| Learning objectives |
- Students will be able to conceptually distinguish dress,
fashion, and style, as well as understand the significance of the
difference.
- Students will be able to understand explain anthropological and
ethnographic approaches to studying dress fashion and style.
- Students will conduct their own independent research on dress,
fashion, and style and will interpret that research using ideas
drawn from course meetings and course readings.
|
| Examination |
|
Fashion/Dress
and Style: An Ethnographic Approach:
|
| Exam
ECTS |
7,5 |
| Examination form |
Home assignment - written product |
| Individual or group exam |
Individual exam |
| Size of written product |
Max. 20 pages |
| Assignment type |
Project |
| Duration |
Written product to be submitted on specified date
and time. |
| Grading scale |
7-point grading scale |
| Examiner(s) |
One internal examiner |
| Exam period |
Winter |
| Make-up exam/re-exam |
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
If the student has not handed in at
the ordinary exam, the retake will be as the ordinary exam.
If the student has not passed the ordinary exam the re-take exam is
constituted by the same portfolio of cases as the ordinary exam. If
a student fails the ordinary exam, the student submits a revised
version of her own contribution to the case portfolio at the
re-take exam.
|
Description of the exam
procedure
The examination for this course will be an individual, written
home assignment made up of a packet in two parts. Students will be
afforded class time and guidance over the course of the semester to
complete this work in a gradual manageable way. All assignments
will be in 12 point font, be double spaced, and have one inch
margins. The components follow:
-
Part one will consist of three small
independent research projects. Each project will be written up and
will be no longer than 3-4 pages each. Each write up will
report on the students independent research and cite and engage
with at least three (3) different readings from the
course.
- Project one will be an interview with someone in front of their
closet asking them to explain all the items in it. You may also
take and include photographs.
- Project two will be a street photography project of the
students design meant to illustrate some look or pattern in some
specific part of Copenhagen.
- Project three will be an analysis of the clothing worn in a TV
show or movie using interpretive tools drawn from the
class.
-
Part two will be a final written assignment
running 8-12 pages in lengthy. Students will either:
- Do an independent research paper on a topic of their choosing
that is related to the class and approved by the
instructor.
- Create a research proposal including a background, research
questions, a literature review, a methods/sampling strategy
section, and a reflection on the potential benefits and limitations
of completing the research. The research proposal should be on a
topic related to the course.
Again, students will have the opportunity to work on the various
parts of this exam packet over the course of the term. They will
formally submit both parts in one packet at the end of the
course
|
|
| Course content, structure and pedagogical
approach |
|
We dress ourselves every day. We evaluate how others look. We
notice when people standout. Often our first apprehensions of
social or cultural difference has to do with appearance. Clothing,
adornment, and body modification are inescapable parts of the human
experience. There is no culture, society, nation, civilization, or
group of humans that does not and that did not get their bodies
ready in some way shape or form for social presentation.
This course will offer a way to understand how humans dress
themselves. It will draw on approaches from anthropology,
sociology, and fashion studies, and will center ethnographic
scholarship (actual field studies) in its presentation.
Specifically, it will pivot between the related concepts of
“fashion,” “dress,” and “style” and use ethnographic research to
illuminate the use of these concepts in understand why people look
the way that they do.
This course will also lead students through a series of applied
research projects on clothing and dress that will allow them to
develop their own independent research interests on topics of their
choosing related to dress, fashion, and style.
|
| Description of the teaching methods |
Course meetings will be a mix of lectures,
discussions, and activities.
Students should read and be prepared to discuss all readings prior
to class.
Students should attend class as they’re unlikely to understand
course material otherwise. |
| Feedback during the teaching period |
| Students will have the opportunity to both
workshop and submit drafts of all portions of their examination
project over the course of the semester. The instructor will give
significant class time to this. What this practically means is that
students may hand in drafts of their exam project which the
instructor will give comments and critique to. There will also be
in class workshops to discuss assignments. |
| Student workload |
| Teaching |
30 hours |
| Preparation |
135 hours |
| Examination |
40 hours |
|
| Further Information |
|
Anthropology is the main academic discipline drawn on in this
course.
|
| Expected literature |
|
- Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture and the Meaning of
Style. London: Routledge.
- Woodward, Sophie. 2007. Why Women Wear What They Wear.
Oxford: Berg.
- Clarke, Alison and Daniel Miller. 2002. “Fashion and Anxiety.”
Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture
6(2):191-213.
- Kaiser, Susan B. 2012. Fashion and Culture Studies.
London: Bloomsbury.
- Cannon, Aubrey. 1998. “The Cultural and Historical Contexts of
Fashion.” In Consuming Fashion, Adorning the Transnational
Body. Anne Brydon, and Sandra Niessen eds. Pp. 23-39.
- Turner, T.S. 1980. “The Social Skin.” In Not Work Alone: A
Cross-cultural View of Activities Superfluous to Survival. J.
Cherfas and R. Lewin eds. Pp. 112-40. London: Temple Smith.
- Keane, Webb. 2005. “The Hazards of New Clothes: What Signs Make
Possible.” In The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience.
S. Küchler and G. Were, eds. Pp. 1-19. London: UCL Press.
- Marx, Karl. 1990. “Chapter One: Commodities.” In Capital
Volume One. London: Penguin.
- Taussig, Michael. 1977. “The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a
South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labor and the Baptism of Money.”
Comparative Studies in Society and History
19(2):130-155.
- Rofel, Lisa and Sylvia J. Yanagisako. 2019. Fabricating
Transnational Capitalism: A Collaborative Ethnography of
Italian-Chinese Global Fashion. Durham: Duke University
Press.
- Roper, Hugh-Trevor. 1983. “The Invention of Tradition: The
Highland Tradition of Scotland.” In The Invention of
Tradition. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger Pp. 15-43.
Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
- West, Candace and Don Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.”
Gender & Society 1:125-51.
- Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender
Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.”
Theater Journal 40 (4):519-531.
- Meadow, Tey. 2018. Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the
Twenty-First Century
- Holland, Dorothy, Wiliam S. Lachiotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and
Carole Cain. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. 2001.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Miller, Daniel. 1994. Modernity—an Ethnographic Approach:
Dualism and mass consumption in Trinidad. Oxford: Berg.
- Bueno, Carlos. 2014. “Insie the Mirrotocracy.” Carlos.bueno.org
(blogpost). June.
http://carlos.bueno.org/2014/06/mirrortocracy.html.
Accessed 11 December 2020.
- Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. London:
Penguin.
- Grasseni, Cristina. 2011. “Skilled Visions: Toward an Ecology
of Visual Inscription.” In Perspective on the History of Visual
Anthropology. Marcus Banks and Jay Ruby eds. Pp. 19-45.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Hunt, Alan. 2010. “A Short History of Sumptuary Laws.” In
The Fashion History reader: Global Perspectives. Giorgio
Riello and Peter McNeil eds. Pp. 43-61. London: Routledge
- Anawalt, Patricia Rieff. 1990. Indian Clothing Before
Cortés: Mesoamerican Costume From the Codices. University of
Oklahoma Press.
- Monroe, Rachel. 2020. “How to Spot a Military Impostor.”
The New Yorker October 19.
- Bayly, C.A. 1986. “The origins of swadeshi (home industry):
cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930.” In The Social Life of
Things. Arjun Appadurai ed. Pp. 285-322. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
- Friedman, S. 2004. “Embodying civility: civilizing processes
and symbolic citizenship in southeastern China. J. Asian
Stud 63(3).
- Ivaska, Andrew M. 2004. ““Anti-mini Militants Meet Modern
Misses”: Urban Style, Gender, and the Politics of “National
Culture” 1960s Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.” In Fashioning Power:
Clothing, Politics and African Identities. J. Allman ed. Pp.
105-121. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
- Luvaas, Brent. 2016. Street Style: An Ethnography of
Fashion Blogging. London: Bloomsbury.
- Woodward, S. 2005. “The Myth of Street Style in Fashion
Theory.” Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture
13(1):83-102.
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