ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP:
Fashion forms part of a society’s rich tapestry and can serve as an entry point into contemplating how marginalized and racialized communities understand themselves and their place in the world. FASHION & JUSTICE is a daylong workshop that examines the role of fashion in challenging inequality through sartorial ingenuity. The schedule will include an analysis of artwork and artistic projects, partial film screenings, review of relevant literature, a conversation with guest speaker Dr. Lyndon Gill of UT, and a look at designers, artists, journalists, curators, photographers, and academics who explore the fashion system through a critical lens. Participants will leave the workshop with a #fashionandjustice syllabus equipping them with tools to understand how marginalized communities harness fashion to negotiate the complexities of power and visibility (and the lack thereof), proposing substantive solutions for a more just fashion system.

THE INSTRUCTORS:
Jonathan Michael Square, PhD
Jonathan Michael Square is a writer and professor of history at Harvard University, specializing in fashion and visual culture in the African Diaspora. Jonathan received a Ph.D in history from New York University, a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin, and a bachelor’s from Cornell University.

Kimberly M. Jenkins, M.A.
Kimberly Jenkins is a visiting assistant professor of fashion history and theory at Pratt Institute and part-time lecturer at Parsons School of Design. Kimberly specializes in the sociocultural and historical influences behind why we wear what we wear, specifically addressing how politics, psychology, race and gender shapes the way we ‘fashion’ our identity.

GUEST:
Lyndon K. Gill, PhD, is currently an Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He was born in New York City and raised on all the Trinbagonian culture that Jamaica, Queens, would allow. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a BA in African & African American Studies. He received his PhD in African American Studies and Anthropology (with a Secondary Field in Studies of Women, Gender & Sexuality) from Harvard University. His scholarship focuses on Queer aesthetics in the African Diaspora, the erotic, LGBT art and activism in Caribbean cultures, African-based spiritual traditions in the Americas, and subjectivity and community building.

This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department.