Photo Assignment #9, November 17.

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.

Photo Assignment #8, DATE CHANGE Nov. 10, Thurs

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...)

What might Guy Debord say about the phenomenon of the fashion blog? Is it the apotheosis of the Society of the Spectacle, or might self-fashioning and self-publication function as detournement? What do you think?

FINAL PAPER PROJECT:

11/22: Proposal (1-2) and initial bibliography (at least 5 sources) due;
12/1 and 12/6: presentations;
12/6: paper draft due (8 pages minimum);
12/20: final draft (10-12 pages) due, 2pm.

The parameters of the final paper are purposefully left very broad. You should select a topic of your choice
involving fashion and examine it from a performance theory-inflected standpoint. It might be
something from your concentration, a specific example from the course, or the topic of one of your photo
responses that you want to investigate in greater detail. This is a research project, so external research
and additional reading are expected. If you have questions about how to locate and access sources, by
all means schedule an appointment with me, as well as consulting with the librarians. This class has
raised many many questions and answered few of them. This is your second chance to focus in on a
specific issue of fashion and work to make a strong claim about it. Read back through some of your
favorite articles from the semester and think about how these authors make their claims, then consider
where you want to make your own intervention into the discourse surrounding fashion which, of
course, surrounds us everyday.

A proposal (1-2 pages) outlining your topic of choice, what aspects of that phenomenon you plan to focus on, and a discussion of what theories you plan to apply to it along with an initial bibliography of sources you plan to consult is due 11/22.

Everyone will give a brief presentation (5-10 minutes) of their project in class either 12/1 or 12/6, with a paper draft (8pgs minimum) due via email from everyone on 12/6 by midnight (11.59pm).

Final papers are due, 12/20 at 2pm-- our scheduled final time.

Photo Assignment #7, Nov 1

HALLOWEEN. So, by definition, a costume is at least a superficial performative. It turns one into a role. We ask, "What are you going to be for Halloween?" for example. So, what does a costume do for identity? Or do to identity? How is costume and identity intertwined (or not)?

One angle might be to think about the "sexy" costume trend. What is going on there? Is that an expression of identity or non-identity (remember, as in sameness, or as in a "true likeness" of some interior aspect)? Or is there something more complicated going on?

Another subject could be the question we brought up today: "culture not costume"? Why might those discussions be so fraught? What's the big deal if it's "just a costume"?

Take a photo this weekend of something you see that piques your interest and use it as the prompt to move you through these big questions.

Syllabus through end of class.

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.

• Svendsen, Lars. “Fashion and Art,” Fashion: A Philosophy. 90-110. OCRA* Note the entire e-book is available here. You are assigned the chapter "Fashion and Art."
  
• Benjamin, Walter. “Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” OCRA
• Museums and Fashion
  
• Yinka Shonibare: 1. New York Times article (including slideshow), 2. Check out http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com, and 3. watch the first 15 minutes of Art:21 about Shonibare.
• Page through the site for Alexander McQueen Savage Beauty show at the Met.
  
• Chadwick, Whitney. Review of Couture Culture. Art Bulletin, 86.2(2004): 384-388. OCRA
  

*MIDTERM PAPER DUE

10/27 HALLOWEEN! Costume

• Monks, Aoife. Introduction and Chapter 1 from Actor in Costume. 1-33.
• “Introduction” from Theatricality. Eds. Tracy C. Davis and Thomas Postlewait. 2003.

Tour of Brown University Costume Shop

*assign final paper

11/1 Subculture

• Hebdige, Dick, “Style” in Fashion Theory Reader, 255-265.
• Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.”
• Look through Ted Polhemus Street Style, on reserve at Rock.
• Spooner, Catherine. “Undead Fashion: Nineties Style and the Perennial Return of Goth,” GOTH: Undead Subculture.143-154.

• Articles about the Lo Lifes: 1.threadbared.wordpress.com
  
• 2. at The Guardian.
• 3. documentary trailer
  

*Photo assignment #7: HALLOWEEN

11/3 Subculture 2

• Kawamura, Yuniya. “Japanese Teens as Producers.” Packet/OCRA
• Groom, Amelia, “Power Play and Performance in Harajuku,” New Voices v.4, 188-212. Packet/OCRA
• Owens, Craig. “Posing,” in Beyond Recognition. OCRA
• Look through Fruits and Fresh Fruits, on reserve at Rock.

11/8 Representing Fashion (or, are there other ways to consume fashion than wearing it?)

• Duggan, Ginger. “Greatest Show on Earth” in Fashion Theory. Googledocs
• Gambrell, Alice. “You’re Beautiful When You’re Angry: Fashion Magazines and Recent Feminisms” OCRA
• Disability/Fashion Photography: 1. Fashionista.com,
  
• 2. Oscar Pistorius at NYT
• Aimee Mullins on Accessible Design. "You know Aimee, you're very attractive. You don't look disabled."
  
• Come back to Owens "Posing."
  

11/10 Blogging

• Peruse at length a few fashion blogs, for example:
  
• Style Rookie, Sartorialist, Anna Dello Rosso, StyleBubble, Bryanboy, Fashiontoast, etc.
• “People Dress So Badly Nowadays” shared via Google docs
  
• Debord, Guy. From Society of the Spectacle. OCRA
  

*Photo Assignment #8

11/15 Fashion on TV

With guest discussant, Hunter Hargraves.

• “Project Runway” Season 8, episode 10. (You have to find episode 10 on the list and choose a streaming site.)
  
• “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 1, episode 4.
• Hargraves, Hunter. “You Better Work: The Commodification of HIV in RuPaul’s Drag Race” in Race, Sexuality and Television. Fall 2011. 24-34.

11/17 NO CLASS – WORK DAY

*Photo Assignment #9: final project

11/22 Makeover

• “What Not to Wear” Season 8, episode 38. (http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/player/megavideo.php?id=368RM38R&md=d)
• “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” season 2, episode 2. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMamkba2PI)
• Cohan, Steve. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guise.” Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. OCRA
• Roberts, Martin, “The Fashion Police: Governing the Self in What Not to Wear.” Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. OCRA

*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

12/20 *FINAL PAPER/REWRITE DUE 2pm

Photo Assignment #6, Oct 20

As we've been discussing for several weeks, identity is often expressed, or indeed in part created through fashion (or perhaps the performance of fashion). Judith Butler suggests that a major part of identity--gender--is created through performance, although this doesn't necessarily mean that we wake up in the morning and choose what we will be, consciously choosing to play a role. Rather, the "performative" indicates an activity rather than a thing (remember back to the Schechner reading). Thus, for Butler, gender is not a *thing* or solid idea, but rather a doing, an action that creates the illusion of a solid, singular thing-that-is-gender. Similarly, when talking about ethnic and racially marked dress, we more or less concluded that race does not reside in items of clothing, but rather in how they are used, in the relation of clothing, body, context, and society. This fluidity, the contingency of meaning based on how things are being used in what context, I would contend, is about performance.
Today we try to wrap up some loose ends about "identity" and "fashion." Find a picture that speaks to one of the issues about bodies that we read about today: beauty, size, or age, and discuss it in terms of the repetitive action of performance. Is beauty, size or age something you *are* or a relation? An action? A performance? What would it mean to look at age, size, or beauty as performance? Could it help explain the wildly different and ambiguous ways these dynamics play out, or does it obscure some aspects too?

Presentation schedule

10/13 Ethnic/Traditional Dress
Shirley & Chase

10/18 Class and Labor
Sheila

10/25 Art and the Museum
Christine

11/1 Subculture 1
Dorothy & Meredith

11/3 Subculture 2 (日本）
Corina & Liz

11/8 Representing Fashion
Tashyana & Becca T

11/10 Blogging
Nazli

11/15 Fashion on TV
Jordan & Becca M

11/22 Makeover
AnnaKate

(Photo) Assignment #5

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.

MIDTERM ASSIGNMENT

MIDTERM ASSIGNMENT: DUE OCTOBER 25, hard copy turned in at class.

We have been discussing how clothing and fashion help to fix or express or create personal identity, but as Elizabeth Wilson puts it, "Clothing marks an unclear boundary ambiguously" (2). The dictionary definition of identity is about self-sameness, fixity, unchanging features, but theorists and philosophers of the last fifty or so years have questioned the notion that identity is a solid, singular entity. Judith Butler, for example, suggests that identity in fact exists only in its execution of actions-- in performance-- "a stylized repetition of acts" (154).

As a means of summing up our wide ranging discussions on the topic of identity, go back to a specific example that interested you-- it might be a type of clothing, a fad, a tendency, it might come from one of your photo responses, it could be something new from beyond what we've already talked about. Using the theories and class discussions we've had so far, analyze your specific object in depth. Make a strong and specific claim and come to a conclusion about how your example is functioning in relation to identity and performance.

4-6 pages, double-spaced. (Note this is shorter than originally assigned)
The difference between this assignment and a regular response is formality. This is a short, but formal research and theory paper, whereas responses take a variety of formats. I will be looking for strength and clarity of argument, careful editing, and use of a standard citation method (your choice: Chicago, MLA, etc). Use quotations from readings and paraphrases from class to elucidate your argument.

ALSO REQUIRED:
Add to the end of your essay an evaluation (1-2 pages) of how you feel the class is going. What lingering questions do you have? What is working about the class? What do you want more of? What doesn't work in your opinion? For example, would you prefer reincorporation of alternative methods of discussion (like small groups? sharing of responses?)

Spend one paragraph on self evaluation. How are you engaging and preparing for class? What do you want to work more on? What are the specific challenges you are facing?

Updated syllabus through end of unit 2 (10/20)

10/11 Race

• Good Hair documentary (MyCourses)
  
• Kelley, “Nap Time: Historicizing the Afro.”(Packet/OCRA)
• Kaiser and McCullough, “Entangling the Fashion Subject Through the African Diaspora.” Fashion Theory 14.3: 361-386. (Packet/OCRA)
  
• Picton, John. “What to Wear in West Africa” from Black Style (Packet/OCRA)
  

10/13 Ethnic/“Traditional” Dress

(Remember how some—like Hollander—claimed that ethnic dress was not fashion?)

• America’s Next Top Model Cycle 13, episode 9. “Let’s Go Surfing”

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

• and article. ONLINE

• Parezo, Nancy J. “Indian Fashion Show” from Unpacking Culture. Packet/OCRA
• Hoganson, Kristen. “The Fashionable World: Imagined Communities of Dress.” EMAIL
• Leshkowich & Jones. “What Happens When Asian Chic Becomes Chic in Asia?” from Fashion Theory 7.3/4 (2003): 281-300. OCRA

*Photo assignment #5

10/18 Class and Labor

• Wilson, Elizabeth. "The Fashion Industry" from Adorned in Dreams. Packet/OCRA
• Veblen. “Conspicuous Consumption.” Packet/OCRA
• Made in L.A. documentary, streaming on MyCourses.
• Marx, Karl. “Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.” Fashion Theory Reader p347-350. Packet/OCRA
• Johanna Blakley TED talk on copyright. ONLINE

10/20 Size, Age, and other Things about Bodies

• “The Anthropometry of Barbie” from Deviant Bodies. OCRA
• “Beauty Privilege.” (see also this article) ONLINE
• Read through the blog entries on fat-positivity at yrwelcome ONLINE
• LeBesco, Kathleen. “Revolution on a Rack” from Revolting Bodies? 65-73. OCRA(pending)
  
• check out http://advancedstyle.blogspot.com/
  

*Photo assignment #6

Reading assignment for Thursday

10/6 Religion

The original link to the "Mediating Morality" conference was broken. Try this one.

• Meneley, Anne. “Fashions and Fundamentalisms in Fin-de-Siecle Yemen: Chador Barbie and Islamic Socks.” Cultural Anthropology 22.2(2007): 214-243.
• Tarlo, Emma. “Introduction.” Visibly Muslim. p1-16.
• There was an entire conference about fashion and religion (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) in Britain recently. Listen to a talk or two at "Mediating Morality: Fashioning Faithful Bodies."
• Peruse some Muslim style blogs:

1. http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/

2. http://www.stylecovered.com/

• Go shopping at: http://www.c28.com/
  

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."