Roundtable on Teaching and Visualizing Global Fashion History

AHA Session 220
Saturday, January 7, 2023: 3:30 PM-5:00 PM
Room 404 (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 4th Floor)
Chairs:
Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoue, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Papers:
The Joys and Challenges of Engaging with Fashion History Globally
Alison Matthews David, Ryerson University
Fashion as History: Engaging Students in the Classroom
Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, Case Western Reserve University
Teaching the Fashioned Body in Global History: The State of the Field
Rachel Silberstein, University of Puget Sound
Teaching Politics through Fashion History: Africa as a Case Study
Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoue, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Session Abstract

This roundtable focuses on the teaching and visualizing of fashion, the popular styles of dress and ornament at a specific historical period. It will focus on the creative ways in which scholars might use diverse and nontraditional methods to teach global fashion history in the classroom and to a non-specialist audience. The participants seek to emphasize the monumental importance of teaching history through material and visual objects and highlight why fashion is a valuable lens with which to do it. The panelists will draw from diverse regions—Africa, China, the United States—and time periods—from the nineteenth century to the Cold War era—to examine how historians might disseminate general knowledge about fashion history through diverse pedagogies. In doing so, the roundtable participants seek to reveal unexpected approaches to teaching and visualizing fashion history during in-class instruction and through other professional activities. For example, panelists will discuss varied teaching activities such as using digital fashion and costume collections to provide greater accessibility to the subject matter, assigning graphic novels to explore visual aesthetics in history, and drawing from media outside of history to bring the subject matter to life such as newspapers, films, street art as well as scholarly texts in a range of disciplines. Also, panelists will explain how they have engaged with fashion history beyond the classroom, such as curating art exhibitions on dress history and founding academic journals on the subject. The roundtable will conclude with reflections on the challenges of teaching the subject matter, particularly in a STEM-oriented university; on the panelists’ endeavors to globalize (and diversify) fashion history; and future directions in the study of fashion history.
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