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.

Packet at Allegra

Hi everyone.
The packet containing most (but not quite all) of the readings you need will be available for order by 3pm today at Allegra (upstairs from Sovereign Bank, corner of Waterman and Thayer Streets).
Remaining readings and viewings are available on OCRA; they are streaming movies, or e-books that can be printed from online, but not easily made into PDFs. A few readings from later in the course are not yet available either.

But if a big huge bible of good fashion reading is what you're looking for, and less printing from your pawprints card, this is the thing to get.

Fashion/Performance: SYLLABUS TAPS0080.S01

Fashion/Performance

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

• gained intellectual facility with a range of fundamental performance theory concepts
• practiced methods of critically analyzing social and artistic practices.
• explored a number of means of responding critically to a subject intellectual interest.
• learned how clothing and fashion help to structure individual and group identity, both in the past and present.

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?

• Wilson, “Introduction” from Adorned in Dreams
• Wilson, “Explaining It Away” from Adorned in Dreams
• Hollander from Sex and Suits p1-29

*Photo assignment #1

9/15 What is Performance?

• Schechner, “Performance” Performance Studies: An Introduction p 28-51
• Carlson, “What is Performance?” and “Performance in Society” from Performance: A Critical Introduction. p 1-12, 34-55.
• Goffman, Erving “Performances” from Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Austin, J.L. “How to Do Things with Words Lecture 2” p147-153.

9/20 Time and History

• Hollander, from Sex and Suits 30-62
• Wilson, "The History of Fashion" from Adorned in Dreams. 16-46.
• Leopardi, “The Dialogue of Fashion and Death.”
• Corrigan, Peter. “Dress and Temporality” from The Dressed Society. 47-71.

*Photo assignment #2

Unit 2: IDENTITY AND FASHION (Do the clothes make the man? Or woman?)

9/22 Identity

• Stallybrass/Jones, “Introduction” from Renaissance Clothing and the Material of Memory
• Simmel, Georg. “Fashion”
• Entwistle, Joanne. “The Dressed Body”
• Warwick & Cavallaro, “Preface,” Fashioning the Frame. xv-xxiii.

9/27 Gender

• Judith Butler “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”
• Helene Roberts, “The Exquisite Slave” and replies.
• Tseelon, Efrat. “Masking the Self: The Lady is a Fake” from Masque of Femininity.

*Photo assignment #3

9/29 Sexuality

• Case, Sue-Ellen. “Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.”
• Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’”
• Andrej Pejic: http://nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/andrej-pejic/
• “Dykes and Their Hair,” zine in PDF format.
• http://lesbianswholooklikejustinbieber.tumblr.com, as well as the “Biebershop Quartet” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTv-Kks5kEs)
• Paris is Burning streaming on OCRA

10/4 SEX

• Kraus, Karl. “The Eroticism of Clothes" in The Rise of Fashion: A Reader. OCRA/Packet
• Steele, Valerie. "The Corset: Fashion and Eroticism" Fashion Theory 4(1999):3. 449-474. OCRA
  

• Manrepeller.com and associated articles: http://jezebel.com/5714237/is-man+repelling-fashion-a-feminist-statement, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/fashion/16MANREPELLER.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
• Slutwalks: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/slutwalks-and-the-future-of-feminism/2011/06/01/AGjB9LIH_story.html
• Fashion photography: 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. Or 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?
  

*Photo assignment #4

10/6 Religion

• 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.
• Muslim style blogs:

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

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

• Papers delivered at the religion and society symposium on “Mediating Modesty” http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/events/programme_events/show/mediating_modesty_fashioning_faithful_bodies

10/11 Race

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

10/13 Ethnic/“Traditional” Dress

(look back to Hollander abt p20)

• America’s Next Top Model Cycle 13, episode 9. “Let’s Go Surfing” and article:
  
• Access Hollywood Article about the show.

• “Slave Earrings”
  
• Parezo, Nancy J. “Indian Fashion Show” from Unpacking Culture.
• "What Happens with Asian Chic Becomes Chic in Asia?" Fashion Theory 2001
  

*Photo assignment #5

10/18 Class and Labor

• Svendson, Lars. “The Origins and Spread of Fashion,” Fashion: A Philosophy. 36-62.
• Veblen. “Conspicuous Consumption”
• Made in L.A. documentary, streaming on MyCourses.
• Marx, Karl. “Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret.” Fashion Theory Reader p347-350.

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

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.
• Museums and Fashion: http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-23948-art-museums-are-becoming-fashionable.html
• Yinka Shonibare: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/arts/design/21sont.html, http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/index.html
• Chadwick, Whitney. Review of Couture Culture. Art Bulletin, 86.2(2004): 384-388.

*MIDTERM PAPER DUE

*assign final paper

10/27 HALLOWEEN! Costume

• Monks Actor in Costume 1-33
• “Introduction” Theatricality

11/1 Subculture

• Hebdige, Dick, “Style” in Fashion Theory Reader, 255-265.
• 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: http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/2011/07/28/lo-lifes/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/27/new-york-gangs-ralph-lauren

*Photo assignment #7: HALLOWEEN

11/3 Subculture 2

• Kawamura, Yuniya. “Japanese Teens as Producers”
• Groom, Amelia, “Power Play and Performance in Harajuku,” New Voices v.4, 188-212.
• 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?)

• “Greatest Show on Earth”
• Craik, Jennifer. "Heroin Chic." Fashion: the Key Concepts. p191-193.
  
• Gambrell, Alice. “You’re Beautiful When You’re Angry: Fashion Magazines and Recent Feminisms”
• Disability/Fashion Photography: http://fashionista.com/2011/06/are-paralympians-the-new-black-in-beauty/, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/fashion/oscar-pistorius-a-model-and-front-runner.html

*Photo Assignment #8

11/10 Blogging

• Style Rookie, Sartorialist, Della Rosso, Suzie Bubble, Bryanboy, etc.
• “People Dress So Badly Nowadays”

11/15 Fashion on TV

• “Project Runway”
• “America’s Next Top Model”

*Final paper/project proposals and bibliographies due

11/17 NO CLASS – WORK DAY

*Photo Assignment #9: final project

11/22 Makeover

• “What Not to Wear”
• “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”
• Cohan, Steve. “Queer Eye for the Straight Guise.” Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture.
• Roberts, Martin, “The Fashion Police: Governing the Self in What Not to Wear.” Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture.

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