First-Year Writing Seminar: The Social Skin

Catalog description

“Man is born naked but is everywhere in clothes (or their symbolic equivalents),” writes the anthropologist Terence Turner. “We cannot tell how this came to be, but we can say something about why it should be so and what it means.” Turner’s classic text on dress and the body describes the interface of matter, technology, and meaning that is clothing, and calls it as “the social skin.” But who (or what) is the self in this understanding of the social? And how do natural and synthetic materials - textiles, pigments, thread, beads, hide, tissue - fashion its body? This first-year writing seminar focuses on observing, understanding, and representing the social skin, through a focus on materials. Students will be introduced to theories of dress, material culture, difference, and the body drawn from anthropology, fashion studies, and conservation. Weekly writing assignments will be tailored around student interests in fashion, the body, and symbolic practices. We will read work by Mary Douglas, Roxane Gay, and Julietta Singh, and think through artwork by Rebecca Belmore, Nick Cave, and Cecilia Vicuña, among others.