Fashion Studies
From classical antiquity onward, the study of fashion has been consistently a subject of social commentary and has played a crucial role in the formation of personal, national, and transnational identities. Today it is emerging as a fertile field of research that reaches beyond national and cultural boundaries. Available to doctoral candidates in all disciplines, the Concentration in Fashion Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York is the culmination of many years of work in the field—lectures, experimental courses, and international conferences—and the Graduate Center offers a rich array of interdisciplinary courses that provide a broad understanding of the fashion system, both as an economic force and an industry, in relation to social and cultural history, the arts, theories of the body and gender, consumption, new technologies, and media and popular culture.
Goals of the Concentration
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To produce scholars who are fully cognizant of the diverse and rich field of fashion studies and who are prepared to contribute via research and theory to developing this field.
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To provide doctoral students with an understanding of the analytical and research tools needed to navigate and articulate the study of fashion in all its multifaceted manifestations.
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To provide a focus on New York and the impact fashion has had in shaping the city’s identity and in making it one of the most prominent global capitals of fashion, while also demonstrating how the rapid pace of cultural diffusion now is expanding the field beyond national and cultural boundaries.
Requirements
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Matriculation as a doctoral student at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York
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Two Interdisciplinary Studies Core Courses: Fashion Studies I: Fashion, Power and Space; Fashion Studies II: The Fabric of Cultures. Fashion, Identity, Globalization
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Two electives chosen from the broad spectrum of courses provided by the concentration's course listing, one in the arts or humanities and the other in the social sciences
For further information, interested students should contact: Professor Eugenia Paulicelli, Co-Director, 1-212-817-8171 or Professor Joseph Glick, Co-Director, 1-212-817-8706, The Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
