HIST 077. Fashion: History and Theory W 1:15-4:00 pm, Trotter 303

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1 HIST 077. Fashion: History and Theory W 1:15-4:00 pm, Trotter 303 Professor BuYun Chen bchen5@swarthmore.edu Office Hours: Friday, 1:00-3:00 pm Office: Trotter 205 This course explores the theoretical frameworks and multiple methodologies that have been applied to the study and interpretation of fashion. Over the course of the semester, we will trace the historical development of fashion systems and fashion theory, with a special focus on East Asia. We will read key texts in fashion studies to reflect critically on how we define fashion in different historical and cultural contexts. Using textual, visual, and material sources, we will examine historical representations of dress, the politics of dress, fashion and the body, and consumption and modernity. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, embracing history, anthropology, art, and literature. Course Requirements Your grade for this course will be calculated as follows: (1) Engagement Each member of the class is expected to attend every class, come prepared, and actively participate in discussion. Preparation for class involves completing the required readings and composing thoughtful blog posts each week. In discussions, you will be asked to participate by asking questions, posing arguments, and responding to your peers points of view. Come to class having thought about the material, made notes of what interested or surprised you, and be ready to discuss it. (2) Think Pieces Over the course of the semester, you will be required to post weekly responses (300 words min., Moodle) to the assigned readings that address the themes and topics raised in the readings and/or in class. You should not summarize the week s readings or discussions. The think piece is a space for you to work through the challenging questions or concepts of the week, post revelations or provocations, and experiment with new ideas or theories. You are also strongly encouraged to read each other s think pieces. 20% 20% Due on the Tuesday before our class meetings, by 9pm. All responses must be posted on Moodle. Late think pieces will not be accepted. (3) Midterm Project: Genealogy of a Garment/Accessory/Style For this project, you will be asked to take an individual garment/accessory/style or a specific genre of clothing (for example, the three-piece suit) and trace its development across time and space. To help us better explore how fashion is a dynamic process that involves the creation, revision, and adaptation of style, this assignment calls upon you to show how a garment can illuminate the social and cultural context in which they circulated. More specific guidelines to follow. 20% Due Friday, March 4 th, by 5pm. (6-8 pages; Formatting requirements: double-spaced, 12 pt. font, one-inch margins) 1

2 (5) Final Project: Fashion Reader For the final project, you will be asked to collaborate with your classmates to produce a critical fashion reader that is designed to target students, scholars, or anyone interested in fashion in East Asia. The reader will bring together essays on key theoretical concepts, the histories of specific trends, and the greater historical, social, and cultural context. The range of topics to be included will be decided collectively, as a class. Each student will contribute one essay (10-12 pages) on one of the selected topics. Like any co-edited volume, you will be asked to collaborate with each other to decide on content and to compose the front matter (Title, Table of Contents, Introduction, Acknowledgements) and the back matter (Bibliography, Index). Formatting should be consistent with that of a published book. Class time will be allotted to work on the catalogue. Your grade for this project will be an average of: 1) the individual essay and 2) the group catalogue. 40% Individual essay due Friday, April 29 th, by 5pm. (10-12 pages; Formatting requirements: double-spaced, 12 pt. font, one-inch margins) Reader due Friday, May 13 th, by 5pm. Policy on Extensions Extensions will be granted only in the case of medical emergency (upon submission of written proof) or formal notification by a class dean. Late assignments will be penalized by the deduction of one-half of a letter grade per day. History Department Policies on Attendance & Communication Students are required to attend all classes. Unexcused absences will result in a lower grade for the course. If you are having a medical or personal emergency, please contact the Dean s Office as well as the instructor of the course. It is your responsibility to inform your instructor as soon as possible. It is essential that you check your on a regular basis since I will contact you via . I also expect you to use to contact me. Disability Accommodations If you believe that you need accommodations for a disability, please contact Leslie Hempling in the Office of Student Disability Services (Parrish 113) or lhempli1@swarthmore.edu arrange an appointment to discuss your needs. As appropriate, she will issue students with documented disabilities a formal Accommodations Letter. Since accommodations require early planning and are not retroactive, please contact her as soon as possible. For details about the accommodations process, visit the Student Disability Service Website at You are also welcome to contact me [the faculty member] privately to discuss your academic needs. However, all disability-related accommodations must be arranged through the Office of Student Disability Services. Course Texts All readings are available for download from the course s Moodle site or as an E-Book accessible via Tripod. Topics and Reading Schedule Week Introduction FOUNDATIONS 2

3 Syllabus. Week Coming to terms with the F-word: Theory Edward Sapir. Fashion. In Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 6, pp New York: Macmillan, Alfred L. Kroeber. On the principle of order in civilization as exemplified by changes of fashion. American Anthropologist 21.3 (1919): George Simmel. Fashion. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 62, no. 6 (May, 1957): Week Coming to terms with the F-word: Method Christopher Breward. Cultures, Identities, Histories: Fashioning a Cultural Approach to Dress. Fashion Theory 2.4 (1998): Colin Campbell. The Meaning of Objects and the Meaning of Actions: A Critical Note on the Sociology of Consumption and Theories of Clothing. Journal of Material Culture 1: 1 (1996): Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass. Introduction. In Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, pp Cambridge, Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher. Fashioning through Materials: Material Culture, Materiality and Processes of Materialization." Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty 5.1 (2014): Week Was Fashion a European Invention? Fernand Braudel. Costume and Fashion. In Civilization and Capitalism, 15 th - 18 th Centuries, vol. 1: The Structures of Everyday Life, pp London: Collins, Carlo Belfanti. Was fashion a European Invention? Journal of Global History 3 (2008): pp Gilles Lipovetsky. Introduction. In The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, pp Princeton University Press, Beverly Lemire. Introduction. In The Force of Fashion in Politics and Society: Global Perspectives from Early Modern to Contemporary Times, pp Ashgate Publishing, Week The Gendered Body THE BODY Marcel Mauss. Techniques of the Body. Economy and Society 2.1 (1973): Thorstein Veblen. The Economic Theory of Woman s Dress. The Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 46 (1894): pp Joanne B. Eicher and Mary E. Higgins Roach. Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles. In Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning in Cultural Contexts, pp

4 Berg, Louise Cort. Whose Sleeves? Gender, Class, and Meaning in Japanese Dress of the Seventeenth Century. In Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning, Berg, Recommended Pierre Bourdieu. Structures and the Habitus. In Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge, Week The Body as Project Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Vintage, 1977): pp ( Docile Bodies ). Suk-Young Kim. Dressed to Kill: Women s Fashion and Body Politics in North Korean Visual Media (1960s-1970s). positions: east asia cultures critique 19:1 (2011): pp Hirano Ken ichiro. The Westernization of Clothes and the State in Meiji Japan. In The State and Cultural Transformation: Perspectives from East Asia, pp United Nations University Press, Tina Mai Chen. Proletarian White and Working Bodies in Mao s China. positions: east asia cultures critique 11:2 (Fall 2003): pp Week The Body as Practice Jennifer Craik. The Face of Fashion: Technical Bodies and Technologies of the Self. In The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion, New York: Routledge, Joanna Entwistle. Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice, Fashion Theory 4:3 (2000): pp Dorothy Ko. Bondage in Time: Footbinding and Fashion Theory, Fashion Theory 1 (March 1997): pp Recommended Susan Bordo. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, pp UC Press, Week 8 SPRING BREAK THE SELF Week Between Self and Society Elizabeth Wilson. Introduction. In Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity, pp IB Tauris, [EBOOK] Daniel Roche. Clothing and Appearances. In A History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, , pp Cambridge, Eileen Chang [Zhang Ailing]. A Chronicle of Changing Clothes. Trans. Andrew F. Jones, positions: 4

5 east asia cultures critique 11:2 (Fall 2003): pp Paola Zamperini. On Their Dress They Wore a Body: Fashion and Identity in Late Qing Shanghai. positions: east asia cultures critique 11:2 (Fall 2003): pp Week Self-fashioning Ulinka Rublack. Looking at the Self. In Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in the Renaissance Europe, pp Oxford University Press, Osmud Rahman, Liu Wing-Sun & Brittany Hei-man Cheung. Cosplay : Imaginative Self and Performing Identity. Fashion Theory 16:3 (2012): Susie Jie Young Kim. What (Not) to Wear: Refashioning Civilization in Print Media in Turn-ofthe-Century Korea. positions: east asia cultures critique 15:3 (2007): pp Week A Matter of Taste Herbert Blumer. Fashion: From Class Differentiation to Collective Selection. The Sociological Quarterly 10.3 (1969): Eiko Ikegami. Categorical Protest from the Floating World: Fashion, Gender, and the State. In Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture, pp Cambridge, THE ECONOMY Week The favored child of capitalism Werner Sombart. The Emergence of Fashion. In Economic Life in the Modern Age, pp Transaction Publishers, Grant McCracken. Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods. Journal of Consumer Research 13.1 (1986): Antonia Finnane. Yangzhou s Modernity : Fashion and Consumption in the Early Nineteenth Century. positions: east asia cultures critique 11:2 (Fall 2003): pp Week Orientalism and its Aesthetics Sandra Niessen. Re-Orienting Fashion Theory, in Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress, eds. Niessen, Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carla Jones (New York: Berg, 2003): pp David Porter. Monstrous Beauty: Eighteenth-Century Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Chinese Taste. Eighteenth-Century Studies 35.3 (2002): Verity Wilson. Western Modes and Asian Clothes: Reflections on Borrowing Other People s Dress. Costume 36.1 (2002): Andrew Bolton. Toward an Aesthetic of Surfaces. In China: Through the Looking Glass, pp

6 Metropolitan Museum of Art, Adam Geczy. A Chamber of Whispers. In China: Through the Looking Glass, pp Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rachel Silberstein. A Commercial Surface China: Through the Looking Glass, and the Impact of Chinese Dress and Aesthetics on Western Fashion. CAA reviews, forthcoming. Week The Urban Spectacle Georg Simmel. The Metropolis and Mental Life. in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. and ed. Kurt H. Wolff (Free Press, 1950): pp Miriam Silverberg. Constructing the Japanese Ethnography of Modernity. The Journal of Asian Studies 51.1 (1992): Harry D. Harootunian. Streets, Shelter, Subjectivity (Chapter Three: Perceiving the Past). In Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan, pp Princeton University Press, [EBOOK] Conclusion Week Reflections on the F-word Valerie Steele. The F word. Lingua Franca 2 (1991):