New Approaches to Decolonizing Fashion History and Period Styles

New Approaches to Decolonizing Fashion History and Period Styles: Re-Fashioning Pedagogies offers a wide array of inclusive, global, practical approaches for teaching costume and fashion history. Costume designers, technicians, and historians have spent the last several years re-evaluating how they teach costume and fashion history, acknowledging the need to refocus the discourse to include a more global perspective. This book is a collection of pedagogical methods aimed to do just that, with an emphasis on easy reference, accessible activities, and rubrics, and containing a variety of ways to restructure the course. Each chapter offers a course description, syllabus calendar, course objectives, and learning outcomes, as well as sample activities from instructors across the country who have made major changes to their coursework. Using a combination of personal narratives, examples from their work, bibliographies of helpful texts, and student responses, contributors suggest a variety of ways to decolonize the traditionally Western-focused fashion history syllabus. This collection of pedagogical approaches is intended to support and inspire instructors teaching costume design, costume history, fashion history, period styles, and other aesthetic histories in the arts.

Ashley Bellet is a professional costume designer and crafts artisan. She is an assistant professor of costume design at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and secretary for the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT).

Introduction: New Perspectives and Taking Chances 1. Re-Fashioning Time: An Object-Based Approach to The History of Style 2. Research Methods for Fashion History and Technology 3. Conscious Fashion History 4. Fashion Forward: A History of Dress in Global Context 5. Global Dress History for Undergraduate General Education 6. Historic Costume and Decor Utilizing People- and Place-Based Curriculum 7. An Abridged Clothing History in Four Construction Techniques 8. Examining and Creating Connections in Costume History Through Cultural Intersections and Alternative Assessment Models 9. Expanding and Deconstructing the Western Fashion History Ideology 10. Fashion and Costume: Global Adornment and Attire 11. The March of History Gives Way to Flowers in a Field 12. Activities for the Classroom Project A: Worn History: Personal History Through Clothes Project B: Final Assignment: World Building Project C: Historic Tools and Techniques: An Exercise in Material Culture Observation