Topics in Latina and Latino Social and Political Issues (392-0-2)
Topic
Latinx Fashion
Instructors
Gabriel Andres Guzman
Meeting Info
Wirtz 240 Seminar Room 2: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
How is fashion performed and expressed through the body as a performance of identity and culture? Understanding fashion as a modal practice that aestheticizes culture enables a deeper query into how identity becomes layered and expressed by and through the body across various contexts. In this course, students will each investigate the relationship between Latinx culture and fashion to consider how meaning is rendered and produced through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality. We will be focusing on how our upbringing influences the way we dress and how we feel in our body. Consequently, this class considers the home as a valuable site of knowledge production, considering how personal narrative, objects, and memory, underpin our understanding and experiences of fashion often rooted in survival. In doing so, this course will consider how media portrayal of fashion at the mainstream and local level across the late 20th century and 21st century overlaps with Latinx cultural histories and nostalgia. To develop our methodological wardrobe, we will engage with an array of critical texts and objects that highlight the intersections of gender, nationality, race, and class to understand the implications of fashioning culture on the body, that stratify between the runway and everyday life. This course will feature in-class workshops, artist talks, social media analysis (i.e: YouTube, TikTok), film, photography, and other media, culminating with a final creative project.
Learning Objectives
Students will:
1) understand and analyze how fashion is performed and expressed through the body and the implications of fashioning culture onto the body;
2) query how identity becomes layered and expressed by and through the body across various social contexts and spaces by drawing from our personal experiences;
3) explore the role of media and its portrayal of fashion across the late 20th and 21st century overlaping with Latinx cultural histories and nostalgia at the mainstream and local level;
4) students will each investigate the relationship between Latinx culture and fashion to consider how meaning is rendered and produced through the lens of race, gender, and sexuality in everyday life by developing a culmulative final creative project
5) engage in storytelling and art-practice in critical and thoughtful ways;
Class Materials (Required)
There are no required books or texts. All materials and readings will be provided by the instructor and will be available on Canvas. Readings and materials will be posted on Canvas. No purchase necessary.
Class Attributes
Social and Behavioral Science Foundational Discipl
Interdisciplinary Distro-rules apply
Social & Behavioral Sciences Distro Area
Ethics & Values Distro Area
Enrollment Requirements
Enrollment Requirements: Registration is reserved for Latina and Latino Majors and Minors during pre-registration. Regular registration will be open to all majors/minors after the pre-registration period.