Dress Sense

Description

Dress Sense explores the importance of the senses and emotions in the way people dress, and how they attach value and significance to clothing. Inspired by the work of Joanne B. Eicher, contributors offer different multi-disciplinary perspectives on this key and unexplored topic in dress and sensory anthropology. The essays present historical, contemporary and global views, from British imperial dress in India, to revolutionary Socialist dress. Issues of body and identity are brought to the fore in the sexual power of Ghanian women’s waistbeads, the way cross-dressers feel about their clothing, and how the latest three-dimensional body-scanning technology affects people’s perception of themselves and their bodies. For students and researchers of dress and anthropology, Dress Sense will be invaluable in understanding the cross-cultural, emotional and sensual experience of dress and clothing.

Helen Bradley Foster is Lecturer, University of Minnesota.
Donald Clay Johnson is Curator, Ames Library of South Asia, University of Minnesota.

Introduction, Helen Bradley Foster and Donald Clay Johnson Part I. Historical Perspectives 1. Sight, Sound, and Sentiment in Greek Village Dress, Linda Welters 2. More than Costume History: Dress in Somali Culture, Heather Marie Akou 3. Dress, Hungarian Socialism, and Resistance, Katalin Medvedev 4. Clothes Make the Empire: British Dress in India, Donald Clay Johnson 5. African American Enslavement and Escaping in Disguise, Helen Bradley Foster Part II. Living Traditions 6. Indian Madras Plaids as Real India, Sandra Evenson 7. The Role of Scents and the Body in Turkey, Marlene Breu 8. Awakening the Senses: the Aesthetics of Moroccan Berber Dress, Cynthia Becker 9. The Power of Touch: Women’s Waistbeads in Ghana, Suzanne Gott 10. Performing Dress and Adornment in Southeastern Nigeria, Sarah Adams Part III. Challenging Traditions 11. Women, Migration, and the Experience of Dress, Mary A. Littrell and Jennifer Paff Ogle 12. Handmade Textiles: Manufacturing African Authenticity, Victoria L. Rovine 13. Growing Old and Dressing (Dis)Gracefully, Annette Lynch, M. Elise Radina and Marybeth C. Stalp Part IV. The Future 14. Embodying the Feminine: Male-to-Female cross-Dressing, Jane E. Hegland and Nancy Nelson Hodges 15. Virtual Sensation: Dress Online, Suzanne Loker and Susan P. Ashdown.

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