Bard Graduate Center is a research institute for advanced, interdisciplinary study of diverse material worlds. We support the innovative scholarship of our faculty and students as well as resident fellows, guest curators and artists, and visiting speakers.

Photo by Fresco Arts Team.

Our Public Humanities + Research department focuses on making scholarly work widely available and accessible through the coordination of the fellowship program and public programming that combines academic research with exhibition-related events. Across the institution—from the classroom to the gallery, from publications to this website—we utilize digital media to facilitate and share original research. This section outlines current programming and provides a repository for past scholarly content.

From Left to Right: Harry B. Lachman. “The Day Off Duty.” Femina, June 1917. © Diktats bookstore. Two women with a soldier wearing the standard-issue military coat designed by Paul Poiret, ca. 1915. Postcard. Private collection. A woman in work clothes, Paris. “The new professions for women since the war,” Excelsior, June 24, 1917. © Excelsior–L’Équipe / Roger-Viollet, RV-72194-51.

This symposium on new research in fashion studies will celebrate the opening of the exhibition French Fashion, Women, and the First World War at Bard Graduate Center (on view September 5, 2019 – January 5, 2020). In honor of the Bard Graduate Center’s mission to bridge the divide between texts and objects, this symposium will invite scholars who think critically about fashion’s materiality to present their latest research. How has the material turn contributed to producing a discursive space where questions about clothing become central? How has the close study of clothing and textiles advanced the discipline of cultural history? Bringing together experts in the fields of history, art history, and ethnography, this symposium aims to show the direction in which the field of fashion studies is advancing today.

1 pm
Deborah L. Krohn
Bard Graduate Center
Welcome

Nina Stritzler-Levine
Bard Graduate Center Gallery
Remarks

Maude Bass-Krueger and Sophie Kurkdjian
Leiden University and Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (IHTP)
Introduction

1:20 pm
Anne Bissonnette
University of Alberta
Studying Fashion, War, and Politics in 1790s France: A Material Culture Perspective

1:45 pm
Peter McNeil
University of Technology Sydney
Appearing and Being: Macaroni Materialities, c. 1760-1780

2:10 pm
Questions and Discussion

2:20 pm
Coffee Break

2:45 pm
Justine De Young
Fashion Institute of Technology
Working Girl: Sex, Fashion, Class, and the Demoiselle de magasin

3:10 pm
Ariane Fennetaux
Université Paris Diderot
The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives

3:35
Sylvia Houghteling
Bryn Mawr College
Clothing Materials as Cultural History in Early Modern South Asia

4:00 pm
Questions and Discussion

4:30 pm
Reception