As a popular ‘scientific’ and educational journal, National Geographic, since its founding in 1888, has positioned itself as a voice of authority within mainstream American print media, offering what purports to be an unprejudiced ‘window onto the world’. Previous scholarship has been quick to call attention to the magazine’s participation in an imperialist representational regime. Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Tamar Rothenberg and Linda Steet have all argued that National Geographic’s distinctive, quasi-anthropological outlook has established hierarchies of difference and rendered subjects into dehumanised objects, a spectacle of the unknown and exotic other. A more nuanced understanding can be reached by drawing upon Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the ‘contact zone’. Pratt defined the contact zone as ‘spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power’. Photographs since National Geographic’s centenary edition in September 1988 have traced the beginnings of a different view of encounters within the United States-Brazil contact zone, driven by the forces of globalisation, which have resisted the processes of objectification, appropriation and stereotyping frequently associated with the rectangular yellow border. This is because they have provided evidence of a fluid and various population, which has selected and experimented with preferred elements of American and European dress, and used it to fashion their own, distinctly Brazilian identities. This thesis will examine both the visual and textual strategies that National Geographic and National Geographic Brasil (the Portuguese-language version of the magazine, established in Sao Paulo in May 2000) have used to fashion Brazil, but also the extent to which Brazilian subjects can be seen to have self-fashioned, through the strategic appropriation of clothing and ideas derived from an existing and dominant global culture. It will approach dress not simply as cloth but as a system of communication, whose many meanings are not fixed but continually informed and to an extent, even performed, by its visual, material, and textual representation. This thesis employs a multidisciplinary mode of analysis that draws on five Brazilian scholars, each of whom have used dress and fashion metaphors in their writings, which have encompassed poetry, film studies, poststructuralist theory, literary criticism and anthropology.

Ocularium Lucis: Light and Optical Theory in Guarino Guarini's Church of San Lorenzo is intended to provide theoretical advancement in the understanding of the work of the Baroque architect Guarino Guarini by employing his Church of San Lorenzo as an example. In Part One an historical account of Guarini's life and work is presented. In Part Two, Guarini's methods as an architect are analyzed according to their intersection with the philosophy of science, geometry and astronomy, presented within his many treatises on such subjects. A syllogistic correlation is demonstrated in Guarini's writings between the study of optics, geometry and architecture, which reveals that the architectonic forms which he creates are configured according to a profound interest in light and opticality. In this manner, Guarini's Church of San Lorenzo is understood as an instrument of light and a vessel of divine illumination.

In February 1877, publisher Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington began release of a monthly serial called Street Life in London, by journalist Adolphe Smith and photographer John Thomson. The work aimed to reveal to readers, through novel use of photographic illustrations combined with essays, the conditions of a life of poverty in London. Appearing also as a book in late 1877, Street Life in London did not achieve commercial success in either format and was cancelled after just one year's run. This dissertation aims to demonstrate how Street Life in London was subject to and shaped by a variety of interests and forces, to understand why it failed, and to place it within the overarching contexts of Victorian social exploration and street typology. Historians of photography have justifiably praised Street Life in London as a foundational work of socially-conscious photography, John Thomson's images breaking--sometimes radically--with prior models for depiction of the poor. But they have tended to regard it primarily as a book rather than a serial, and primarily as a book of photographs, not a publication in which text and image work in concert. This dissertation examines the vital contributions of both Adolphe Smith and John Thomson, combining close reading of images, text and sequencing throughout the serial publication to treat the work as a photo-text. It reinscribes the work within the contexts of both authors' overall careers, relates it to prior pictorial and literary models for representation of poverty, and demonstrates the roles of other players such as the publisher and critics in shaping the publication. Ultimately this study places Street Life in London within a matrix of Victorian discourses on poverty, photography, and typology, among others, demonstrating that it was contingent, conflicted, and ultimately incomplete: a flawed but fascinating commentary on the complex and multifarious Victorian era from which it emerged.

The thesis addresses the reception and consumption of Japanese fashion in the U.K. between 1980 and 2006 and concomitant constructions of Japanese identity in the critical discourses surrounding fashion. It examines the impacts of the sartorial traffic emanating from the Japanese fashion system, the creative outputs of which are polarised in Western critical thought as either unreflective cultural borrowings (Japanisation, appropriation) or as embodying an unfathomable Eastern aesthetic (zen, wabi/sabi, wa). Building on a substantive account of the cultural impacts of the initial encounters with the West, the investigation identifies sites where Japanese sartorial culture is consumed in the form of text, image and artefact. A variety of methodological approaches are mobilised in the analysis of data from retail outlets, cultural institutions and media publications. Material pertaining to "high-concept designers" whose outputs are largely consumed within visual and intellectual contexts is balanced by that from "high street apparel makers" operating in a more commercially-oriented manner. Findings regarding the role of an "intermediate matrix" of designers/brands employing creative approaches and retail strategies that supersede issues of culture, race and historicity are presented in order to map a creative continuum in contemporary Japanese fashion design. In addressing the imbrications of Japanese identity and contemporary sartorial practice, the thesis interrogates research findings from creative, commercial, critical, curatorial and mass media sources within a framework of existing academic accounts of the construction of Japan in the Western mind. The conclusion articulates new readings of the nature of "Japanese-ness" available to a globally connected audience and identifies a gendered differentiation between visual representations of Japanese-designed fashion mediated through the gatekeepers of sartorial culture in the United Kingdom.

This practice-led thesis places archival research within the framework of a contemporary art practice and proposes an interpretive reading of tailoring patterns as informative documents and inspiring drawings in their own right. Conventionally, patterns are treated only as a means to an end, aiding garment production. It is rare for patterns to be analysed by contemporary dress historians for their contribution to history. This thesis will demonstrate how tailoring patterns are undervalued and neglected, and remain a hidden craft. This qualitative research is conducted in the archive in order to gain a deep understanding of a group of patterns – here military patterns – that in turn inspired an artistic and curatorial output. An archive of uniforms worn by officers of the British Raj held at the National Army Museum was identified for this research; these uniforms were closely examined, handled and drawn in situ. The drawings were placed next to military patterns from different sources and scrutinized using a case-study method. The analysis revealed that information could be derived from the patterns making them relevant in respect to an understanding of dress history. The archival research is further interpreted in art and curatorial practice in the second half of the thesis by suggesting that patterns are unique abstracted drawings of the human form, carrying with them not only the outline of the garment but also impressions of the body. A reflective approach to the practice illustrates how the archival research became the primary source materials to create romantic Love Garden sculptures. The researcher positions his own emerging practice at the blurring of fashion, art and curatorial practice; and articulates how other artists, practitioners and designers have responded to the pattern as an object and a drawing, producing work in the context of art, fashion and design. The thesis demonstrates that military patterns and the tailoring knowledge they comprise represent rich and rewarding source materials for producing contemporary artworks, and also vital historical documents in the context of dress history.

This thesis explores a history of fashion and art in post-war Britain. The historical analysis of this study focuses on how institutions and spaces of public culture – such as museums, galleries, exhibitions and art schools – were used as locations for editorial photo-spreads published in the British editions of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar between 1945 and 1962. Fashion magazines participate in the cultural production of art by depicting its institutions, its products and producers as fashionable. This thesis interrogates the ways in which the field of fashion, and fashion media in particular, thereby gives symbolic value to the field of art through its mediation. In its examination of the ways in which representations of art and fashion have been meaningfully constructed for a high fashion magazine readership, the thesis contributes to a further understanding of the relationship between fashion and art, and affords new insights into the cultural history of post-war Britain. The theoretical framework of this study engages with Agnès Rocamora’s model of ‘fashion media discourse’, which brings together the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. This thesis draws upon Foucault’s work on ‘discourse’ and Bourdieu’s concept of ‘cultural production’ in order to conduct an ‘archaeology’ of post-war British fashion media and its participation in the cultural production of art. This thesis has developed Rocamora’s concept in its application to a specific historical study of fashion media. In doing so, this thesis contributes to a wider understanding of how the theoretical work of Foucault and Bourdieu can be applied in the scholarly research of fashion media and histories of fashion. This thesis contributes to the further knowledge of practices in history concerning methodologies of archival research and textual analysis.

This thesis identifies and characterises a minimal aesthetic evident in a strand of fashion emerging in New York and Paris from 1964 onwards. It examines the way in which a minimal aesthetic has been applied to the practice of fashion design and retail architecture, specifically in a high-fashion context. The research establishes that the earliest manifestation of a minimal aesthetic in fashion design, took place in 1964, in the work of the French fashion designer André Courrèges. Designers who later adopted similar principles include Jil Sander (1968), Calvin Klein (1968), Zoran Ladricorbic (1976), Donna Karan (1984), Helmut Lang (1986) and Narciso Rodriguez (1997), among others. The study identifies the origins of the principles of a minimal aesthetic and examines them through two distinct case studies that consider the practice of designers Donna Karan and Helmut Lang, both of whose work emerged during the 1980s. The investigation re-evaluates the significance of Minimalism in fashion history. It challenges accepted views of Minimalism in fashion as merely a trend of the mid-1990s, or as a local phenomenon. The thesis maintains that these principles find expression in the designers’ work, in the architecture of the flagship stores and in the inter-relationship between the two. Additionally, it investigates the meanings that these products convey to the consumer. Through an evaluation of the retail architecture, it establishes parallels between the principles of this aesthetic and earlier elements of a post-war Modernist architecture. The study of the dynamic inter-relationship between elements of fashion design and those of architecture focuses on the definition of a minimal aesthetic. Furthermore, these claims are contextualized within other fields such as material culture, cultural and historical studies and sociology. The thesis employs a qualitative methodology comprising empirical research based on case studies and object-based analysis, all of which draw upon theory that addresses the means of interpretation. The study has developed through an analysis of dress and the retail architecture associated with the case study designers’ work. Through empirical research, the research shows how contemporary attitudes, practices and theories have emerged which are essential for the analysis of dress and the spaces it inhabits. The primary sources, garments from the collections of André Courrèges, Donna Karan and Helmut Lang held at key international costume archives at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are discussed in relation to other archival and published sources.

This study addresses eighteenth-century illustrations of Mexico City's Alameda Park. The study reads views of Alameda Park for information about the cultural, political, and economic topographies of the colonial city. Alameda Park offered a place of leisure that was free and open to all members of society. It is argued that as a popular, public setting the Alameda represented a discursive space where cultural opinions were shaped. These beliefs found expression in physical objects: views of Alameda Park. Despite the informational value of these expressions, views of Alameda Park remain an untapped resource on account of the ambiguity surrounding their classification as either an objective map or an artful landscape. This study takes a visual culture approach; it calls attention to the ways views of Alameda Park utilize the conventions of both map and landscape. The study analyzes four views of the park. Each view illustrates a moment in colonial history. These include: the 1719 founding of a convent for Amerindian women—the first in two hundred years of colonial rule, the 1774 opening of the Hospicio de Pobres—a facility that incarcerated vagrants in order to rehabilitate them, the circa 1775 renovation of Alameda Park—a project joining citywide efforts to better police the population, and the 1778 promulgation of the Royal Pragmatic on Marriages—a bill designed to preserve Spanish hegemony in a racially-diverse context. Each view speaks a separate narrative; by reading the object, audiences gain detailed information about the shifting cultural landscape of eighteenth-century Mexico City.

The childlike character of ideal femininities has long been critiqued in feminist literature, from Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) to Susan Faludi (1992). Yet, despite the partial gains of feminism the ‘woman-child’ continues to be a prominent subject-position in fashion photography of the West. This thesis builds upon earlier feminist critiques of the infantilisation of women by considering the meaning of childlike femininities in the period spanning 1990 to 2015. In particular, it questions whether representations of childlike femininities can shed their dehumanising, ‘second sex’ connotations and be resignified to a more progressive end in the contemporary context. The possible appeal of ‘girly’ subject-positions to women, following several waves of feminism, is explored through reception studies carried out with female participants in focus groups, as well as theory on the ‘female gaze’. Images were principally drawn from three British fashion magazines: Vogue (UK), i-D, and Lula. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which discourses on childhood, girlhood and womanhood overlap and intersect to produce the figure of the ‘woman-child’ in the fashion media and beyond. This subject-position is shown not to be singular but rather as appearing in a number of guises. The many permutations of childlike femininity are subsumed into four overarching categories: the Romantic woman-child; the femme-enfant-fatale; Lolita style; and the Parodic woman-child. This thesis thereby contributes to existing debates in fashion studies by considering in greater detail the different discourses on childhood and femininity that come into play when women are positioned as childlike. A multi-faceted visual methodology is employed, combining visual analysis of imagery with experimental reception studies. Reception studies were conducted in focus groups with female participants and provide insight into the way these women made sense of the ‘woman-child’. In addition, they provide an indication as to whether the participants liked or disliked childlike femininities in the fashion media, thus pointing to the possible investments women might have in childlike subject-positions. Finally, including an element of social research served to challenge and/or reinforce the researcher’s own readings of the imagery, pointing to new avenues of research and expanding the discursive field of enquiry. This aspect of the thesis makes a methodological contribution to literature on the reception of still media imagery in fashion studies, magazine studies and feminist media studies.

"Grassroots schools" and training centers in the Prospect district of Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1959-1964 -- We will move : the Kennedy administration and restoring public education to Prince Edward County, Virginia -- Farmville, 1963 : the long hot summer -- Black resilience vs. white resistance in Prince Edward County -- Northerners in a Jim Crow world : Queens College summer experience -- A lecture from the children of the "lost-generation" of students from Prince Edward County, Virginia -- Reflections of African American parents, teachers, and students in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1959-1964. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1029/thumbnail.jpg