ARTH 330 - Art and Fashion

(4)

SP, alternate years. What do people wear, and why? This course explores the past five centuries of fashion history with an eye toward understanding today’s sartorial conventions. The course starts from a commitment to the simple proposition that clothing matters a lot. Attending to ethical questions of production as well as consumption, the course addresses five major themes: the mediation of the body, gender representations, style, modernist constructions of consumer culture, and performance.