KX00FT42-3002 SOCIOLOGY OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION AND CLOTHING
“If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what's going on in the world as a headline in The New York Times.” - Anna Wintour
This course is an introduction to the sociology of sustainable fashion and clothing. Students will engage in studying fashion and clothing from a sociological lens. Each session will bring attention to a different sociological aspect present within the practice and phenomenon of fashion with the eventual aim of critically examining the extent to which various SDGs address these tenets of a sociology of sustainable fashion.
Session one will begin by introducing students to the aims of the course, course content, important deadlines, reading materials and assignments.
Session two will explore how fashion has traditionally been understood as a means of creating and sustaining class hierarchies within societies.
We will then examine sustainable fashion practices in this light to explore if sustainability driven fashion addresses or perpetuates class differences and elitism in societies?
In session three our focus will shift to the works of contemporary scholars that explore fashion as a symbolic medium of expression and the role it plays in influencing understandings of the self and body-image. We will continue to examine the possibilities slow fashion practices might provide in creating body positivity and well-being .
Session four till seven will examine how fashion is used to construct and even challenge societal understandings of ethnicity, race and material culture and critically examine how these aspects are represented in sustainable fashion practices (in particular certain SDGs).
Participation in the course will enable students to create a revised understanding of what it means to be a designer in the 21st century by examining the dual nature of designers as agents that shape sustainable fashion practices and also get shaped by larger sociological and structural forces that encompass global fashion and clothing practices.
I welcome you to the course and look forward to meeting you all!
Dr. Marium Durrani, Lecturer