Fashion and Modernism
- Autumn 2019
Syllabus Description:
10.10.19
Fashion and Modernism Seminar
Professor Burstein
English 546A Autumn 2019 Class: T/R 1.30-3.20 Denny 210
Office hours: Tues/Thurs 12-1 Padelford A502 and by appt: jb2@uw.edu Phone: 206.616.4181
For the duration of this quarter, check your UW email twice daily. Send responses from uw.edu, too; non-uw.edu’s will require approval by the Matrix, which takes time.
Required Texts
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Eiland and McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002) ISBN: 0674008022
Émile Zola, The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. Brian Nelson. Oxford Press; ISBN: 0192836021
Online link to Arcades Project: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e4/Benjamin_Walter_The_Arcades_Project.pdf
Vogue (USA) September 2019 issue, hopefully
This thing you’re reading
Reading Packet: The Ram Copy Center, 4144 University Way (2 volumes)
Requirements
This is a reading intensive seminar. Foremost, you must be prepared for and contribute (aloud) to each class; this entails a strategic and continuous time commitment. To assist you in scheduling your time, the number of reading pages for each meeting is noted in the schedule below each session. In addition to engaged and informed participation, your grade will be based on the following.
Talking well:
(1) Leading discussion for two class periods. You will be directing the deliberations surrounding two sessions’ readings, beginning with a 5 minute spiel on what the point is (sic). Work from notes, but be engaging: don’t read from them; fake spontaneity or—hey—be spontaneous. (But organised.)
Email the class at least 24 hours ahead of time to tell us what you’ll be focusing on; feel free to direct our attention to particular questions and/or passages.
(2) You will have signed up as an official respondent to another’s paper for the class conference we’ll have at the end of term (surprise: you’re going!), and you will be responsible for beginning the q and a with at least two questions. The art of listening is hard to master, and asking good questions will get you noticed at conferences.
Begin your question with a brief account of what you understand the presenter to have argued (2 sentences can do it) and move to your question. They’ll answer and you can either do a follow-up on that, or move to your next question. Then the floor will be open to the rest of us.
Respondents can ask panelists for the paper in advance in order to prepare a response ahead of time. Whether you get it or not will depend, and might depend on whether you have your panel paper ready for your own respondent. This is what happens in so-called real life, by the way.
Written assignments/professional skills:
(3) In conjunction with our visit to the Henry Art Gallery archives, you will produce
(a) a “First Contact” email/letter requesting the objects you wish to be brought out from the Costume Collection. You’ll do it twice—as a draft (due to me) then to the Henry (with revisions, cc-ing me. See “Schedule” for template.
(b) Ekphrastic exercise: A 1-2 page single-spaced description of an object you’ve chosen/encountered/ explored during your visit to the Henry Art Gallery Costume Collection archive. See below for details. You take notes on this on site, but might start it ahead of time based on the catalog. Write it for someone who’s not seeing it.
The last paragraph is non-ekphrastic. It says why this thing is interesting, and places it in the context of some critical reading.
(4) A response to the CFP for the F&M class conference. See below.
(5) A 20 minute conference paper, which you will present in our “Fashion and Modernism” colloquium.
(a) This conference paper will be 8-10 pages (doublespaced), and you will, as at a typical national conference, read it aloud (you’ll have practiced it in advance so you know that it’s 20 minutes long).
(b) You will also turn in a copy to me addended with a critical bibliography and a further singlespaced page on how you would expand it in terms of a future paper/article/chapter (that is, adding something that would amount to 20 or so more pages: This is my subtle way of getting your mind proto-wrapped around the concept of a (gulp) dissertation prospectus. But relax. This is 1 page. One good one.
The paper must be historically grounded in the period 1850-1939, and can be British, European, or American. It should not feature as primary materials anything written in a language with which you do not have facility (eg., you can refer in passing to Zola, but if you don't read French, you can't do a close reading of French fashion magazine from the period). Your subject matter may be literary or visual; it could for instance engage a particular aspect of advertising trends in British Vogue 1910-1915. Its subject may emerge from readings you encounter in the course readings, but must go beyond the readings dealt with in the class. You might also see 4 volume Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources. It contains a wealth of possibilities. See bibliography below.
CFP: Prior giving your paper--see syllabus for when--you will have turned in a response to a “Call for Papers” (CFP) that previews your paper: as you are likely to do in the professional future. (You can in fact change your mind after your CFP response; it’s not a contract.) Here is the CFP:
Colloquium on “Fashion and Modernism,” University of Washington, Autumn 2019: Papers focusing on literary, material, artistic, sociological, and/or historical aspects of the period 1850-1939 in Anglo-American and/or European modernisms. 500 word abstract, due 14 November 2019. Annotated Bibliography required. Specify any a-v requirements.
CFP’s don’t usually ask for bibliographies, but I will; your annotations will describe in 2 or 3 sentences what the source does and what it will be lending your argument. Your bibliography must include at least 5 critical texts in addition to the primary text(s).
We will discuss the CFP genre. Basically, you will be describing the paper as if you’ve written it already (this feels odd, but it’s a genre, and you get used to it), giving it a catchy title, and describing the paper’s stakes (its place in the field) and thesis--what it argues. This is a key aspect of professionalization. You’ll turn it in hard copy, and then schedule an appointment with me ASAP to have your topic approved (or not—you may need to rework your paper’s ken), and I’ll turn the hard copy back to you with suggestions for how to improve it at the level of the generic CFP level. The responsibility for scheduling this appointment is your own. This meeting will not be conducted through email.
Fashion explains not just the subject but the structure of this class. You’re going to be constantly looking ahead in the present, and consulting the past in order to understand the present. I hate this color, by the way, but the point is to show [sic] that fashion shows that structure is meaning, and form is content—the structure of this fashion class is key to understanding fashion tout court. The backwards/forwards=now structure makes plain the weirdly binocular vision you cultivate as an academic scholar in grad school, even if you’re silly enough to specialize in something other than fashion or modernism. You are always looking forward (even if you’re not).
It is advisable that you skim the course reader in advance, and begin considering
your topic in advance. Feel free to meet with me for brainstorming sessions. Use our library's resources: the collection contains many primary documents (serials being one of them) from the period. I want you to learn about fashion, but I also want you to learn about thinking. Handily, fashion explains everything, which includes how to think about thinking.
Schedule
Week 1
Thursday 26 Sept: Introduction
Lecture, “This is the first day”. Discussion of The September Vogue. (Or the October one, since I kept thinking instead of posting this syllabus.) See / Discuss Burstein, “Annoucement” [sic].
Homework:
Reread syllabus. Oh, and
Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman" from After the Great Divide [10]
Ilya Parkins, “Fashion as Methodology: Rewriting the Time of Women’s
Modernity” [17]
Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," pp. 324-39 [15]
Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," 1-41 [41] (some skimming)
Precursor: 18th century: Sennett, Chap. 4 "Public Roles" [24]
Max Nordau, from Degeneration (1892), pp. 7-15 [8]
George Simmel, “Fashion” [17]
Agnes Brooks Young, from “On the Nature of Fashion” (1937) [3 pages: see silhouettes]
[135+ reread syllabus]
For further:
On shock in American culture: Ben Singer, "Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism" from Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Leo Charney and
Vanessa Schwartz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 72-99; Anne Hollander, history of (representations of) clothing, pre19th century
Week 2: Dandy, Flâneuse, and Trans Chanel Crossing
Tuesday 1 Oct: The Dandy (Artificiality I)
Ellen Moers, "Brummell," pp. 17-38 [21]
Rosalind H. Williams, "The Dandies and Elitist Consumption," pp. 107-27 [20]
Oscar Wilde, "Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1890), 119-20 [2]
Max Beerbohm, “A Defense of Cosmetics/The Pervasion of Rouge” (1896), 99-124 [25] : for online version and some hyperlinks see http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/mb/rouge.html
SVV [Si vous voulez/optional]:
Virginia Woolf, “Beau Brummell” (1935), 3-6 [3] [71]
For further:
Garelick, R. (1998). Rising star : Dandyism, gender, and performance in the fin de siècle. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
France—a good setup for the Zola:
Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (2017): ISBN: 9781474245487
Another version is newly out and being purchased for us: Valerie Steele, Paris: Capital of Fashion (Bloomsbury)
Mallarmé, La Dernière Mode (fashion mag; available in trans)
Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, The Anatomy of Dandyism (1845), trans. Douglas Ainslie. (New York, N.Y. : PAJ Publications, 1988): Du Dandysme et de Georges Brummel
Honoré de Balzac, Treatise on Elegant Living (Wakefield Press) The dandy’s handbook, 1830s.
- K. Huysmans, Against the Grain (À Rebours), intro. by Havelock Ellis 1466268042
Thursday 3 Oct: Flâneur/Flâneuse (and some Dandy Chanel)
Benjamin, "The Flâneur " from Arcades, 416-55 [39]
Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, "The Flâneur on and off the Streets of Paris," 22-39. [17]
Ulrich Lehmann, “L’Homme des foules, Dandy, Flâneur: Fashion and the Metropolis, 1850-1940,” 315-26 [11]
Janet Wolff, "The Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity," 141-56. [15]
Anne Friedberg, "The Mobilized and Virtual Gaze in Modernity: Flâneur/Flâneuse," 15-38 [skim to "The Baudelairean Observer" (29), then begin more concertedly] [23]
We will end the discussion by turning to Evans, “Chanel: The New Woman as Dandy.” Not to be quoted or circulated beyond this class. We’re doing it on the flâneuse, not dandy, day for a reason; if you don’t get it by the time the discussion rolls around, ask at 2:57 pm today in class. [6 pages]
[111]
For further: The Flâneur, ed. Tester
John Rignall, "Benjamin's Flâneur and the Problem of Realism," pp. 112-21
Oscar Wilde, “The Suitability of Dress” (1882), 231-38 [7]
Homework: In order to prepare for our upcoming visit to the Henry Art Gallery Costume Collection, acquaint yourself with the Costume Collection online archive. Start Prep for visit to Henry Art Gallery Costume Collection.
A general overview is at http://dig.henryart.org/textiles/costumes/, and you can do a more advanced search at http://collections.henryart.org/main.php?module=objects You can both search for particular objects and get closeups by mousing on the objects. With the advanced search, you can select “Costumes” under the “Class” value options, and then further narrow down through maker, date, style, or other categories of interest. Try things like “leather jacket”; “Chanel” to get a sense of what’s possible. Your goal is to select 1-3 objects: make one your top priority, then if that’s not going to be possible, one or two alternatives. (Your object rationale can be on any of the objects you select, but presumably it would be your top priority.)
Prepare a “first contact” email request (first due to me for approval in a few more weeks; then to the Henry: This ultimately goes to the Henry’s curator, and you cc me. Your request is a formal one, and will serve you well as a template if you do further archival research. Tone is key; it tells them who you are and the level of professionalism you will bring to engaging their valuable time. Curators and librarians often known a lot more than what is available on databases, and being respectful of their time is not only good karma (they’re holy), but is important to your brain. (If you end up publishing an article/book on the stuff, you include them in the acknowledgements.)
For the Henry First Contact email, include “Prof. Burstein’s Fashion & Modernism seminar: English 546” in the subject line, so they know what they are receiving and have a record. Always update your subject lines. It’s an archive of a conversation.
Dear FIRST AND LAST NAME [with relevant title if ascertainable; do not assume someone has a Ph.D. Under no circumstances address someone by their first name in this point of first contact; you follow their lead when they respond. This is a professional exchange.]
My name is Henry Mancini, and I am conducting research on the couturier Paul Poiret for my work at the University of Washington, where I am a graduate student [you become a “doctoral candidate” when you pass your qualifying exams]. I write to inquire whether it would be possible to see XXX (Be sure to include accession numbers to make things easy for them to identify and pull--the "TC" or other identification number listed with the piece's information: give all identifying catalog information so they don’t have to guess which object you mean, or trot off and do your work for you: they are more likely to help you out/ use their energies if you spare them work you should already have done.). [something like] This is my top priority, but I’d also be interested in YYY and ZZZ. Any additional information or suggestions you have would be most appreciated. [Now, a brief [no more than a 5 sentence paragraph] and plainspoken gloss of the project. The point is to inform them so they have context, and might be able to generate other ideas from their collection.] My dissertation, “Name,” covers the period… I’m interested in/ researching X. If you have any suggestions, I’d be most receptive.
[You’d tell them when you were in town, and say you’d be happy to work with their schedules.]
Please feel free to forward this email. [NB: In case you’ve contacted someone with research staff colleagues who specialize in the area.]
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Henry Mancini
English Department
University of Washington
Seattle WA etc [but spell everything out; it looks casual / annoying otherwise: see?.]
Give your own email@uw.edu [this is important to repeat in case the your email gets forwarded and the meta-data buried in transmission]
Week 3: Four Ways to Talk about Fashion, and One Way to See it
(Museum Visit)
Tuesday 8 Oct: History, Methods, Theories.
Thorstein Veblen, “Conspicuous Consumption,” and "The Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture," 261-88 [28]
Flügel, from The Psychology of Clothes, “Fundamental Motives” and “Decoration-Purposive Aspects” 1-38; “Sex Differences” (N.B. “The Great Masculine Renunciation and its Causes”), 103-21; “The Forces of Fashion,” 137-54, “The Future of Dress,” 227-38 [75]
Gilles Lipovetsky, "A Century of Fashion," 55-87. [32]
[135]
Thursday 10 Oct: Site Visit/ Benjamin and Fashion
Benjamin, Arcades, "Fashion," 62-81 [19]
"The Interior, the Trace" 212-27 [16]
"Prostitution, Gambling" 489-515 [27]
Giacomo Leopardi, “The Dialogue of Fashion and Death” (1824), 206-9 [4]
Peter Wollen, “The Concept of Fashion in The Arcades Project,” 131-42 [11]
Buck-Morss, from Dialectics of Seeing: Part 1, ch. 2, "Spatial Origins" for orientation in the Arcades, p. 25-43; excerpt from Part 2, ch. 4 "Mythic History: Fetish," 97-109 [15]
[92]
Rec.: Benjamin, "Baudelaire," Arcades, 238-387
Online link to Arcades: https://monoskop.org/images/e/e4/Benjamin_Walter_The_Arcades_Project.pdf
Site Visit: Seattle Style exhibition at MOHAI, with guided tour, Clara Berg, Associate Director of Collections.
You’ll be leaving campus at 12.45, thanks to Krista. (The tour starts at 2.15)
Homework: Think/Work on Henry email request, which entails looking at their catalog and thinking about what you’re interested in at the same time. See “Requirements”. Start thinking seriously about your research interests for this class.
Week 4 Zola
Tuesday 15 Oct: (First 15 minutes: Discussion of last week’s MOHAI show.)
Zola, The Ladies' Paradise (1883), Day one [the entire book]
Rosalind Williams, excerpt from "The Dream World of Mass Consumption" pp. 58-70 [12]
Leslie Camhi, "Stealing Femininity: Department Store Kleptomania as Sexual Disorder," [abt 9]
Phillipe Perrot, "The Department Store and the Spread of Bourgeois Clothing", 58-79 [22]
[43 plus novel]
Further:
On US Store Window Dressing: (Frank L. Baum author of Wizard of Oz wrote a book on window display) Culver, Stuart. "What Manikins Want: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Windows." Representations, no. 21 (1988): 97-116. doi:10.2307/2928378.
Rachel Bowlby, "'Traffic in Her Desires': Zola's Au Bonheur des dames" in her Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing, and Zola (1985)
Friedberg on Zola
Elaine Abelson, When Ladies Go A-Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (1989)
Thursday 17 Oct: No class. JB at MSA. Try to decide what your conference paper is on/consider what you’re interested in as you research the Henry Collection. (It’s not a contract.)
While I’m out of town, I suggest you read ahead to the Simmel day: “The Philosophy of Fashion” and reread Parkins’ “Fashion as Methodology” since she does an argument about feminist historiography. This could set terms for your paper—not content; just some terms.
Friday: 5 pm. “First Contact” Henry Email request due as attached Word doc in an email to me: jb2@uw.edu.
Week 5 Paradise
Start researching/talking with me about your interests and research ideas for paper.
Tuesday 22 Oct: Zola, Day Two.
Louisa Iarocci, “Dressing Rooms: Women, Fashion and the Department Store,” pp. 169-85 [16]
Gertrude Stein, “Flirting at the Bon Marché” (1911), pp. 107-111 [4] [20 plus novel]
For further:
Erika Diane Rappaport, “To Walk Alone in London,” pp. 3-15; “Resting Places
for Women Wayfarers: Feminism and the Comforts of the Public Sphere,” pp. 74-107 in her Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London's West End
American context: Wendy Gamber, "Engendering Change: The Department Store and the Factory, 1890-1930," in The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 190-232
JB: email AP @ Henry
Class: TBC/Work on Research project/letter to Elliott
Thursday 24 Oct: Dolls/Automata (put in conversation with Zola?)
Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny," 219-52 [33]
- T. A. Hoffman, "The Sandman," 93-125 [82]
Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Marionette Theater” (1810) [7]
Rainer Marie Rilke, “Dolls: On the Wax Dolls of Lotte Pritzel” (1913-14), [7]
“Android Portrait Stirs Controversy,” NYT, 11 September 2017: https://nyti.ms/2xQukU6
[129]
(look back to Sennett, “The Body is a Mannequin,” from The Fall of Public Man, 64-88 [24])
For further: Jennifer Craik, “Fashion Models: Female Bodies and Icons of Femininity,” in The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion (NY: Routledge, 1994), 70-91 [skim after p. 80]
From Emily Klug, “Allure of the Silent Beauties”: 202-5
From Vanessa Osborne, “The Logic of the Mannequin: Shop Windows and the Realist Novel,” 187-91
Bonnie Roos: “Oskar Kokoschka's Sex Toy: The Women and the Doll Who Conceived the Artist,” Modernism/modernity 12.2 (2005) 291-309
Juliette Peers, The Fashion Doll: From Bébé Jumeau to Barbie, (Berg 2004)
Daniel Tiffany, “The Lyric Automaton” in Toy Medium
Week 6: Costumes
Tuesday 29 Oct: Site Visit: Henry Art Gallery Costume Collection. Meet in lobby.
Your assignment while there is to explore the archive—and pick one of your objects and produce a 1-2 page single-spaced ekphrastic description of it in as much detail as possible, with an eye toward what you find interesting/what would be of use were you to integrate it into a conference paper. It’s in third person. Use standard paragraphing, as you will in all written work for nonGoogledrones. Ekphrastic exercise on this or MOHAI object due by 5 pm PST Friday,
TBC: Letter to Elliott
Thursday 31 October: Halloween.
Mannequins
*Jean Rhys, “Mannequin,” from The Left Bank and Other Stories (1927), 59-70 [11]
*Henry James, “The Real Thing” (1892), 39-65 [27]
Paola Colaiacomo, “Fashion’s Model Bodies: A Genealogy,” in 24-32 [8]
Wilde, “The Relation of Dress to Art” (in re. to Whistler)—and referenced in the Colaiacomo
**Caroline Evans, “Multiple, Movement, Model, Mode: The Mannequin Parade, 1900-1929,” 125-45 [17]
[63]
Friday 1 November: Ekphrastic exercise due by email, 5 pm PST.
Week 7
Tues 5 Nov: Suzzallo Site Visit with Elliott Stevens, UW Subject librarian for English Studies, Research Commons Librarian and supervisor, guru. Come with research questions/topics in humanities/fashion—for your papers, spurred perhaps by Henry and/or conference topic. This ideally will be a live working research session.
Thurs 7 Nov: Artificiality/Woman as Mask
Come with questions about CFP’s: discussion of the genre.
Magnus Hirschfeld, “Analysis of the Causes (Complex of Symptoms),” 245-58 [14]
Amelia Jones, 'Women' in Dada: Elsa Rrose, and Charlie," 142-72 [30]
*Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as Masquerade” and Heath, 35-61 [24]
Valerie Steele, “Artificial Beauty and the Morality of Dress and Adornment,” 275-97 [27]
Alison Matthews David, “Fashion’s Chameleons: Camouflage, ‘Conspicuousness’ and Gendered Display During World War I,” 89-107 [18]
(Review Beerbohm, “The Pervasion of Rouge,” above)
[113]
For further: Cicely Hamilton, Diana of Dobson’s (1908), Shaw, Pygmalion (1912), Claude Cahun, Kate Adie, from Corsets to Camouflage: Women and War, pp. 113-123
Week 8 Woolf’s Clothing
Tuesday 12 Nov: (Please spend 30 minutes reviewing Mrs. Dalloway.)
Editorial Notes for Virginia Woolf, "The New Dress"
Woolf, "The New Dress" and table of contents &tc., in Forum: A Magazine of Controversy (May 1927) 704-11 [7]
Woolf, “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” [3]
Jane Garrity, "Selling Culture to the 'Civilized': Bloomsbury, British Vogue, and the Marketing of National Identity," 29-58 [29]
Jennifer Wicke, "Mrs. Dalloway Goes to Market: Woolf, Keynes, and Modern Markets," 5-23 [19]
Lisa Cohen, "'Frock Consciousness': Virginia Woolf, the Open Secret, and the Language of Fashion," 149-74 [29]
Celia Marshik, “The Modernist Macintosh” in Modernism/modernity/At the Mercy of their Clothes
[[Erika D. Rappaport, "'A New Era of Shopping': The Promotion of Women's Pleasure in London's West End, 1909-1914," 130-53 [23]
[120]
For Further: Lisa Tickner, The Spectacle of Women
Woolf, "Slater's Pins have no Points" in Complete Shorter Fiction, ed. Dick
Reginald Abbott, “What Miss Kilman’s Petticoat Means: Virginia Woolf, Shopping, and Spectacle,” MFS 38:1 (Spring 1992): 193-216 (on Mrs. Dalloway for the most part)
Thurs 14 Nov: Simmel
CFP responses due in hard copy in class. See “Requirements” above. Also email it to me—with the CFP response attached to the email as a Word doc-- with the subject line “CFP response: ‘What my Working Title Is.’”
Simmel, "The Philosophy of Fashion" and "Adornment," 187-211 [24]
Ilya Parkins, “Fashion, Femininity, and the Ambiguities of the Modern: A Feminist Theoretical Approach to Simmel,” 28-49 [21]
David Frisby, excerpt from "Modernity as an Eternal Present," pp. 95-102 [7]
[52]
Week 9: Avant-Gardes
Tuesday 19 Nov Italian Futurism
Jeffrey Schnapp, "The Fabric of Modern Times," 191-245 [includes manifesto: F. T. Marinetti, "Wrapping the world in Italrayon" [54]
Futurist Manifestos: Emily Braun, "Futurist Fashion: Three Manifestoes," 34-41 [7]
Franca Zoccoli, “Futurist Accessories,” 54-81 [22]
[83]
Thurs 21 Nov: Surrealism and Fashion
NB: Hark back to the uncanny days.
See Canvas files: is not in reader: Hannah Crawforth, “Surrealism and the Fashion Magazine” in American Periodicals, Vol. 14, No. 2 (2004), pp. 212-246.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20770930
[61]
Excerpts from Ghislaine Wood, The Surreal Body: Fetish and Fashion [about 35 pages, not including images]
Ilya Parkins, “Elsa Schiaparelli and the Epistemology of Glamorous Silence,” 190-95 [6]
Cristina Giorcelli, “Wearing the Body over the Dress: Sonia Delaunay’s Fashionable Clothes,” pp. 33-53 [20]
Week 10: Catch up While You’re Desperately Writing
Tues 26 Nov
Catch-up, because by now we’re probably really behind. Discussion of methods-questions/papers in progress discussion. I might add a little stuff on new materialism.
Michael Yonan, “Toward a Fusion of Art History and Material Culture Studies”, 232-48 [16]
Thurs 28 Nov: Thanksgiving. No class. Homework: Give thanks.
Week 11: Conference. Dress Professionally, whatever you think that means.
Tues 3 Dec: “Fashion and Modernism” Colloquium
M.O.: a) 20 minute paper, to be read aloud, A/V ok but you need to discuss how in advance of this moment.
b) Then 10 minutes or so of discussion after each paper, the latter started by a pre-assigned moderator, whose job it is to
(1) Rephrase the thesis of the argument/take up a specific point and rephrase that [Take notes!]. You can circulate papers in advance but that is up to you and your interlocutor and the reality of your work schedule.]
(2) Ask 2 questions. They can be critical (critical does not mean nasty), and should be substantive. Not just “can you say more about X”? But “Your claim seems to be that flâneurie was historically a male enterprise. How do you account for Janet Wolff’s claim about the invisibility of the female flâneuse?” Answer: “Well, I’m going to take your question and answer it in two ways….” [We can go over ways to organize how you respond to questions.]
On moderating: It’s nervewracking, but can be fun (or can be both)—and you will get better at it. Starting here and now, in this classroom, is professionalizing.
Then the other members of the class will join in for a general discussion of the paper.
- c) End with 10 minutes or so of meta-discussion about the papers together—and in relation to the course/fashion.
Thurs 5 Dec: Fashion and Death: A Beginning.
The Rules
Regard this class as a community. Please think critically, and do not be afraid to argue. Dialogue can be dialect. Argue politely. Don’t be afraid to say “I do not understand.” Or “I disagree.” Don’t waste time with “Well, to me…”. We already know it’s you. And if it’s not you, that’s ok too. Give a man [sic] a mask and he will tell you the truth and all that. See Wilde/artificiality/ above.
Before you recall a library book—and use Summit if you can--email the class and ask if anyone has it; wait 12 hours for a reply before actually recalling a book. If yes, negotiate a handoff. This will reduce time spent in acquiring it. You are under an ethical obligation to respond if someone is seeking a book you have in your possession. There is no need to reply if you don’t have the book.
If you require accommodation owing to a disability immediately contact the Disabilities Resources for Students Office (DRS) in Schmitz Hall 448 (206-548-8924; uwdss@u.washington.edu) or the Disabilities Services Office (DSO) at dso@u.washington.edu. It is your responsibility to notify me in writing and in advance of any accommodations to be arranged by either the DSO or DRS office and—should forms be involved—to deliver those to me in person during office hours, with time enough to allow for us to arrive at a mutual understanding of the means by which those accommodations are best met.
“Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities. The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/). Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).” --I am commanded to include this and thus and thereby herein comply. And yeah, that’s what made this syllabus too long.
Like fashion itself and therefore everything, this syllabus is subject to change.