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“History of Costume: Contemporary Dress” (Spring 2014; ARCS-GE 2064)

Professor Charles E. Colman
NYU Steinhardt, Department of Art and Art Professions / Visual Culture: Costume
Studies Mondays, 2-4 P.M., Art and Art Professions Building, 34 Stuyvesant Street,
Room 304 Required books (all available at NYU Bookstore and/or on Amazon.com):
Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(Oxford History of Art 2003) Anne Hollander,
Sex and Suits
(Knopf 1994)/(Kodansha 1995) [out of print; buy used copy on Amazon] Daniel Purdy,
ed.,
The Rise of Fashion: A Reader
(Minnesota 2004) Dana Thomas,
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
(2008) [inexpensive used copies readily available] Gary Watt,
Dress, Law, and Naked Truth
(Bloomsbury 2013) (also available via NYU Libraries’ “eBrary”)

Required coursepack is available for purchase through the NYU Bookstore. Students may
instead elect to purchase each book highlighted in yellow; if bought used, the difference
in price might be minimal. Other readings are available electronically; where no
hyperlink appears, look in NYU Classes/Resources.
Please print out these readings
so you can annotate them and bring them to class for easy reference. Remaining course
requirements consist of
(1)
a midterm paper of roughly ten double-spaced pages, in which students must either (a)
engage in a hypothetical dialogue with at least two theorists discussed in the course, or
(b) design and perform a field experiment involving the modification of the student’s
appearance, devoting (i) the first half of the paper to an explanation of the objective,
methodology, and results of the experiment, and (ii) the second half of the paper to an
analysis of those results based on the material assigned and discussed in the course; and
(2)
a final paper of roughly twenty-five pages, in which each student must apply selected
historical and theoretical material covered throughout the semester (and other research, as
necessary) to a dress-related topic of her choice. Final grades will also reflect the quality
of
class participation
, with a focus on whether each student’s questions and comments during class show
thoughtful and nuanced engagement with the assigned readings and with the professor
and other students.
UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION
WEEK 1
(Jan. 26th) -Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(pp. 21-113) -Christian Garve, “On Fashion” (1792), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 65-71)
WEEK 2
(Feb. 3rd) -Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(pp. 159-215) -Eicher & Sumberg, “World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress,” in
Joanne B. Eicher,
Dress and Ethnicity: Change Across Space and Time
(Berg 1995) (pp. 295-305) -Anne Hollander,
Sex and Suits
(“The Work of Fashion,” pp. 14-29) -Daniel Leonhardt Purdy, “Introduction,” in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 1-17)
UNIT 2: THE STATE, IDEOLOGY, AND RELIGION
WEEK 3
(Feb. 10th) -Alan Hunt,
Governance of the Consuming Passi ons: A History of Sumptuary Law
(1996) (Chapter 2, “A Short History of Sumptuary Law,” pp. 17-42)

2 -Gary Watt,
Dress, Law, and Naked Truth
(Bloomsbury 2013) (Chapter 1, “Dress Is Law,” 1-11; Chapter 2, “Foundations of the
State of Dress,” pp. 13-16, 44-50; recommended but not required: Rest of Chapter 2 and
all of Chapter 4, “The Face the Law Makes,” pp. 79-121) -Ruthann Robson,

“Beyond Sumptuary: Constitutionalism, Clothes, and Bodies in Anglo-American Law,

1215-1789,” 2:2
British Journal of American Legal Studies
477-509 (Fall 2013)
[UNIVERSITY HOLIDAY FEB. 17TH – NO CLASSES] WEEK 4
(Feb. 24th) -Michael Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-Made”,
106:5
The American Historical Review
(Dec. 2001) (pp. 1553-1573 [rest of article assigned for Week 8]) -Toby Slade,
Japanese Fashion: A Cultural History
(Berg 2009) (portion of Chapter 3, “Japanese Menswear: Masculinity and Sartorial
Statecraft,” pp. 65-77) -Eugenia Paulicelli, “Fashion, the Politics of Style and National
Identity in Pre-Fascist and Fascist Italy,” 14:3
Gender and History
537–559 (Nov. 2002) -Lawrence Glickman, “‘Make Lisle the Style’: The Politics of
Fashion in the Japanese Silk Boycott, 1937-1940,”
Journal of Social History
, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Spring, 2005), pp. 573-608
WEEK 5
(Mar. 3rd) -Watt,
Dress, Law, and Naked Truth
(Ch. 5, “Addressing the Naked and Unfolding the Veil,” pp. 123-148) -Mimi Thi
Nguyen, “The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialisms and Global Feminisms in
an Age of Terror,” in 36:2
Signs
359-383 (Winter 2011)

-Arjun Appadurai,
Modernity at Large:

Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Public Worlds

(1998)

(Excerpt from Chapter 2, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,”
pp. 27-43)
UNIT 3: SEX AND GENDER
WEEK 6
(Mar. 10th) -Anne Hollander,
Sex and Suits
(Knopf 1994) (pp. 3-13, 30-62) -Simone de Beauvoir, “Social Life,” from
The Second Sex
(1953), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 126-136) -Judith Butler,
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
(Routledge 2006) (pp. 1-17) -Efrat Tseëlon, “From Fashion to Masquerade: Towards an
Ungendered Paradigm,” in Entwistle &

Wilson,
Body Dressing
(Berg 2001) (pp. 103-117)
WEEK 7
(No class 3/24 due to professor conflict; date of this make-up class TBD) -J.C. Flügel,
“The Great Masculine Renunciation and Its Causes,” from
The Psychology of Clothes
(1930), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 102-108) -Anne Hollander,
Sex and Suits
(Knopf 1994) (pp. 63-97) -George Chauncey,
Gay New York
(1994) (“The Semiotics of Inversion,” pp. 50-63) -Christopher Breward, “Manliness,
Modernity, and the Shape of Male Clothing,” in Entwistle & Wilson,
 Body Dressing
(pp. 165-181)
[SPRING BREAK – NO CLASS MARCH 17TH] WEEK 8
(Mar. 31st) -Georg Simmel, “Adornment” (1908), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 79-84) -Michael Zakim, “Sartorial Ideologies: From Homespun to Ready-Made”,
106:5
The American Historical

Review
(Dec. 2001) (pp. 1576-1586) -Liz Conor,
The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s
(2004) (pp. 1-35) -Hilary Rader, “Embodying the Single Girl in the 1960s,” in
Body Dressing
(pp. 183-197)

-Ruth Holliday, “Fashioning the Queer Self,” in

Body Dressing
(pp. 219-231

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UNIT 4: CLASS, WEALTH, AND CONSUMERISM
WEEK 9
(Apr. 7th) -Thorstein Veblen,
The Theory of the Leisure Class
(1899) (Chapter 4, “Conspicuous Consumption,” and Chapter 7, “Dress As an
Expression of the Pecuniary Culture”) -Georg Simmel, “Fashion” (1904), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 298-309) -Edward Sapir, “Fashion” (1931) -Herbert Blumer, “Fashion: From Class
Differentiation to Collective Selection,” 10:3
The Sociological Quarterly
275-291 (Summer 1969)
WEEK 10
(Apr. 14th) -Michael Zakim, “A Ready-Made Business: The Birth of the Clothing
Industry in America,” 73:1
The Business History Review
61-90 (1999) -Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(pp. 115-129) -Dana Thomas,
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
(2008) (pp. 1-38)
WEEK 11
(Apr. 21st) -Dana Thomas,
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster
(2008) (pp. 39-71) -Jean Baudrillard,
The Consumer Society
(1970) (“The Finest Consumer Object: The Body,” pp. 49-86)

-Zygmunt Bauman,
Consuming Life
(2007) (pp. 74-81)
UNIT 5: (DE?)CLUSTERING, INDIVIDUALISM, AND POSTMODERNITY
WEEK 12
(Apr. 28th) -Paul Sweetman, “Shop-Window Dummies? Fashion, the Body, and
Emergent Socialities,” in Entwistle & Wilson,
Body Dressing
(Berg 2001) (pp. 59-77) -Monica L. Miller,
Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic
Identity
(2009) (Chapter 2, “Crimes of Fashion: Dressing the Part from Slavery to Freedom,” pp.
77-136) -Kobena Mercer, “Black Hair/Style Politics,” 3
New Formations
33-54 (Winter 1987)
WEEK 13
(May 5th) -Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(pp. 217-228) -Samuel Simon Witte, “An Answer to the Question: Would It Be Harmful
or Beneficial to Establish a National Uniform?” (1791), in
The Rise of Fashion
(pp. 72-78) -Christopher Breward,
Fashion
(pp. 228-239) -Elizabeth Wilson,
Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity
(“Oppositional Dress,” pp. 179-207)
WEEK 14
(May 12th) -Herbert Spencer, “Fashion,” from
The Principles of Sociology
(1902), in
The Rise of Fashion
(328-332) -Gilles Lipovetsky,
The Empire of Fashion
(1994) (pp. 55-87) -Minh-Ha T. Pham, “Susie Bubble Is A Sign of the Times,”

13:2
Feminist Media Studies
245-267 (2013)