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BIG IDEA #1: What are the politics and histories that make certain fashion discourses and clothing practices available to some persons and not others, and how do persons operate within these politics and histories?
BIG IDEA #2: The stories we create around persons from their clothes often say more about us, and about the larger social, political, economic discourses and practices that inform our world-views both consciously and unconsciously, than about the persons we are looking at.
BIG IDEA #3: Fashion discourse and clothing practice, as a way of wearing and activating the body, can also regulate access to rights and resources. The measure of “humanness,” or for instance “Americanness,” is so often policed on appearance (including dress) and comportment (how one carries oneself).
BIG IDEA #4: Fashioned identities are sources of pleasure as well as scenes of surveillance.
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