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Abstract
Decolonizing the curriculum involves more than broadening the canon and revising reading lists. In challenging Eurocentric frameworks and making definitions of “fashion” more inclusive, methods and approaches to teaching itself also require active reconceptualization in a closer questioning of the meaning of decolonized practice. This paper analyses experimental teaching within the MA History of Design program at the Royal College of Art, London, which aimed to explore decolonial praxis while training postgraduates to critique fashion historiography. The ambition was also to broaden students’ perspectives toward deeper reflexivity and wider professional development. We argue that the dismantling of Eurocentric bias and critiquing of institutional systems involves an uncomfortable unpicking of accustomed structures of knowledge that is both the ground zero and the end goal of decolonial histories. In modeling more collaborative modes of teaching, learning and writing, we suggest what a decolonized practice could look like for fashion studies, and the importance of emotion and position within a transformational potential.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 http://events.arts.ac.uk/event/2019/2/5/UAL-Teaching-Platform-Thinking-Differently-Addressing-Attainment-Differentials-in-Higher-Education/ accessed March 8, 2020.
2 We use the term “course” here to indicate a program of study with a duration of weeks or months, with a set of specific learning outcomes, tied to a fixed assessment point. In other institutions this “course” might be called a “module” or a “unit.”
3 Between 2008 and 2016, the V&A/RCA MA History of Design was even home to a specific pathway on Asian design, led by Christine Guth, and with a teaching team that included Sarah Teasley (both expert in Japanese material culture).
4 Livia Rezende’s “Design Faultlines” workshop series, de-centering, practical and collaborative methods for thinking, feeling, enacting and decolonizing design history, continues to be invigorating for me. Her most recent work on Brazilian International Design Biennials is inspired by methodologies developed in Latin American political theatre since the 1960s.
5 Fashion and Translation: Britain, Japan, China Korea (AHRC funded network project, 2014–2015).
6 This was powerfully brought home to us while participating in the three-day space/event/workshop “Decolonial Transformations: Imagining, Practicing, Collaborating,” University of Sussex, 31 October–2 November 2019.
7 Tanveer Ahmed and Cathy Johns, “Re-imaging Fashion Herstories/Histories: Decolonising Fashion History in The Royal College of Art Library.” Conference paper ARLIS UK & Ireland Annual Conference, London, 26–27 July 2018.
8 For example, there were students from Goldsmiths, University of London.
9 We worked with design brands Tamao Shigemune, Rumix Design Studio/Rumi Rock, Iroca and Modern Antenna, and stylist Sheila Cliffe.
10 This was an exercise designed by the OPEN team. It involved presenting a series of quotes and images from decolonial sources and asking audience members to respond, with awareness of their emotional positions. The responses ran in sequence as audience members engaged with the exercise over the course of an evening, and this in turn evolved into a co-created and collaborative document that we called an “essay sprint.” The OPEN essay sprint can be found on our website (https://www.rcathisisopen.com/).
11 Useful guidance on the nature of white defensiveness and the emotional work it causes can be found in Diangelo (2019, 123–129).
12 The texts that we looked at were Ben Highmore. 2017. “Feeling our Way and Getting in the Mood (An introduction,” and “Cultural Feelings (Some Theoretical Coordinates),” in Cultural Feelings: Mood, Mediation and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge); Jia Tolentino. Citation2019. “The I in the Internet,” in Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (New York: Random House); Denise Ferreira da Silva. 2020. “In the Raw” e-flux, Journal #93; Zadie Smith. Citation2020. “What Do We Want History to Do to Us?” The New York Review of Books, 27 February 2020; Stacy Alaimo. Citation2008. “Trans-Corporeal Feminisms and the Ethical Space of Nature,” in Material Feminisms (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press); Don Mee Choi. Citation2016. Hardly War (Seattle: Wave Books).
13 Akram Khan, the award-winning fusion dancer of classical kathak and contemporary dance, was invited to give an artist’s talk about the role of emotions in his practice.
14 For example, the Globalising Art, Architecture and Design History project (GLAADH, 2000–2003) (Gieben-Gamal 2005).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sarah Cheang
Sarah Cheang is Senior Tutor in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art, London. Over the past twenty years, she has taught fashion history at a variety of higher education institutions, including London College of Fashion, with a constant commitment to inclusive curricula and transnational fashion research. [email protected]
Shehnaz Suterwalla
Shehnaz Suterwalla is Senior Tutor in Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in London. Her research explores radical politics of the body in contemporary culture. Currently she is working on a book of experimental decolonial feminist writing. Shehnaz is co-founder of OPEN, a decolonial research initiative. [email protected]