2023 Scholars’ Roundtable

Abstract

AbstractThe 2023 CSA Scholars’ Roundtable focused on the role of collaboration within teaching, learning, costume design, and museum practice. The scholars reflected on the challenges, successes, opportunities, and failures encountered when engaging in collaboration. This report is based on an edited and condensed transcript of the authors’ panel presentation and summarizes the audience’s comments and discussion.Keywords: critical thinkingfashioninterdisciplinaryhistorical societiesmuseumstheaterqueer Notes1 Kelly L. Reddy-Best and Dana Goodin, “QueerCrip Fashion in the Twenty-First Century: Sky Cubacub and the QueerCrip Dress Reform Movement,” Clothing Cultures 5, no. 3 (2018): 333–57, https://doi.org/10.1386/cc.5.3.333_1. See also Aison Kafer, Feminist Queer Crip (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).2 Kelly L. Reddy-Best and Eric D. Olson, “Trans Traveling and Embodied Practices: Panopticism, Agency, Dress, and Gendered Surveillance,” Annals of Tourism 85 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.103028; Eric D. Olson and Kelly L. Reddy-Best, “‘Pre-Topsurgery, the Body Scanning Machine Would Most Likely Error.’ Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Travel and Tourism Experiences,” Tourism Management 70 (2019): 250–61, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2018.08.024; Kelly L. Reddy-Best and Eric D. Olson, “Packers, Diolaters, and the Options for Either Male or Female: Navigating Movement of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Bodies, Appearances and Luggage Through Airport Security,” Fashion, Style, and Popular Culture 7, no. 2–3 (2020): 223–46, https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00016_1.3 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).4 Vishakha Chauhan, Kelly L. Reddy-Best, Mahim Sagar, Arbuda Sharma, and Karan Lamba, “Apparel Consumption and Embodied Experiences of Gay Men and Transgender Women in India: Variety and Ambivalence, Fit Issues, LGBT-Fashion Brands, and Affordability,” Journal of Homosexuality 68, no. 9 (2021): 1444–70, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1698914.5 Kelly L. Reddy-Best and Eunji Choi, “‘Male Hair Cannot Extend Below Plane of the Shoulder’ and ‘No Cross Dressing.’ Critical Queer Analysis of High School Dress Codes in the United States,” Journal of Homosexuality 67, no. 9 (2020): 1290–1340, https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1585730.6 Dashka Slater, “The Fire on the 57 Bus in Oakland,” New York Times, January 29, 2015.7 Nancy Gebhart and Kelly L. Reddy-Best, “Slogan T-shirts: Liberalism, Abolition, and Commodity Activism in the Midwestern United States,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 13, no. 2 (2022): 255–77, https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00048_1.8 Devon W. Carbado, “Colorblind Intersectionality,” Signs: Journal of Women and Culture in Society 38, no. 4 (2013): 811–45; Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser, Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times (New York: New York University Press, 2012); Chela Sandoval and Guisela Latorre, “Chicana/o Artivism: Judy Baca’s Digital Work with Youth Of Color,” in Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media, ed. Anna Everett (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 81–108.9 Courtney Johnson, Kelly L. Reddy-Best, and Eulanda Sanders, “Swagger Like Us: Black Millennials’ Perceptions, Knowledge and Influence of 1980s and 1990s Urban Fashion Brands,” Clothing & Textiles Research Journal 40, no. 4 (2022): 255–70, https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X20976634.10 Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2012).11 Eunji Choi and Kelly L. Reddy-Best, “South Korean Fashion Media: Examining Beauty Ideals, Race, and the Prominence of Whiteness Between 2013 and 2017 in Céci Magazine,” International Journal of Costume and Fashion 21, no. 2 (2021): 1–18.12 Margaret Hunter, “The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status and Inequality,” Sociology Compass 1, no. 1 (2007): 237–54, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00006.x.13 This exhibition originated in virtual form in January 2021. See “Gateway to Pride,” Missouri Historical Society, January 2021, https://gtp.mhs.yourcultureconnect.com/e/home.14 The official Guinness World Record title belongs to Walter Cole, stage name Darcelle XV, who died at the age of 92 in March 2023 and had a 56-year career as a drag performer. Chaney was born two years before Cole and has anecdotally placed the start of her career in the late 1950s, but as no documented proof of this claim has been provided, Chaney has not been recognized as the oldest drag performer.15 My presentation featured photographs pulled from various sources, including mannequin company catalogs and exhibitions from other museums. This included a variety of fiberglass mannequins and dress forms traditionally sold as male and female, with or without heads, as well as invisible forms, colors ranging from white and gray to skin tones to fun and funky, and completeness of display such as the inclusion of wigs and accessories.16 The Del Valle Vestments: The Devotion and Performance of a Matriarchy was curated and designed by students taking Costume Research Methods, Fall 2015. The exhibit was open during the Spring 2016 semester in the Archives and Special Collections Gallery, 3rd Floor, William H. Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University. Objects came from Loyola Marymount University, Rancho Camulos, University of California Irvine Special Collections and Archives, and the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. 17 George H. Schwartz, Collecting the Globe: The Salem East India Marine Society Museum (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2020).18 Schwartz, Collecting the Globe, 67.19 It should be acknowledged that Cher’s “Half Breed” costume—and Gypsy Lee’s distillation of it—was problematic, appropriating a variety of Indigenous cultural elements to create an “Indian” narrative based on the song lyrics’ reference to a woman with a White father and Cherokee mother.20 Adam MacPhàrlain, “Treasures from the Collections,” Gateway 43, no. 1 (2023): 2–5.21 Kyunghee Pyun and Minjee Kim, eds., Dress History of Korea: Critical Perspectives on Primary Sources (New York: Bloomsbury, 2023).22 The Life of Kids’ Clothes will open in 2025 as part of a rotating exhibit space in a newly created permanent gallery at the Missouri History Museum called Collected.23 Susan Kaiser and Denise Nicole Green, Fashion and Cultural Studies (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021).24 I reference John Chaney/Bonnie Blake using interchangeable names and pronouns. This is in keeping with how he is referred to by himself and by others.25 Lydia Edwards, How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century (New York: Bloomsbury, 2017); Ingrid E. Mida and Alexandra Kim, The Dress Detective: A Practical Guide to Object-Based Research in Fashion (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015).26 For more information, see Iowa State University Textiles and Clothing Museum at https://aeshm.hs.iastate.edu/current-students/facilities/textiles-and-clothing-museum/.