Fashion and Freedom of Expression

Catalog description

How have fashion and the creative arts shaped the limits and possibilities of constitutionally protected free speech in the United States? What circumstances, conditions, and criteria are needed to determine what is legally safeguarded as symbolic speech and expressive conduct? How have Cornell students, both past and present, used fashion to push boundaries, make change, and express ideologies and identities? In this course, we grapple with these questions and explore the bleeding edge of Cornell's Indispensable Tradition of free speech through the lens of art practice, embodied aesthetics, and the regulatory forces at play.