final project
11/22 Makeover
*Final paper/project proposals and bibliographies due
11/24 NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING
11/29 Wrap Up—So what is Fashion and what is Performance?
12/1 FINAL PRESENTATIONS
12/6 FINAL PRESENTATIONS
*Paper drafts due
12/8 Optional class or individual meetings: reading week
Kaiser and McCullough suggest an alternative way of thinking about "identity" with their metaphor of "knots" which are sensitive to location, context, and multiple strands of meaning that make up identities. They write, "Fashion can be seen as entangling everyday political acts with embodied and visual performances." Authenticity and "appropriation" become particularly intense concerns around notions of ethnic and race-specific dress.
How do racially and ethnically marked pieces of clothing circulate around Providence and Brown? Take a picture, or (just this once) simply report on something you see around campus amongst your friends and peers.10/11 Race
10/13 Ethnic/“Traditional” Dress
(Remember how some—like Hollander—claimed that ethnic dress was not fashion?)
Ideally, watch the whole episode, but if you’re pressed for time (and seriously, you really don’t want to watch ANTM?! Really?!) make sure you see the entire photo shoot and critique. On youtube, this is the last minute or so of part 3, parts 4 and 5.)
(link 1)
OR (link 2, ESPECIALLY: part 3, minute 8:50, and parts 4 and 5). ONLINE
*Photo assignment #5
10/18 Class and Labor
10/20 Size, Age, and other Things about Bodies
*Photo assignment #6
10/6 Religion
The original link to the "Mediating Morality" conference was broken. Try this one.
1. http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/
2. http://www.stylecovered.com/
GENDER. It has been observed that we don't even think of people as human until we determine their gender. (What's the first question about babies? Is it a girl or a boy?)
So, it's personal. It's a cornerstone of how we determine our identities--both when we fail to perform our genders "correctly" as Butler would put it AND when we do it "right" as Tseelon's discussion of notions of "masquerade" points out.
Both Tseelon's work and Butler's are evidence of the unprecedented amount of scrutiny and rethinking notions of gender have undergone in recent years, and Roberts' article reminds us that controversy about gender and how to do it is also not new.
This week, get personal. Take a picture (Don't find one! Don't use an old one! Take a new one!) that helps to express your own experience(s) of gender. You might want to use the reading assignments as a prompt to help you focus on one aspect of your experiences as a gendered subject. (Sorry boys, there wasn't reading focused on masculinity this week, but there's still plenty to talk about. And in binary systems, thinking through one thing inevitably brings up questions and ideas about the other.)
Instructor: Michelle Liu Carriger
Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 12noon to 12:50pm
Clothing is a basic fact of human life; it surrounds us and conditions our experience of other people and the world and yet interest in clothing has simultaneously been branded as superficial, frivolous, deceitful, and—above all—feminine. In this course we will examine fashion and clothing through the lens of performance theory, engaging with issues of identity, history, and ideology and processing course materials through critical writing, as well as creative assignments including photography, blogging, and in-class presentation.
Major questions of this class will include the following: how does fashion function as performance? What are the stakes of considering fashion and performance in tandem? How does fashion condition identity? What are we to make of fashion as art and as entertainment? How do the complex relations between fashion, performance, and identity play out in popular culture today, “live,” online, on television and in print? Do the clothes really make the man (or woman) or is fashion “just a fad”?
Course goals
At the conclusion of this course, students will have
Required readings and viewings are all available on OCRA or as course packet from Allegra. There are no required textbooks for this course.
Recommended texts:
-Fashion Theory: A Reader (Routledge 2007) edited by Malcolm Barnard
-Adorned in Dreams by Elizabeth Wilson
Required materials:
-Digital camera, or any device that can take photos (for instance, a cell phone) and the means to upload these photos to the internet. We will have a class blog with which to share our photo assignments and responses.
If you do not have and cannot provide a camera, you may still take this course—we will find a camera for you to use for the duration of the course.
Photo responses: The class will share a tumblr for required photo assignments. The url is fashion-performance-response.tumblr.com.
Requirements and Grading:
20% Weekly responses and photo assignments: Once weekly responses to the class themes and assigned readings are required before Tuesday class each week. These may take the form of photos and/or text, and will generally be composed in response to a prompt. We will use class responses in conjunction with the assigned readings to guide discussion.
30% Attendance, participation, and class presentation: This is a seminar style class where discussion is vitally important. Your attendance, preparation, and involvement in discussion is necessary for satisfactory progress.
Each person will lead discussion on one day of the semester solo or in pairs, based on a sign up sheet. Come prepared to lead discussion with a brief summary and analysis of the readings (5-10 minutes) and some provocative questions to engage the class.
20% Midterm paper: a short (5-7 page) paper will be due at the end of the first two units.
30% Final paper, proposal, outline, presentation: 10 to 12 page research paper (or project) on a subject of your choice relating to fashion and performance. Due on assigned date of final exam. (20 December 2pm). There is no final exam for this class, but there is an in class presentation of material from your final project/paper.
Attendance: Two absences for any reason (excused or unexcused) will be allowed before attendance begins to affect your grade. Please plan very carefully and use these allowances strategically. See “Requirements and Grading” for more information on how absences may affect your grade. Special and emergency situations regarding extended absences must be taken up on a case by case basis with the instructor.
Academic Integrity:
Plagiarism is a serious offense. If you have questions about what constitutes original work or appropriate citation, by all means, ask. Refer to Brown’s Academic Code: “Students who submit academic work that uses others' ideas, words, research, or images without proper attribution and documentation are in violation of the academic code. Infringement of the academic code entails penalties ranging from reprimand to suspension, dismissal, or expulsion from the University. Brown students are expected to tell the truth. Misrepresentations of facts, significant omissions, or falsifications in any connection with the academic violate the code, and students are penalized accordingly. Misunderstanding the code is not an excuse for dishonest work. Students who are unsure about any point of Brown's academic code should consult their courses instructors or an academic dean, who will be happy to explain the policy.” For Brown’s complete academic code see: http://brown.edu/Administration/Dean_of_the_College/curriculum/academic_code.php
SCHEDULE
*indicates an assignment due.
Unit 1: FASHION/PERFORMANCE
9/8 Introduction
9/13 What is Fashion?
*Photo assignment #1
9/15 What is Performance?
9/20 Time and History
*Photo assignment #2
Unit 2: IDENTITY AND FASHION (Do the clothes make the man? Or woman?)
9/22 Identity
9/27 Gender
*Photo assignment #3
9/29 Sexuality
10/4 SEX
*Photo assignment #4
10/6 Religion
1. http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/
2. http://www.stylecovered.com/
10/13 Ethnic/“Traditional” Dress
(look back to Hollander abt p20)
*Photo assignment #5
10/18 Class and Labor
10/20 Size, Age, and other Things about Bodies
*Photo Assignment #6
Unit 3: Performing Fashion
10/25 Art and the Museum
>>> “Fashion is the art that, in its proximity to the body, comes to be understood as supplemental and purely decorative. But fashion is now marked by its increasing ambivalence, as Elizabeth Wilson writes: ‘when we dress we wear inscribed upon our bodies the obscure relationship of art, personal psychology and the social order.’”
–Rizvana Bradley.
*MIDTERM PAPER DUE
*assign final paper
10/27 HALLOWEEN! Costume
11/1 Subculture
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/27/new-york-gangs-ralph-lauren
*Photo assignment #7: HALLOWEEN
11/3 Subculture 2
11/8 Representing Fashion (or, are there other ways to consume fashion than wearing it?)
*Photo Assignment #8
11/10 Blogging
11/15 Fashion on TV
*Final paper/project proposals and bibliographies due
11/17 NO CLASS – WORK DAY
*Photo Assignment #9: final project
11/22 Makeover
11/24 NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING
11/29 Wrap Up—So what is Fashion and what is Performance?
12/1 FINAL PRESENTATIONS
12/6 FINAL PRESENTATIONS
*Paper drafts due
12/8 Optional class or individual meetings: reading week
12/20 *FINAL PAPER/REWRITE DUE 2pm
