IDSEM-UG9254 L01, Fashion, Culture, and the Body

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1 IDSEM-UG9254 L01, Fashion, Culture, and the Body NYU London: Fall 2018 Instructor Information Dr Elizabeth Kutesko Office Hours: Thursday pm & office location] Course Information Thursday pm (unless otherwise specified) [Class room number and building] There are no prerequisites for this class Course Overview and Goals This course begins with a working definition of fashion as the cultural construction of our embodied identity/identities. Fashion is, after all, both a product of human creativity and technology and a process which modifies and supplements the body to address certain needs at certain times, often physical, social, cultural or political. Fashion and the body are clearly complex topics that demand the interdisciplinary perspective of more than one field of enquiry. This course consults a diverse range of academic theories, methods and practices to analyse the lived and subjective experience of fashion, its embodied messages, and how they can be seen to connect to broader ideas and body ideals concerning race, gender, age, sexuality even national identity. We will use pertinent case studies to address the fashioned body in various forms as an object of scientific examination, criminal investigation and colonial exploration; as a social agent that enables wearers to self-fashion and pass as a new (racial) identity; and, as a crosscultural site of exoticism and appropriation where long-established power relations continue to collide. The format of the course will be lectures and seminars with visits and outside speakers where relevant. The majority of classes will take place in Bedford Square and be formed of lectures, class activities, discussion of set texts, and student presentations. There will be class visits to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and to the V&A Museum in London to see the exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up, as well as a meeting with a fashion historian who works on the posing of the body in fashion photography. This course may include engagement with controversial issues possibly stemming from personal, lived experience but always in a nuanced and rigorous way. Page 1

2 Upon Completion of this Course, students will be able to: Identify key aspects of fashion and bodily practices through the interpretative lens of cultural studies, and use a range of cross-cultural case studies to explore contemporary and historical perspectives relating to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and national identity. Evaluate a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of fashion, culture and the body, as well as the interconnections between these subjects, through discussion of relevant academic scholarship. Demonstrate an improved ability to present independent, reasoned analysis of primary and secondary sources relevant to the study of fashion, culture and the body, both verbally and in writing, by employing appropriate academic conventions. Course Requirements Grading of s The grade for this course will be determined according to these assessment components: s/ Activities Class Participation Description of Attentiveness to, and engagement with, class content and the presentations of fellow students will represent 20% of each student s total assessment % of Final Grade Paper word essay due on Session 7 25% Paper word essay due on Session 12 25% Presentation Written Exam 5-10 minute oral class presentation, of c words, to be delivered on a date arranged in class 1 x end of semester unseen written examination of two hours duration 20% ongoing 5pm, 18 Oct pm, 22 Nov % tbc 20% 13 Dec 2018 Failure to submit or fulfill any required course component results in failure of the class Grades Letter grades for the entire course will be assigned as follows: Page 2

3 Letter Grade A Percent Example: 93.5% and higher B Example: 82.5% % C Example: 72.5% % D Example: 62.5% F Example: 59.99% and lower Description Excellent, sophisticated work that demonstrates lucid, original thinking, superior writing skills, and sustained critical engagement with the course concepts and requirements. Reflects a unique voice, while balancing personality with appropriate tone, style, structure, and awareness of audience. Incorporates evidence with aplomb. Virtually free of grammatical and spelling errors, and presented professionally in terms of layout and referencing. Solid work demonstrating some original thinking, clear writing skills, and sustained engagement with the course concepts and requirements. A B assignment will show a good deal of potential and clarity, but overall it may be less consistent or full achieved. Writing and ideas may be clear but lack the flair of an A paper. Good editing and structure will be in evidence and the assignment will be well presented, but there may be some grammatical errors or other inconsistencies. Satisfactory work demonstrating fair writing skills and some engagement with the course requirements. An effort to sustain thinking and develop ideas will be evident, but not thoroughly executed. A grasp of some relevant concepts will be present, but there may be omissions, mistakes or inaccuracies. Writing may be stale and unfocused, or simply lack clarity. Weak work with clear flaws and a lack of engagement with the course concepts and requirements. May lack structure and will be muddled, with confusions of language and ideas. Likely to be underdeveloped, with variable presentation. Grammar and punctuation is lacking. Inadequate work with a lack of engagement with the course requirements. Fails to address the prompt, offers little to no structure, and exhibits high levels of confusion or misunderstanding. Course Materials Required Textbooks & Materials Susan B. Kaiser, Fashion and Cultural Studies, (London: Bloomsbury, 2012) Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, (Cambridge: Polity, 2000) Page 3

4 Optional Textbooks & Materials Lisa Blackman, The Body: Key Concepts, (Oxford: Berg, 2008) Joanne B. Eicher and Sandra Lee Everson, eds., The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture and Society, 4 th Edition, (London: Bloomsbury, 2016) Resources Access your course materials: NYU Classes (nyu.edu/its/classes) Databases, journal articles, and more: Bobst Library (library.nyu.edu) NYUL Library Collection: Senate House Library (catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk) Assistance with strengthening your writing: NYU Writing Center (nyu.mywconline.com) Obtain 24/7 technology assistance: IT Help Desk (nyu.edu/it/servicedesk) Course Schedule Session/Date Topic Reading Session 1: 13 Sept 2018 Introduction: Fashion, Culture & The Body Kaiser, S. (2012) Fashion and Culture: Culture Studies, Fashion Studies, Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Bloomsbury. Blackman, L. (2008) Introduction, The Body: Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg. Eicher. J. B and S. L. Evenson (2016), Part 1: The Systematic Study of Dress, The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture & Society, New York: Fairchild, pp Entwistle, J. (2000) Addressing the Body in The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp Walters, L. and A. Lillethun (2018), Introduction: Europe and the People Without Fashion, Fashion History: A Global View, London: Berg, pp Page 4

5 Session 2: 20 Sept 2018 Fashion, Embodiment & the Senses Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002), The Theory of the Body is Already a Theory of Perception and Sense Experience in The Phenomenology of Perception, New York: Routledge, p David Le Breton (2017), Introduction and Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses in Sensing the World: An Anthropology of the Senses, London: Bloomsbury, pp Helen Bradley Foster and Donald Clay Johnson, Introduction, Dress Sense: Emotional and Sensory Experiences of the Body and Clothes, Oxford: Berg Howes, D. (2005), HYPERESTHESIA, or, The Sensual Logic of Late Capitalism, Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader, Oxford: Berg, Arnold, R (2017). Luxury, Luxe, Luxus. Redefining Fashion for the New Millennium, in Margiela, The Hermes Years, Antwerp: Lannoo, pp Page 5

6 Session 3: 24 Sept 2018 (*This is a make-up class, and will take place on Monday evening from 6-9pm) Session 4: 29 Sept 2018 (*This is a Saturday trip.) The Gaze and Surveillance of the Body Visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PP Foucault, M. (1995) Panopticanism in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Vintage Books, pp Tynan, J. (2015) Fashioning the Body Politic in Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, London: I.B.Tauris Hauser, K. (2005), The Fingerprint of the Second Skin, in Christopher Breward and Caroline Evans, eds., Fashion and Modernity (Oxford: Berg), pp Tagg, J. (1988), A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in Law in The Burden of Representation: essays on Photographies and Histories, London: Macmillan Cho, L., (2014), Anticipating Citizenship: Chinese Head Tax Photographs in Feeling Photography, ed. by Elspeth H. Brown and Thy Phu, London: Duke University Press, pp Uden, J. S., H. M. Richardson and R. E. Lee (2016), The Conservation and Display of the Tahitian Mourner s Costume at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford in Refashioning and Redress: Conserving and Displaying Dress, Los Angeles: The Getty Conservation Institute, pp Feldman, J. D. (2002) Contact Points: Museums and the Lost Body Problem, in Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, ed. by E. Edwards, C. Gosden and R. B. Phillips, Oxford: Berg, pp Page 6

7 Session 5: 04 Oct 2018 Anthropology and Colonial Bodies Edwards, E., C. Gosden and R. B. Phillips (2002), Introduction, Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material Culture, ed. by E. Edwards, C. Gosden and R. B. Phillips, Oxford: Berg, pp Edwards, E., (2001), Rethinking Photography in the Ethnographic Museum, in Raw Histories, Oxford: Berg, pp Edwards, E. (1997), Ordering Others: Photography, Anthropologies and Taxonomies in InVisible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and the Everyday, ed. by Chrissie Illes and Russell Roberts, Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, pp Lutz, C. and J. L. Collins (1993), The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes in Reading National Geographic, University of Chicago Press, pp Stepan, N. L. (2001), Racial Degenerations, Picturing Tropical Nature, London: Reaktion, pp Pinney, C. (2011), The Doubled History of Photography and Anthropology, in Photography and Anthropology, London: Reaktion, pp Gosewijn van Beek (2005), Culture in Shreds, in Global Fashion, Local Tradition: On the Globalisation of Fashion, ed. by J. Brand and J. Teunissen, Arnhem: Terra, pp Page 7

8 Mercer, K. (1996), Black Hair/Style Politics in Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, pp Dyer, R. (1997) The Matter of Whiteness, in White, London: Routledge, pp Session 6: 11 Oct 2018 Fashion, Whiteness and the Raced Body Whitley, Z. N. (2007), Black Panthers in Vogue: signifying blackness in fashion magazines, in Design and the modern magazine, ed. by J. Aynsley and K. Forde, Manchester University Press, pp Cheang, S., Ethnicity (2017), in A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Age of Empire, ed. by D. A. Baxter, London: Bloomsbury, pp Cheddie, Janice, The Politics of the First: The Emergence of the Black Model in the Civil Rights Era, Fashion Theory, 6 (1): Thaggert, M. (2005), Racial Etiquette: Nella Larsen's Passing and the Rhinelander Case. Meridians, 5 (2): 1 29 Session 7: 18 Oct 2018 Passing Bodies and Self-Fashioning Through Dress Rottenberg, C. (2003), Passing : Race, Identification, and Desire. Criticism, 45 (4): Paper One due by 5pm on Turnitin Gondola, Ch. Didier (2010), La Sape Exposed! High Fashion among Lower-Class Congolese Youth: From Colonial Modernity to Global Cosmopolitanism, in Gott, Suzanne and Kristyne Loughran, eds., Contemporary African Fashion, Page 8

9 Bloomington: Indiana Univeristy Press, pp Haidarali, L (2012), Giving Coloured Sisters a Superficial Equality : Re- Modelling African American Womanhood in Early Postwar America, in Fashioning Models: Image, Text and Industry, ed. by J. Entwistle and E. Wissinger, London: Berg, pp Sadre-Orafai, S. N. (2010) Developing Images: Race, Language and Perception in Fashion-model casting in Fashion as Photography: viewing and reviewing images of fashion, ed. by E. Shinkle, pp Session 8: 25 Oct 2018 The Body as Medium in Fashioning National Identity Kaiser, S. (2012), Fashioning the National Subject in Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Bloomsbury, pp Mendes, S. and N. Rees-Roberts (2013), Branding Brazilian Fashion: Global Visibility and Intercultural Perspectives, in S. Bruzzi and P. Church Gibson (eds.) Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, 31-42, London: Routledge. Anderson, B. (2006), Introduction Imagined Communities, London: Verso, pp. 1-8 Root, R. A. (2017), Mapping Latin American Fashion in The Handbook of Fashion Studies, ed. by S. Black et al, London: Bloomsbury, pp Mohs Gage, K. (2016), Moda da Bahia: An analysis of contemporary vendor dress in Salvador, Fashion Page 9

10 Theory: the journal of dress, body and culture 20 (2): Session 9: 27 Oct 2018 (*This is a Saturday trip. Details tbc) Visit to the Frida Kahlo Exhibition, V&A Museum, Cromwell Rd, Knightsbridge, London, SW7 2RL Henestrosa, C. (2018), Appearances Can Be Deceiving Frida Kahlo s Construction of Identity: Disability, Ethnicity and Dress, in Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, ed. by C. Wilcox and C. Henestrosa, London: V&A, pp M. Turok, (2008) Frida s Attire: Eclectic and Ethnic, in Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress: Frida s Wardrobe, ed. by D. and M. Rosenzweig, U.S.: Chronicle Books, pp Andre, M. C. (2006), Evita and Frida: Latin American Icons for Export, in The Latin American Fashion Reader, ed. by R. Root, Oxford: Berg, pp Session 10: 15 Nov 2018 Global Fashion Cultures and Bodily Practices Belfanti, Carlo Marco (2008), Was Fashion a European Invention? in Journal of Global History, 3: Mercer, K. (2005), Introduction, in Kobena Mercer, ed., Cosmopolitan Modernisms, London and Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, pp Jansen, M. A. and J. Craik (2018), Introduction, Modern Fashion Traditions: Negotiating Tradition and Modernity Through Fashion, ed. by Jansen and Craik, London: Bloomsbury, pp Cheang, S. (2015), Fashion, Chinoiserie and Modernism in Page 10

11 Chinoiserie and British Modernism, ed. by Anne Witchard, University of Edinburgh Press, pp Session 11: 16 Nov 2018 (*This is a make-up class, and will take on Friday from pm) Exoticism and Cultural Appropriation in Western Fashion Craik, J. (1997) Exotic Impulses in techniques of Fashion, The Face of Fashion: Cultural studies in Fashion, London: Routledge, pp Maynard, M. (2004), Ethnic Dress or Fashionably Ethnic, Dress and Globalisation, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp Cheang, S. (2013), To The Ends of The Earth : Fashion and Ethnicity in the Vogue Fashion Shoot, in Bruzzi, Stella & Pamela Church Gibson, Fashion Cultures Revisited: Theories, Explorations and Analysis London : Routledge, pp Jones, C. and A. M. Leshkowich (2003), Introduction : The Globalization of Asian Dress : Re- Orienting Fashion or Re-Orientalizing Asia? in Re-Orienting Fashion:The Globalization of Asian Dress, Oxford : Berg, pp Volpi, M. C. (2016), The Exotic West: The Circuit of Carioca Featherwork in the Nineteenth Century, in Fashion Theory, Brazilian special edition, 20 (2): Craik, J. Exotic narratives in fashion: the impact of motifs of exotica on fashion design and fashionable identities, in Modern Fashion Traditions: Negotiating Tradition and Modernity Through Fashion, ed. by Jansen and Craik, London: Bloomsbury, pp Page 11

12 Butler, J. (1993), Chapter 4, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York: Routledge. Jobling, P. (1999) Statue Men : The Phallic Body, Identity, and Ambiguity in Fashion Photography, Fashion Spreads: word and image in fashion photography since 1980, Oxford: Berg, pp Session 12: 22 Nov 2018 Gendered Bodies: Masculine, Feminine and Queering the Gaze Through Fashion Filippello, R. (2018), Thinking Fashion Photographs Through Queer Affect Theory, International Journal of Fashion Studies, 5 (1): Paper Two due by 5pm on Turnitin Entwistle, J, Fashion and Gender, in The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity. Nagoshi, J. and S. Bruzuzy (2010), Transgender Theory: Embodying Research and Practice, Affilia: Journal of Women and social Work 25 ($): Shinkle, E. (2016), The Feminine Awkward: Graceless Bodies and the Performance of Femininity in Fashion Photographs, Fashion Theory, 21 (2): Session 13: 29 Nov 2018 Posing the Body: Fashion Media and Modelling Barthes, R. (2000), Section 5 in Camera Lucida, (London: Vintage), pp Powell, Richard J. (2008), Luna Obscura in Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture (University of Chicago), pp Page 12

13 Conekin, B. (2010) From Haughty to Nice: How British Fashion Images Changed from the 1950s to the 1960s, Photography and Culture 3 (3): Brown, E. H. (2012), From Artist s Model to the Natural Girl : Containing Sexuality in Early-Twentieth-Century Modelling in Fashioning Models: Image, Text and Industry, ed. by J. Entwistle and E. Wissinger, (London: Berg), pp Session 14: 06 Dec 2018 Final Assessment: 13 Dec 2018 Visiting Speaker: Academic and fashion historian Dr Felice McDowell will speak about her work on Posing. see NYUClasses for reading materials Final Exam: Unseen format of two and a quarter hours duration. You will be required to answer two questions. Co-Curricular Activities Required Trips: Visit to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford on Saturday 29 September Visit to the Frida Kahlo exhibition, V&A, London on Saturday 27 October Classroom Etiquette Classroom etiquette aims to promote the best possible learning environment and good communication between all participants. To this end, mobile phones and laptops will be switched off, unless you are asked to use them (and there will be opportunities for you to use them). All readings must be brought to class in hard copy (there is a printing allowance for this). Food will not be consumed during class. NYUL Academic Policies Page 13

14 Attendance and Tardiness Key information on NYU London s absence policy, how to report absences, and what kinds of absences can be excused can be found on our website ( s, Plagiarism, and Late Work You can find details on these topics and more on this section of our NYUL website ( and on the Policies and Procedures section of the NYU website for students studying away at global sites ( Classroom Conduct Academic communities exist to facilitate the process of acquiring and exchanging knowledge and understanding, to enhance the personal and intellectual development of its members, and to advance the interests of society. Essential to this mission is that all members of the University Community are safe and free to engage in a civil process of teaching and learning through their experiences both inside and outside the classroom. Accordingly, no student should engage in any form of behaviour that interferes with the academic or educational process, compromises the personal safety or well-being of another, or disrupts the administration of University programs or services. Please refer to the NYU Disruptive Student Behavior Policy for examples of disruptive behavior and guidelines for response and enforcement. Disability Disclosure Statement Academic accommodations are available for students with disabilities. Please contact the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities ( or mosescsd@nyu.edu) for further information. Students who are requesting academic accommodations are advised to reach out to the Moses Center as early as possible in the semester for assistance. Instructor Bio Elizabeth Kutesko (PhD Courtauld Institute of Art) is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Central Saint Martins. She is the author of Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic (Bloomsbury, 2018) and has published an article based upon her research in the Brazilian Fashion Special Edition of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture (November 2016). Her research interests are Latin American bodily practices and the intersection between fashion, cultural identity, representation and power. Page 14