Costume, Fashion, and Cultural Studies

This course enables students to understand fashion and costume (clothes worn by people) using the lens of cultural studies. The course will take students on a journey of non-Western clothing alongside Euro-Western clothing and under major critical movements and concepts such as cultural studies, Orientalism, post-coloniality, subalternity, pan-Africanism, feminism and gender, material culture, thing theory, visual dramaturgy, to reveal how clothes and costumes are shaped by such forces. Readings in theatre and performance, anthropology, sociology, film and media, history (and microhistories such as fashion history and theatre history) and other areas will help students develop an understanding of the global aesthetics of the body on stage, on screen and on the street.

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