The question of what fashion means—is it a form? Is it a temporal indicator? Is it a moral category?—has many answers. This complexity is the main reason why fashion studies can be so elusive, whether by material culture specialists, anthropologists, or art historians.

At this symposium, four art historians will reflect on the following questions: Is there an operative equivalent concept of “fashion” in their temporal and geographical area of study (Renaissance Italy, the Moghul Empire, the Ottoman Empire)? To what extent is “fashion” constituted negatively, through regulation and complaint? Is group or individual expression through dress exclusively the preserve of an elite with spending power, or can we see fashion operating in a non-elite domain? Is there a sense of tension between the expression of local/”national”/ethnic identity, and a slant that might be described as “cosmopolitan”?

Sylvia Houghteling, Associate Professor of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College

Emanuele Lugli, Assistant Professor of History of Art, Stanford University,

Tim McCall, Professor of Art History and Bernard Lucci Endowed Chair in Italian Studies, Villanova University

Ünver Rüstem, Second Decade Society Associate Professor of History of Art, Johns Hopkins University

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Art.