"It is only superficial people who do not judge by appearances." - Oscar Wilde

"Fashion and Modernism" undertakes a historical look at some nodes in the constellation of English and European sartorial culture circa the mid-nineteenth century through the 1930s, with occasional dips into the American scene. "Fashion" in this context means both clothing and style, and while our focus will be on the consumption of female fashion, we will also explore theories of ornamentation, emergent forms of urbanism, spatiality, and embodiment. Topics will include: shopping/the department store; ornament/anti-ornament; flâneurie; kitsch/camp/theatricality; and some literary and visual instances foregrounding fashion or the fashion industry.

"F&M" is a reading-intensive seminar. Students will be responsible for one class presentation, and a final research paper employing historical materials/an archive such as Vogue of the period, or the Henry's textiles collection.

NOTE: **Acquaintance with a Western modernism is required**: students must have taken at least one previous course--at either the graduate or the undergraduate level--in either British, American, or European literary or visual modernism. The methodology will be an historical one from the specified time period; this class does not deal with contemporary fashion. Prior to the first class, have (re)read Woolf's *Mrs. Dalloway,* and Andreas Huyssen, "Mass Culture as Woman" from *After the
Great Divide,* and made a serious dent in Zola's *Au Bonheur du Dames* (The Ladies Paradise), in the Nelson translation. All readings will be in English.