Dressing in a Dangerous World: Fashion & Politics Workshop

Presented by Parsons The New School for Design and The New School for Public Engagement, this workshop continues conversations begun in Spring 2011 at the annual conference of the International Studies Association in Montreal, instigated by Dr Andreas Behnke, under the title of ‘Being Fab in Dangerous World: Gendered Bodies and the International Fashion World’. 

The intention of bringing some of the contributors of that event to Parsons and The New School is to consider further the wider political contexts and agendas under which fashion impacts and interacts with social, material and corporeal functions in the context of geopolitics and biopolitics in the 21st century. The workshop, which is open to those with varied and diverse interests in fashion, and politics, will also serve as a means of planning for a larger conference to be held at Parsons/The New School in Spring 2013.

• Introduction - Dr. Hazel Clark, research chair of Fashion, Parsons the New School for Design

• Being Fab in a Dangerous World - Dr. Andreas Behnke, director of Studies, MA in International Relations Programme, Department of Politics and International Relations, The University of Reading, U.K. 

• Geopolitical Couture Corporealities: Fashion as a Site of Revolution(s) - Dr. Anna M. Agathangelou, associate professor, Department of Political Science and School of Women's Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada.

• Anorexia Nervosa Interruptus: Global Fashion for the Local Body - Dr. LHM Ling, associate professor, Graduate Program for International Affairs, The New School for Public Engagement

• Fashion Statements - Dr. Linda Bishai, senior program officer, Academy for International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding, United States Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.

• Veil Dressing & the Gender Geopolitics of 'What (not) to Wear' - Dr. Marianne Franklin, associate professor and director of the Global Media & Transnational Communications, Goldsmiths, University of London.

This workshop has been co-organized by Dr Hazel Clark (Parsons) & Dr LHM Ling (NSPE) with funding by Parsons, School of Art and Design History and Theory, and The India China Institute.