Characterized as a social, economic, aesthetic, sexual and psychological formation, fashion stands as one of the major defining features of modernity. On the one hand, it offers a flexibility of self-representation in the rapid change of time by encoding a shifting ※now-ness§ with constant innovations. It enacts, on the other hand, a magical accession to the past by perpetuating a recycling of history. In the words of Walter Benjamin, ※fashion is a tiger＊s leap into the past.§
This graduate seminar is an introduction to theories of fashion and modernity from the mid-nineteenth century to the early-twentieth century. Starting with a theoretical mapping of time, space and fashion, it will move through historically specific discourses on the fabrications of fashion, body, gender, sexuality, colonialism, nationality and the metropolis.

Grading:
Class participation and presentation 30%
Term Paper 70%

Syllabus

2/19 Introduction: Fashioning modernity

2/26 (1) Baudelaire, ※The Painter of Modern Life§
Simmel, ※Fashion,§ ※The Metropolis and Mental Life§

3/5 (2) Benjamin, The Arcade Project 3-81

3/12 (3) Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity 1-66, 117-154

3/19 (4) Hollander, Sex and Suits: The Evolution of Modern Dress 63-173

3/26 (5) Ko, Cinderella＊s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding 1-68

4/09 (6) Finnane, ※Military Culture and Chinese Dress in the Early Twentieth
Century§
Clark, ※ The Cheung Sam: Issues of Fashion and Cultural Identity§
Harrist, ※Clothes Makes the Man: Dress, Modernity and Masculinity in
China, ca. 1912-1937§

4/16 (7) Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India 1-93

4/23 (8) Anderson, Kafka＊s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg
Fin de Si豕cle 1-73

4/30 (9) Boscagli, Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early
Twentieth Century 1-54, 129-164

5/07 (10) Lehmann, Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity 3-51, 125-152

5/14 (11) Lehmann, Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity 199-278

5/21 (12) Lehmann, Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity 281-354

6/04 Class presentation of term papers

6/11 Conclusion: The Fabrication of Temporality