Module Convenor: Dr Michael Meeuwis

What does it mean to narrate a garment, itself possessing a narrative, within a text? How do these narratives clothe us, and how do these narratives sell? We’ll start with theories of fashion drawn from the last two hundred years before considering three different case studies. Examples might include fashion in Victorian literature (Brontë, James, and Wilde), fashion in literature from and about postwar Britain (Spark, Selvon, and McInnes), garments in mythology from Sumerian myth to the present day, a study of runway collections inspired by Virginia Woolf’s novels Orlando and Mrs. Dalloway, an analysis of a particular designer’s work across a variety of international media, etcetera etcetera. Delivery will vary year to year in response to museum shows offered by regional institutions such as the Herbert Art Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Six lectures will furnish historical and visual context, allowing our focus to remain on close literary analysis. Economics will be a focus throughout: we’ll learn to be critical of fashion narratives, to engage with them emotionally, and to ponder them as career skills. This module should be of particular interest to students considering careers in fashion and other defining British industries—but will ultimately interest anyone with a mindful interest in how we narrate how humans get dressed.

Assessment:

Two papers, 40% each (second-year students 3,000 words, third-year 3,500 words)

One individual presentation on a garment in literature, 20%; presentations may be recorded in advance to be shown in class. Students with concerns about presentations are encouraged to contact the instructor.

 

I've used ebooks wherever possible. The only books not available as ebooks are:

1. Rhys, Hello, Midnight (1939)

2. Spark, The Girls of Slender Means (1963)

3. Selvon, The Lonely Londoners (1956)

4. McInnes, Absolute Beginners (1959)

5. William Gibson, Pattern Recognition (2003)

These are all heavily available on second-hand sites--I'd encourage you to shop there first. I'm not fussed about editions. They also should be available as ebooks on the library website.

Dear 2024/5 students: hello! I'm in the process of (curating? not-gatekeeping?) the syllabus for next year. I'll update once finalised; for now, please regard any texts below as provisional.

 

Term one: systems

1: theories – economics PowerPoint Handout	Gogol, "The Overcoat"	Karl Marx, Commodity Fetishism Peter Stallybras, "Marx's Coat" Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life" Ulrich Lehmann, Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity, "Baudelaire, Gautier, and the Origins of Fashion in Modernity"
2: theories – gender and the fashion system PowerPoint Handout	Virginia Woolf, "The New Dress"	Roland Barthes, The Language of Fashion, all chapters except for chapters 5 and the Stafford Afterword Taylor, Lou. “Fashion and Dress History: Theoretical and Methodological approaches,” in The Handbook of Fashion Studies
3: theories - desire and modernity PowerPoint Handout	Colette, "The Hidden Woman"	Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism” Jacques Lacan, "The Mirror Stage" J. Entwistle, "Addressing the Body," in Fashion Theory: A Reader Lehmann, Tigersprung, "Benjamin and the Revolution of Fashion in Modernity"
4: theories - textiles PowerPoint Handout	Thackeray, Vanity Fair, chapter 4, "The Green Silk Purse"	Fashion Theory: A Reader section 1 (Vinken and Bourdieu) and section 2 (Simmel, Sapir, Davis) Sukanya Banerjee, "Ecologies of Cotton" Lisa Lowe, "A Fetishism of Colonial Commodities"
5: theories - stuff and things PowerPoint Handout		Bruno Latour, Assembling the Social Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter
6:
7: Eighteenth-century Fashion Cultures PowerPoint Handout		Derrida, Spectres of Marx, material on Hauntology Henri Bergson, from Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, section collected as 'The Idea of Duration' in Henri Bergson, Henri Bergson: Key Writings, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey (Continuum, 2002)
8: Eighteenth-century Fashion Cultures
9: Eighteenth-century Fashion Cultures
10: Fashion Cultures of High Modernism

Term two: cases and scenes

1: Fashion Cultures of High Modernism
2: Fashion Cultures of High Modernism
3: Fashion Cultures of High Modernism
4: Harlem Renaissance
5: Harlem Renaissance		Dick Hebdige, Subculture: "Introduction: The Meaning of Style"; "Ideology: a lived relation"
6:
7: Harlem Renaissance		Hebdige, Subculture: ""Hipsters, beats and teddy boys"; "Home-grown cool: the style of the mods"
8: Queer Subcultures PowerPoint Handout
9: Queer Subcultures Handout	Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues (1993)	Derek Guy, "Straight Copying: How Gay Fashion Goes Mainstream"
10: Queer Subcultures