First-year HAVC Ph.D. student Jeppe Ugelvig has been announced as recipient of the 22-23 cycle of UCHRI grant for Multicampus Graduate Student Working Groups along with Edward Salazar, first-year Ph.D. student in Latin American and Latino Studies. The UC Fashion Working Group, supervised by Associate Professor of Literature Vilashini Cooppan, is organized by graduate students from four UC campuses with a shared interest in Critical Fashion Studies, an interdisciplinary academic field largely absent across UC syllabi. Responding to the UCHRI theme of Refuge and Refusal, the working group will focus on the politics of fashion, with the intention to develop a critical overview of fashion’s numerous and often conflicting political frameworks.
The group, led by Ugelvig and Salazar, will convene regularly starting in July 2023, taking the form of virtual and in-person discussions responding to relevant literature and creative practices. The goal is to create a “glossary of terms” useful in thinking about fashion politics across practices and disciplines. Beyond a collaborative contribution to The Foundry, our output will manifest as a custom-built open-access online tool that will allow the group to disseminate their own writing as well as commission leaders in the field. This tool, realized in collaboration with the fashion research journal Viscose, will be a critical resource for the UC community and beyond, relevant for students, educators, activists, museums, artists, and fashion professionals.