Learning outcomes: Based on a research project related to clothing, the seminar is designed to enhance students’ ability to carry out ethnographic research as well as process and present the research material. Students will acquire knowledge and skills such as setting research aims, demarcating the field, select informants, carry out semi-structured interviews combined with participant observation, process data and turn them into texts and powerpoint presentations. During that process, students will develop their understanding of clothing as a multi-faceted socio-cultural practice and its importance to the formation of subjectivities in both symbolic and material terms.

General Competences: 

Search for, analysis and synthesis of data and information
Development of new research ideas
Enhancing creative and critical thinking on aspects of everyday life
Enhancing communication skills
Team-work

Suggested bibliography:

• Barnard, M. (ed.) (2007) Fashion theory. A reader. London: Routledge.

• Entwistle, J. (2000) ‘Fashion and the fleshy body: dress as embodied practice’ Fashion Theory 4 (3), p. 323-348

• Miller, D. (2010) ‘Why clothing is not superficial’ in Stuff Cambridge: Polity, p. 12-41

• Rocamora, A. και Smelik, A. (ed.) (2016), Thinking through Fashion. A guide to key theorists. London: I.B. Tauris.