Dress in Art History: A Field Seminar

This field seminar introduces students to the studies of fashion and dress in art history through close readings of key literature from the 1950s, when Mary Stella Newton pioneered a scholarly approach for this nascent field in her research on clothing in painting, to recent writings that reflect expanded methodologies and new academic interests in issues such as gender and identity. Sample readings include the works by Anne Hollander, Aileen Ribeiro, Lisa Monnas, Richard Martin, Nancy Troy, and so on. We will explore various overarching themes: for example, the relationship between fashion and art; artists, patrons, and sitters’ engagements with contemporary and historical dress as individual expressions; and the complex meanings of fashion in visual representations in relation to larger political, social, and cultural contexts. We will also examine selected examples of garments, textiles, and images drawn from the BGC study collection and NYC museums. Students are expected to play an active role in offering critiques on key texts, leading discussions on thematic issues, and presenting on case studies of objects and images. The course materials will focus on Europe from the Renaissance period through the twentieth century, though students’ final projects may go beyond this temporal and geographical scope. 3 credits.