The FASHION & JUSTICE Workshop by Jonathan Michael Square, PhD and Kimberly M. Jenkins, M.A. Program and Syllabus Parsons School of Design New York, New York July 15, 2017
The Instructors Jonathan Michael Square, PhD Jonathan Michael Square is a writer and professor of history at Harvard University, specializing in fashion and visual culture in the African Diaspora. Jonathan received a Ph.D in history from New York University, a master s from the University of Texas at Austin, and a bachelor s from Cornell University. Kimberly M. Jenkins, M.A. Kimberly Jenkins is a visiting assistant professor of fashion history and theory at Pratt Institute and part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design. Kimberly specializes in the sociocultural and historical influences behind why we wear what we wear, specifically addressing how politics, psychology, race and gender shapes the way we fashion our identity. Guest Speakers Elizabeth Way, Assistant Curator, The Museum at F.I.T. Elizabeth Way is an Assistant Curator of Costume at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she co-curated the exhibitions, Global Fashion Capitals in 2015 and Black Fashion Designers in 2016. She has also published a study of African-American dressmakers Elizabeth Keckley and Ann Lowe for Fashion Theory. Joy Douglas, Fashion Designer, Parsons BFA 17 Joy Marie Douglas is a fashion designer, photographer, and artist from Los Angeles, California. Joy earned her bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Parsons School of Design where she majored in Fashion Design. The social, political, and environmental impacts of fashion are topics that Joy has focused heavily upon within her personal research and design career. Her senior thesis was titled, "REBRANDED: Redefining post-incarceration identity". 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 2 of! 14
Workshop Schedule Morning Session 9:00 am Check-in, The University Center at The New School, 66 Fifth Avenue, room 304 9:15 9:45 am Welcome and Introductions, Jonathan Michael Square and Kimberly M. Jenkins 9:45 12:00 pm Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom and Fashion in the Family Archive, Jonathan Square This lecture will include close visual analyses and partial film screenings that explore the connection between the fashion system and the institution of slavery. 12:00 1:00 pm Lunch break Afternoon Session 1:00 2:15 pm Fashion and Race, Kimberly Jenkins This lecture will present an introduction to fashion theory and the conception of race, arguing how sociocultural context can define and add value to the way we understand dress and identity construction. Select issues and practices in the fashion system will be examined and challenged. 2:15 3:15 pm "REBRANDED: Redefining post-incarceration identity, Joy Douglas and Kimberly Jenkins in conversation Parsons alumna and fashion designer Joy Douglas will share the inspiration, research process and implications of her thesis collection, REBRANDED. The collection was spotlighted by the CFDA in May 2017. 3:15 4:00 pm Sam Cooke: A Case Study of Black Male Fashion Performance, guest lecture by Elizabeth Way Museum at FIT assistant curator Elizabeth Way shares the development of her research on the 1960s singer Sam Cooke, exploring how dress and representation shaped the perception of black men under the public gaze. 4:00 4:30 pm Epilogue: Proposing Fashion Futures, Kimberly Jenkins 4:30 5:00 pm Closing reception An open forum, reflecting upon topics put forth in the workshop. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page 3! of 14!
Introduction to the workshop Fashion forms part of a society s rich tapestry and can serve as an entry point into contemplating how marginalized and racialized communities understand themselves and their place in the world. Our daylong workshop, Fashion & Justice, examines the role of fashion in challenging inequality through sartorial ingenuity. The schedule includes an analysis of artwork and artistic projects, partial film screenings, review of relevant literature, conversations with guest speakers, and a look at designers, artists, journalists, curators, photographers, and academics who explore the fashion system through a critical lens. As a participant, you will leave the workshop equipped with a syllabus that provides tools to understand how marginalized communities harness fashion to negotiate the complexities of power and visibility (and the lack thereof), proposing substantive solutions for a more just fashion system. A special "thank you" to Shannon Bell Price, Director of External Partnerships at Parsons School of Design for providing the space for this event. Yours in scholarship, Jonathan Michael Square, Ph.D Kimberly M. Jenkins, M.A. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 4 of 14!
Jonathan Michael Square Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom Articles in journals or edited volumes Brooks, Jr., George E. The Signares of St. Louis and Gorée: Women Entrepreneurs in Eighteenth-Century Senegal. In Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, edited by Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay, 19-44. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976. Camp, Stephanie M. H. The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861. The Journal of Southern History 68.3 (2002), 533-572. Cope, Virginia. I Verily Believed Myself to be a Free Woman : Harriet Jacobs s Journey into Capitalism. African American Review 38.1 (2004): 5-20. Lara, Silvia Hunold. The Signs of Color: Women s Dress and Racial Relations in Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, ca. 1750 1815. Colonial Latin American Review 6.2 (1997): 205-225. Sanders, Eulanda A. The Politics of Textiles Used in African American Slave Clothing. Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, Washington, D.C., September 19-22, 2012. Shaw, Madelyn. Slave Cloth and Clothing Slaves: Craftsmanship, Commerce, and Industry. Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts (2012). Living artist and historian Cheyney McKnight, reiterating a question posed by Frederick Douglass: What to the slave is the Fourth of July? July 4, 2017. Skeehan, Danielle C. Caribbean Women, Creole Fashioning, and the Fabric of Black Atlantic Writing. The Eighteenth Century 56.1 (2015): 105-123. Thompson, Krista. The Evidence of Things Not Photographed: Slavery and Historical Memory in the British West Indies. Representations 113.1 (2011): 39-71. Waldstreicher, David. Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic. The William and Mary Quarterly 56.2 (1999): 243-272. Walker, Tamara. He outfitted his family in notable decency : Slavery, Honor, and Dress in Eighteenth- Century Lima, Peru, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave & Post-Slave Studies 30.3 (2009): 383-402. Weaver, Karol K. Fashioning Freedom: Slave Seamstresses in the Atlantic World. Journal of Women s History 24.1 (2012): 44-59. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 5 of 14!
White, Sophie. Wearing three or four handkerchiefs around his collar, and elsewhere about him : Slaves Constructions of Masculinity and Ethnicity in French Colonial New Orleans. Gender & History 15.3 (2003): 528 549. Articles in newspapers or magazines/blog posts Auslander, Mark. Slavery s Traces: In Search of Ashley s Sack. Southern Spaces, November 29, 2016. Chang, Elizabeth. A Humble Skirt Worn by an Enslaved Child Finds a Place in History. Washington Post, September 15, 2016. Estrin, James. Honoring the Legacy of African-American Women. Lens Blog - The New York Times, May 26, 2016. Miller, Julie. Patricia Norris, 12 Years a Slave s 82-Year-Old Costume Designer, on Inventing History From Whole Cloth. Vanity Fair, January 2014. Whyte, Murray. Why Kara Walker s Incendiary Slavery Art Is as Relevant as Ever. The Guardian, November 22, 2016. "THE NEW SETTING WOULD PROVIDE NEW RAIMENTS OF SELF." TONI MORRISON Books or parts of books Buckridge, Steeve O. The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760-1890. Kingston, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2004. Glymph, Thavolia. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Fair, Laura. Dressing Up: Clothing, Class, and Gender in Post-Abolition Zanzibar. In Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890 1945, pgs. 64-109. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001. Foster, Helen Bradley. New Raiments of Self: African American Clothing in the Antebellum South. New York: Berg, 1997. Frank, Zephyr. Pathways to Wealth in Rio de Janeiro, 1815-1860 and Death and Dying. In Dutra s World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro, pgs. 96-146. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. Epilogue: Frederick Douglass s Camera Obscura: Representing the Anti-Slave Clothed and In Their Own Form. In Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century s Most Photographed American, pgs. 197-216. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2015. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 6 of 14!
Hall, Kim F. An Object in the Midst of Other Objects : Race, Gender, Material Culture. In Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England, pgs. 211-253. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Hunter, Tera. Dancing and Carousing the Night Away. In To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women s Lives and Labors after the Civil War, pgs. 168-186. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Johnson, Walter. Turning People into Products. In Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, pgs. 117-134. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Keckley, Elizabeth. Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Lightfoot, Natasha. An Equality with the Highest in the Land? The Expansion of Black Private and Public Life. In Troubling Freedom: Antigua and the Aftermath of British Emancipation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 117-141. McInnis, Maurie D. Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. Miller, Monica L. Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009. Mitchell, Mary Niall. Introduction: Isaac and Rosa. In Raising Freedom s Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future after Slavery, pgs. 1-10. New York: New York University Press, 2008. Silva, Eduardo. Prince of the Streets. In Prince of the People: The Life and Times of a Brazilian Free Man of Color, pgs. 90-106. New York: Verso, 1993. Smallwood, Stephanie. Turning Atlantic Commodities into American Slaves, In Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora, pgs. 153-181. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Tulloch, Carol. Angel in the Market Place: The African-Jamaican Higgler, 1880-1907. In The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora, pgs. 9-57. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. White, Shane and Graham J. White. Stylin : African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginning to the Zoot Suit. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Dissertations Knowles, Katie. Fashioning Slavery: Slaves and Clothing in the U.S. South, 1830 1865. PhD diss., Rice University, 2014. Laurent-Perrault, Evelyne. Black Honor, Intellectual Marronage, and the Law in Venezuela, 1760-1809 156-176. PhD diss., New York University, 2015. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 7 of! 14
Films & TV Amistad (1997) Beloved (1998) The Color Purple (1985) Daughters of the Dust (1991) Roots (1977) Roots (2016) Sankofa (1993) Underground (2015-2017) Xica da Silva (1976) Literature Hill, Lawrence. The Book Of Negroes. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom s Cabin. Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Runaway slave ad databases Documenting Runaway Slaves East Texas Runaway Slave Project Freedom on the Move North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements Runaway Connecticut The Geography of Slavery in Virginia 2017 All Rights Reserved Page 8! of 14!
Kimberly M. Jenkins Fashion and Race Books and Chapters Archer Straw, Petrine. Negrophilia: Avant-Garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Burrows, Stephen, and Daniela Morera. Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced. New York: Skira Rizzoli in association with Museum of the City of New York, 2013. Cheng, Anne Anlin. Ethical looking. In Second skin: Josephine Baker & the modern surface. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2010. Craig, Maxine Leeds. Yvonne's Wig: Gender and the Racialized Body. In Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Deloria, Philip Joseph. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Eicher, Joanne Bubolz, and Sandra Lee Evenson. Dress Culture and Society. In The Visible Self: Global Perspectives on Dress, Culture, and Society. 2015. Illustration featuring Saartje Baartman being ogled by European voyeurs, turn of the 19th century. Fleetwood, Nicole R. I am King." In Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. Ford, Tanisha C. Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. 2015. Geczy, Adam. 1870-1944: The Japoniste Revolution, the De-Orientalising of the Orient, and the Birth of Couture. and 1944-2007: Orientalisms: Postwar Revivalism and Trans-Orientalism. In Fashion and Orientalism. Dress, Textiles and Culture from the 17th to the 21st Century. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2012. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page!9 of 14!
Guenther, Irene. Fashioning women in the Third Reich. In Nazi Chic?: Fashioning Women in the Third Reich. Oxford: Berg, 2004. Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London [u.a.]: Sage, 2013. Hallam, Elizabeth, and Brian V. Street. Hottentot Venus and Western Man: Reflections on the Construction of Beauty in the West. In Cultural Encounters: Representing "Otherness". London: Routledge, 2005. hooks, bell. Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination. In Black Looks: Race and Representation. 2015. Jansen, M. Angela, and Jennifer Craik. 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. 2016. Jha, Meeta Rani. The Global Beauty Industry: Colorism, Racism, and the National Body. 2016. Jorae, Wendy Rouse. Chinese American Childhood, Fashion and Race in the Exclusion Era, The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, Winter 2010. Kaiser, Susan B. Ethnicities and Racial Rearticulations. In Fashion and Cultural Studies. London: Berg, 2012. Kang, Miliann. I just put Koreans and nails together : nail spas and the model minority. In The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Kinney, Alison. "It's what's under the hood that counts." In Hood. 2016. Kondo, Dorinne K. About Face: Performing Race in Fashion and Theater. New York: Routledge, 1997. Metzger, Sean. Exoticus Eroticus, or the Silhouette of Suzie's Slits during the Cold War. In Chinese Looks: Fashion, Performance, Race. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2014. Miller, Monica L. 2009. Crimes of fashion: dressing the part from slavery to freedom. In Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity Moore, Lisa Jean, and Monica J. Casper. Skin. In The Body: Social and Cultural Dissections. 2015. Niessen, S. A., Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carla Jones. Introduction. In Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Pham, Minh-Ha T. The racial and gendered job performances of fashion blogger poses. In Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Rhode, Deborah L. The Pursuit of Beauty. and The Injustice of Discrimination. In The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page 10! of 14!
Root, Regina A. The Latin American Fashion Reader. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2005. Saraswati, L. Ayu. Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013. Sadre-Orafai, Stephanie. Developing images : race, language and perception in fashion-model casting. In Fashion As Photograph: Viewing and Reviewing Images of Fashion. London: I.B. Tauris, 2008. Smedley, Audrey, and Brian D. Smedley. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011. Fashion folks naïvely-bravely?-attempt to be racially blasé in a culture that still struggles with the burdens of prejudice and the wounds of history. As a result, the fashion community in general often comes across as bumbling on the topic of race. It gets tripped up by ignorance. ROBIN GIVHAN, WHY FASHION KEEPS TRIPPING OVER RACE, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, 2011. Stanfield, Michael Edward. Of Beasts and Beauty: Gender, Race, and Identity in Colombia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Tarlo, Emma. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. 2010. Tu, Thuy Linh N. The Cultural Economy of Asian chic. In The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2011. Tulloch, Carol. The Birth of Cool: Style Narratives of the African Diaspora. 2016. Weinbaum, Alys Eve. The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Wissinger, Elizabeth. Black-black-black : how race is read. In This Year's Model: Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour. 2015. Young, James O. What is Cultural Appropriation? and Cultural Appropriation as Assault. In Cultural Appropriation and the Arts. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2008. Articles Als, Hilton. "The Only One." The New Yorker. November 7, 1994. Arkin, Kimberly A. Rhinestone Aesthetics and Religious Essence: Looking Jewish in Paris". American Ethnologist, Vol. 36, Issue 4, November 2009. 2017 All Rights Reserved Page! 11 of 14!
Givhan, Robin. 2011. "Why Fashion Keeps Tripping Over Race", New York Magazine. Hunter, Margaret L. 2011. "Buying Racial Capital: Skin Bleaching and Cosmetic Surgery in a Globalized World". The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol.4, no. 4. Loughran, Kristyne. The Idea of Africa in European High Fashion." In Fashion Theory, Vol. 13, Issue 2. 2009. Keene, Adrienne. Tribal Fashion: The Newest Trend? Native Appropriations (blog). Martin, Richard. 1995. "Our Kimono Mind: Reflections on 'Japanese Design: A Survey Since 1950'". Journal of Design History. 8, no. 3: 215-223. Okwodu, Janelle. 2016. How Beverly Johnson Broke Fashion s Glass Ceiling. Vogue magazine. Pham, Minh-Ha T. Fashion's Cultural-Appropriation Debate: Pointless. 2014. The Atlantic Monthly. Wilson, Eric. 2013. Fashion s Blind Spot, The New York Times. Woods, Vicki. 2008. "Is Fashion Racist? Vogue magazine. Media (films, blogs, podcasts) Code Switch: Race and Identity, Remixed (podcast) Costume Institute of the African Diaspora (website) Facing Race: Stories and Voices (podcast) Fashion & Cultural Appropriation, Fashion Talks with Kimberly Jenkins, Pratt Institute (2015) Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom (blog) Good and Bad Hair scene from School Daze, Dir. Spike Lee (1988) Looks aren t everything, Cameron Russell, TEDxMidAtlantic (2012). Native Appropriations (blog) Of Another Fashion (blog) Otherhood (podcast) Reel Injun (2010) The Inclusionist, Yomi Abiola, TEDxGöteborg (2015). Threadbared (blog) Unravel (podcast) Vintage Black Glamour (blog based upon the book, Vintage Black Glamour) 2017 All Rights Reserved Page 12! of 14!
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