Art History Senior Seminar: Schedule (2009)

SCHEDULE

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe
with
Professor Tracy Hamilton
Professor Kimberly Morse-Jones

Spring 2009

Dressing the Body: Textiles, Clothing
and Fashion in Art through the Ages

A critical examination of the clothing worn by women and men, with special attention given to the form, function, and design of clothing and how it has been represented in Western art from prehistoric times to the present

SCHEDULE

WEEK 1
January 21
Introduction to the seminar
Requirements
INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION:

Textiles (fabric, cloth)

Dress, Clothing, Costume, Uniforms, Religious clothing, Sportswear, Fashion

Utility Principle (dressing for protection, warmth, or comfort)
Hierarchical Principle (clothing intended to indicate social position or marital status)
Seduction Principle (clothing designed to erotically attract the opposite, or same, sex)
Identity Principle (clothing worn to alter either identity as perceived by others or own self-identity, or both)

Selection of presentation topics

WEEK 2
January 28
Prehistory

PRELIMINARY READING:
The Caveman's New Clothes (Olga Soffer)
Ice Age clothing said to be more advanced than previously thought (News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Woven cloth dates back 2,700 years (BBC News)
Furs for Evening, but Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby (New York Times)
World's oldest hat revealed (BBC News)
Gravettian Culture (Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Archaeology in Brno, The Center for Paleolithic and Paleoethnological Research)

PART I: From Ancient Times to the Middle Ages

WEEK 3
February 4
Ancient Near East

REPORT A1:_____________

Ancient Egypt

REPORT A2: Rebecca Olander

PRELIMINARY READING:
The Fiber Revolution: Textile Extensification, Alienation, and Social Stratification in Ancient Mesopotamia (JStor)
The Dress of the Ancient Egyptians: I. In the Old and Middle Kingdoms (JStor)
The Dress of the Ancient Egyptians. II. In the Empire (JStor)
Ancient Textiles From Egypt in the University of Michigan Collection (Amazon.com)
A Pleated Linen Dress from a Sixth Dynasty Tomb at Gebelein Now in the Museo Egizio, Turin (JStor)
A Note on Ancient Fashions: Four Early Egyptian Dresses in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (JStor)
Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian & Persian Costume (Amazon.com)

WEEK 4
February 11
Ancient Aegean & Greece

REPORT A3: Stephanie Perks

Ancient Etruria & Rome

REPORT A4: Shannon Schalestock

PRELIMINARY READING:
Minoan Dress (JStor)
The Costume of the Servant on the Grave-Relief of Hegeso (JStor)
Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy (Amazon.com)
Etruscan Dress (Randolph Library)
The Clothing of the Ancient Romans (Sweet Briar Library)
The World of Roman Costume (Sweet Briar Library)
Dress and the Roman Woman: Self-Presentation and Society (Sweet Briar Library)
Goddess: The Classical Mode (Sweet Briar Library)

WEEK 5
February 18
Byzantine

REPORT A5: Ashley-Lauren Whitacre

Early Medieval

REPORT A6: Elisa Marani

PRELIMINARY READING:
Byzantine Dress: Representations of Secular Dress in Eighth- to Twelfth-century Painting (Amazon.com)
Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (Amazon.com)
Cloth And Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700 (Amazon.com)
Viking Clothing (Amazon.com)
Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland (Amazon.com)

WEEK 6
February 25
NO SEMINAR

WEEK 7
March 4
Later Middle Ages

REPORT A7: Lauren Ogilvie

Gothic

REPORT A8: Brione Smith

PRELIMINARY READING:
Dress in the Middle Ages (Sweet Briar Library)
Medieval Clothing and Textiles, vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, vol. 5 (Amazon.com)
English Costume of the Early Middle Ages; the Tenth to the Thirteenth Centuries (Sweet Briar Library)
Courtly Love Undressed: Reading through Clothes in Medieval French Culture (RC & SBC Books On The Web)
Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medieval Peasant Labor (JStor)
Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340-1365 (Amazon.com)
Christine de Pizan's "Treasure of the City of Ladies": A Study of Dress and Social Hierarchy (JStor)
Orientalizing Costume in Early Fifteenth-Century French Manuscript Painting (JStor)
Medieval Dress and Fashion (Amazon.com)
Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (Sweet Briar Library)
Mediaeval Costume and Life (Sweet Briar Library)
Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings (Amazon.com)
Fashion in Medieval France (Amazon.com)
Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Amazon.com)

PART II: From the Renaissance to the 18th Century

WEEK 8
March 11
15th-century Northern Europe

REPORT B1: Stephanie Perks

15th-century Italy

REPORT B2: Brione Smith

PRELIMINARY READING:
Dressing Renaissance Florence (Amazon.com)
Fashions of the Renaissance in England, France, Spain and Holland (Randolph Library)
Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300-1550 (Amazon.com)
Clothing Culture, 1350-1650 (Amazon.com)

WEEK 9
March 18
SPRING BREAK

WEEK 10
March 25
16th-century Northern Europe

REPORT B3: Elisa Marani

16th-century Italy

REPORT B4: Sarah Strapp

PRELIMINARY READING:
Vecellio's Renaissance Costume Book (1598) (Sweet Briar Library)
Authentic Everyday Dress of the Renaissance (Amazon.com)
Patterns of Fashion: The Cut and Construction of Clothes for Men and Women c. 1560-1620 (Amazon.com)
Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Randolph Library)
Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's Ginevra de' Benci and Renaissance Portraits of Women (Sweet Briar Library)
Tudor Costume and Fashion (Sweet Briar Library)
A Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century (Randolph Library)

WEEK 11
April 1
17th-century Northern Europe

REPORT B5: Shannon Schalestock

17th-century Italy and Spain

REPORT B6: Ashley-Lauren Whitacre

PRELIMINARY READING:
Handbook of English Costume in the Seventeenth Century (Randolph Library)
Fashion in Detail: From the 17th and 18th Centuries (Sweet Briar Library)
Fashions through the Centuries: Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo (Sweet Briar Library)

WEEK 12
April 8
18th-century France

REPORT B7: Rebecca Olander

18th-century England

REPORT B8: Lauren Ogilvie

PRELIMINARY READING:
English Dress in the Age of Shakespeare (Sweet Briar Library)
The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820 (Sweet Briar Library)
Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (RC & SBC Books On The Web)
Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century (Sweet Briar Library)
Dress in Eighteenth-Century England (Randolph Library)
Revolution in Fashion: European Clothing, 1715-1815 (Sweet Briar Library)
An Elegant Art: Fashion & Fantasy in the Eighteenth Century (Sweet Briar Library)

PART III: 19th and 20th Century

WEEK 13
April 15
19th-century France

REPORT C1: Lauren Ogilvie
REPORT C2: Elisa Marani

19th-century England

REPORT C3: Sarah Strapp
REPORT C4: Stephanie Perks

PRELIMINARY READING:
Fashioning a Nation: Fashion and National Costume in Bertuch's "Journal des Luxus und der Moden" (1786-1827) (JStor)
The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789- 1815 (Sweet Briar Library)
Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres's Images of Women (Randolph Library)
Whistler, Women, & Fashion (Randolph Library)
Victorian Panorama: A Survey of Life & Fashion from Contemporary Photographs (Sweet Briar Library)
Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet's Paris (Amazon.com)
Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (Randolph Library)
Fashion and Reality (1840-1914) (Sweet Briar Library)
Dressed for the Country, 1860-1900 (Sweet Briar Library)
The Corset: A Cultural History (Sweet Briar Library)
Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset (RC & SBC Books On The Web)
Health, Art & Reason: Dress Reformers of the 19th Century (Randolph Library)

WEEK 14
April 22
20th-century Europe

REPORT C5: Shannon Schalestock
REPORT C6: Brione Smith

20th-century America

REPORT C7: Ashley-Lauren Whitacre
REPORT C8: Rebecca Olander

PART IV: The 21st Century

WEEK 15
April 29
21st-century

Art History Senior Seminar Fashion Show!
Lauren Ogilvie: Club Attire
Rebecca Olander: Classic
Stephanie Perks: Athletic
Shannon Schalestock: Preppy
Brione Smith: Gothic
Ashley-Lauren Whitacre: Hippie / Bohemian
Sarah Strapp: Punk
Alexis Parker: Outdoors
Carolanne Bonanno: Hip Hop / Urban

PRELIMINARY READING:
Breaking the Mode: Contemporary Fashion (Sweet Briar Library)
Wild: Fashion Untamed (Sweet Briar Library)
Underwear as outerwear (BBC News Magazine)
Fashion Babylon (Amazon.com)
The End of Fashion: How Marketing Changed the Clothing Business Forever (Amazon.com)
Fashion Brands: Branding Style from Armani to Zara (Amazon.com)
Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture (Amazon.com)
New Women's Dress for Success (Amazon.com)
Attention to Detail: A Woman's Guide to Professional Appearance and Conduct (Sweet Briar: Career Planning In Prothro)

ART HISTORY SENIOR SEMINAR 2009