Fashion and Justice

Dr. Jonathan Michael Square
squaj264@newschool.edu
Office Hours: By appointment only

Parsons School of Design
School of Art and Design History and Theory
PGHT 5562: Fashion and Justice; CRN 5908
Spring 2021
Thursdays, 9:00 pm - 10:50 am

https://NewSchool.zoom.us/j/99472497398

Course Description

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. Fashion & Justice will examine the role of fashion in challenging inequality through sartorial ingenuity. Through select readings, in-class discussion and topical assignments, students will be encouraged to interpret and remedy problematic issues in fashion today, proposing possible futures. The course seeks to help students 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.

This course will investigate the ways in which fashioned identities emerge within a racialized context in effort to gain access, visibility and power, bridging key concepts in fashion studies with critical race theory, as well as methodologies from disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, art history and material culture. Classic and contemporary texts along with an examination of media imagery present in film, fashion editorials, consumer advertising and pop culture ephemera will identify and address the complications of fashion and power today. Students in this course will come away with a deeper understanding of the intersection of fashion, race, labor and justice, and will critically address historical and contemporary social issues within the fashion system.

Learning Outcomes

By the successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Deepen their understanding of foundational theories and systemic issues regarding fashion, race, and inequality

2. 
Develop fluency in critical thinking and writing skills that address fashion, race and power in a cogent manner

3. Develop familiarity with methodologies used in the study of visual and material culture 


4. Recognize and problematize existing business practices and design strategies challenging the fashion system today

grade breakdown

Class presentation (on the last day of class) 10%

Attendance & participation 10%

Thesis statement, outline, and annotated bibliography 10%

Fashion and Justice in Praxis 30%

10-page Final Paper 40%

Fashion and Justice in Praxis

Custom Collaborative

FABSCRAP

The Model Alliance

Course Schedule

Week 1 – January 23: Introduction to the Course

Week 2 – January 29: Defining and redefining Fashion?

• Abby Lillethun, Linda Welters, and Joanne B. Eicher, “(Re)Defining Fashion,” Dress 38 (2012): 75-97.38 (2012): 75-97.

• Square, Jonathan. “How Enslaved People Helped Shape Fashion History,” Guernica.

Week 3 – February 5: Fashion in the Family Archive

Please bring a physical or digital family photo to today’s class.

• Lee, Zun. “Fade Resistance: We Are Enough as We Are.” Filmed September 10, 2017. YouTube video, 1 hour, 13 minutes. Posted September 13, 2017.

• Pham, Minh-Ha T., and Mimi Thi Nguyen, Of Another Fashion

• Rosales, Guadalupe, Veteranas And Rucas

• Waheed, Adreinne, Waheed Photo Archive

• Nuevayorkinos

• The Aids Memorial

• Rainbow Shoe Repair: An Unexpected Theater of Flyness

Week 4 – February 12: Love, Hate, and Culture Wars

• Jackson, Lauren Michele. “The Cover Girl: Blackness, Groundbreaking,” In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue…and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation, 31-46. Boston: Beacon Press, 2019.

• Scafidi, Susan. “The Commodification of Culture.” In Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, 5-12. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Week 5 – February 19: Blackfishing and the Persistence of Blackface

• Jackson, Lauren Michele. “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs.” Teen Vogue, August 2, 2017.

• Jackson, Lauren Michele. "The Women “Blackfishing” on Instagram Aren’t Exactly Trying to Be Black,” Slate, November 29, 2018.

• Lott, Eric, “Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in American Culture,” in Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 15-38.

• Square, Jonathan M. “Is Instagram's Newest Sensation Just Another Example of Cultural Appropriation?.” Fashionista, Mar 27, 2018.

Week 6 – February 26: Ethical Fashion in Praxis

We are meeting at the studio of artist Andrew Ondrejcak at 179 East Broadway, New York, NY 10002.

Week 7 – March 5: Fashioning a Gender Renaissance

• Lewis, Shantrelle P., introduction to Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style

• Nazim, Hafeezah, “We Ask Some DapperQs Why Fashion Matters,” July 1, 2017.

• Paris Is Burning (1990)

• Suited (2016)

Week 8 – March 12: Dress, Citizenship, and Belonging

Thesis statement, outline, and annotated bibliography by midnight

• Jorae, Wendy Rouse. “The Limits of Dress: Chinese American Childhood, Fashion, and Race in the Exclusion Era.” In Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter 2010).

• Miller, Monica. “Crimes of Fashion: Dressing the Part from Slavery to Freedom,” In Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

  ***

  Activity: In-class image analysis

  • “Photograph of the Shibuya Family in Mountain View, California,” 1942

  • Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center

  • Selected images of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and W. E. B. Du Bois

Week 8 – March 26: From the Runway to the Factory Floor

• Human Rights Watch. “Whoever Raises their Head Suffers the Most”: Workers’ Rights in Bangladesh’s Garment Factories”

• The True Cost (2015)

• Ziff, Sara. “Why Models Need Labor Protections”

Week 9 – April 2: Beauty and Aesthetic Labor

• Square, Jonathan M. “The Fashion Industry Struggles at the Intersection of Race and Size on the Red Carpet,” Fashionista, October 17, 2018.

• Summers, Brandi Thompson. “Race as Aesthetic: The Politics of Vision, Visibility, and Visuality in Vogue Italia’s ‘A Black Issue’” In QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 2017), 81-108.

• Wissinger, Elizabeth. “Black-Black-Black: How Race Is Read,” in This Year's Model: Fashion, Media, and the Making of Glamour (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 216- 242.

Week 10 – April 9: Eco-Fashion and Sustainability

• Barenblat, Ayesha and Ruby Veridiano. “Sustainable Fashion’s Race Problem.” Re/Make, June 22, 2018.

• Dahir, Abdi Latif. "How “Made in Rwanda” Is Breathing Life into Kigali’s Fashion Scene." The New Times, May 25, 2019.

• van Sant, Grant. “The Problem with One-for-One Models.” Business of Fashion, August 8, 2014.

• Gambino, Lauren. “‘It’s about Our Dignity’: Vintage Clothing Ban in Rwanda Sparks U.S. Trade Dispute” The Guardian, December 29, 2017.

Week 11 – April 16: The Globalization of Beauty

• Hunter, Margaret L. 2011. "Buying Racial Capital: Skin Bleaching and Cosmetic Surgery in a Globalized World.” The Journal of Pan African Studies 4.4 (June 2011): 142-164.

• Thi Nguyen, Mimi. “The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialisms and Global Feminisms in an Age of Terror” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 36.2 (Winter 2011): 359-383.

Week 12 – April 23: The End of the Trend: Fashion Consumption in the Age of Late Capitalism

• Brooke, Eliza. “How the Great Recession Influenced a Decade of Design,” Vox, Dec 27, 2018.

• Horyn, Cathy. “The Post-Trend Universe,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2015.

• Land, Stephanie. “The Class Politics of Decluttering, The New York Times, July 18, 2016.

• Mull, Amanda. “There’s No Such Thing as a Feminist Brand,” Racked, Jul 18, 2018.

• Thackara, Tess. “How Frida Kahlo Became a Global Brand,” Artsy, Dec 19, 2017.

• K-Hole, “Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom,” 2013.

Week 13 – April 30: Power to the People: Fashion and Populism

• Emma Hope Allwood, “Why the Telfar Shopping Bag is This Decade’s Most Important Accessory,” Dazed, August 8, 2019.

• Jonathan M. Square, “Power to the People: How Willi Smith Paved the Way for the Rise of Streetwear,” in Willi Smith: Street Couture (New York: Rizzoli, 2020).

Week 14 – May 7: Sparking a Fashion Revolution

In-class 10-minute presentations of the research for final papers