Photo Response Assignment #4, Oct 4

Look at some fashion magazines for the way sexual desirability is portrayed in fashion photography. There is one book of Helmut Newton's fashion photography on physical reserve at the Rock too. I handed out some fashion magazines in class and you should also use your own resources and do some internet searches for fashion photos.
What's going on with the representation of women's bodies (or women... or men... or men's bodies...) as objects of sexual desire? Whose sexual desire? How are some ways that notions of gender and sex get layered into ideas of sexuality? And what do you think of the way images of sexy women are sold to heterosexual women as desirable, but still hetero, not lesbian? Are there different kinds of sexuality or sexiness being portrayed? How do we distinguish?

The assignment is to use a photo that helps to illustrate your thoughts on some aspect of the portrayal (and the obsession with portraying) sexual desire or desirability in these photos or in the clothes the photos depict. Or, the photo might inspired some thoughts about these issues.

Everybody says sex sells, and I've been seeing it sell some weird stuff lately. I saw this tshirt the other day on a girl near campus:



And this one I saw on a guy recently:


What do these causes get out of labeling themselves sexy?

NOTE: Sept 29 Class assignments.

Note that not all assignments for Thursday's class are available on OCRA and in packet. Some need to be accessed via open internet.
See complete assignments below, and keep an eye out for more days like this.

Packet/OCRA:

• Case, Sue-Ellen. “Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” OCRA only
  
• Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’” OCRA only
  
• “Dykes and Their Hair,” zine in PDF format. OCRA/packet

WEB:

• Andrej Pejic: http://nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/andrej-pejic/
• http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com, as well as the “Biebershop Quartet” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTv-Kks5kEs)

MYCOURSES:

• Paris is Burning streaming on MYCOURSES

Photo Response Assignment #3, September 27

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.)

WE WILL DISCUSS OUR RESPONSES (briefly) IN CLASS. I will bring a computer and we can all look at the photos together. So, you will probably want to balance my injunction to get personal with what you feel comfortable discussing with the group.

Wilson reading Sept 20

The Elizabeth Wilson reading for Sept 20 was somehow missed on OCRA, but is now available. It is in the packet. If you are reading along in another volume, the pages assigned are 16-46, the chapter called "The History of Fashion."

Photo Response Assignment #2, September 20

Responses are due by 11am, Sept 20.

It has already become clear in the class that the dynamics of fashion are tied up with different and competing notions of time and temporality. Fashion functions under two (or more) temporal regimes at once: linear forward moving time (in that fashion is constantly looking for the "new," the next big thing and discounting "last year's model." On the other hand, that very "new" thing is usually a revival of something past, so the linear model of fashion time is also cyclical. Some theories of performance, those concerned with repetition and repetition with a difference, are also clearly very concerned with temporality.

For this assignment, take a picture of how fashion might register multiple times at once. Think about some of the different ways Corrigan lays out time and clothing: it could be an outfit that mixes times of day (evening and day?), or outfits that mix different decades, or a personal outfit that mixes your new favorite pieces with old favorites.

What's at stake in the way we wear the complications of time on our bodies? What does this say about time in general? Can we really talk about the successive seasons of fashion when in reality everyone is constantly mixing up the fashions of "now" with the fashions of "before"?

Photo Response Assignment #1 for Sept 13

Find a passage in either of the readings (Hollander or Wilson) that you feel was particularly important or surprising.
Then take, make, or find a picture (You can use the internet for this. Hint: the picture will probably be of clothes!) that you feel is reflective of the point being made in the passage. In 1-3 paragraphs, explain to us how the passage informs the picture, and perhaps what the picture may inform the passage.

Comment if you have questions.