ENGL 4416 Fashioning the Nation: English Canadian and American Television, Film, Online Content, and Fashion
This course explores the recent significance of television, film, and online content, the impact of these mediums on the fashion industry, and the ways in which television, film and online content shared through the internet have themselves become part of the creation, marketing, and consumption of fashion, from haute couture to mass market brands. The class considers how the pairing of fashion with television, film, and certain electronic social media forms and content have important implications for contemporary definitions of citizenship. Drawing on the theoretical work of media studies, cultural studies, and literary scholars, we will consider how “the public imaginary” of Canadian and American society has changed with the advent of film, television, and the internet, and specifically led to the creation of new communities through media interactions, a phenomenon that John Hartley provocatively calls “DIY citizenship.” Like television, fashion has been viewed as part of a traditionally feminine private sphere, yet both are important everyday cultural manifestations of identity. This course explores the ways in which an increasingly complex set of cultural, economic, and political meanings emerge in relation to particular figures and shows within North America, such as televisual, filmic, and online characters, fashion designers, stylists, editors, reality television participants, and viewers, all of whom are potential consumers. In addition, we will consider how private life and consumer markets create the possibility for democratic reconfigurations that challenge established notions of the national citizen and lead to the creation of alter-narratives by those who have been marginalized by such definitions or are unacknowledged as citizens in their own right. Finally, questions of gender, sexual orientation, and body image are central to the course, in probing how citizenship has been shaped by white, affluent, heterosexual norms both north and south of the forty-ninth parallel.
We will be drawing on a wide selection of texts from a variety of media, including novels, movies, children’s books, television shows, websites, videos (from TikTok and other social media platforms), and print advertisements. The course will be run in a discussion format, and the formal evaluation will include a final essay, a group presentation, short essays, and an in-class test. There will be no final exam. Primary texts may include the following:
Cashmere If You Can—Wawa Hohhot
Birdie—Tracey Lindberg
Paris is Burning—Jenny Livingston
Female Trouble—John Waters
Anne of Green Gables: The Graphic Novel by Mariah Marsden, Kendra Phipps et al.
Episodes of Sex in the City, Mad Men, Riverdale, and Rue Paul’s Drag Race
The theoretical texts will include excerpts/selections from some of the following, but all required readings will be placed on e-reserves for ease of access. You may wish to consult other works listed below when seeking secondary sources for your essay:
The Fashion Reader, Second Edition, eds. Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun
Clothes by John Harvey
Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing by Diana Crane
The Television Studies Reader, eds. Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson
Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader, eds. Juliet Ash and Elizabeth Wilson
Net Mode: Web Fashion Now by Laird Borrelli
Fashion: The Definitive Visual Guide: New Edition
The Little Dictionary of Fashion by Christian Dior
The Fashion System by Roland Barthes
On Fashion, eds. Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss
The Queen of America Goes to Washington City by Lauren Berlant
The Audience Studies Reader, eds. Will Booker and Deborah Jermyn
Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis, eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson
Culture, Communication, and National Identity: The Case for Canadian Television by Richard Collins
The Cultural Industries in Canada, ed. Michael Dorland
The Cultural Politics of Fur by Julia Emberley
Media Matters by John Fiske
Uses of Television and Television Truths by John Hartley
Subculture by Dick Hebdige
It’s Not TV: Watching HBO in The Post-Television Era, eds. Marc Leverette et al.
“Revisiting the Equality/Difference Debate: Redefining Citizenship for the New Millennium” by Patrizia Longo in Citizenship Studies 5.2 (2001): 269-284.
Studies in Mass Entertainment, ed Tania Modleski
The Return of the Political by Chantal Mouffe
Fashion: A Canadian Perspective, ed. Alexandra Palmer
Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline by Richard Posner
Shopping Around: Feminine Culture and the Pursuit of Pleasure by Hilary Radner
Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America by Lynn Spigel
Private Screenings: Television and the Female Consumer, eds. Lynn Spigel and Denise Mann
Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth L. Cline
The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
Gender Transformations by Sylvia Walby
Publics and Counterpublics by Michael Warner
Point of Purchase by Sharon Zukin
Sex in the City: Kiss & Tell by Amy Sohn
Reading Sex in the City, eds. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
Words About Pictures by Perry Nodelman
The Commodification of Childhood by Daniel Thomas Cook
Buying In by Rob Walker
Fashion: Philosophy for Everyone, eds. Jessica Wolfendale and Jeanette Kennett
Analyzing Mad Men: Critical Essays on the Television Series, ed. Scott Stoddart