Speaker Information

Arden Kirkland, Vassar College

Speaker Bio

Arden Kirkland specializes in building digital collections for teaching with material culture. As Costumer for the Drama Department at Vassar College, she is also a curator of Vassar's research collection of historic clothing. She has taught at Vassar, Bard, Marist, and Barnard; she was formerly the Costume Shop Supervisor at Bard College and the Assistant Shop Manager of the Costume Shop for the Juilliard School. While pursuing a Masters of Library and Information Science at Syracuse University, she is building upon her MFA in Costume Design to promote inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional approaches to teaching with artifacts.

Follow Arden on Twitter @ardeninred or visit her site at http://ardenkirkland.com

Event Website

http://vcomeka.com/vccc/exhibits/show/fashioning/introduction

Abstract

The online exhibit "Fashioning an Education: 150 Years of Vassar Students and What They Wore" highlights current student and faculty collaboration to use clothing as the starting point for research on the lives of late 19th and early 20th century Vassar students, and the effect of fashion on education (and vice versa - http://vcomeka.com/vccc/exhibits/show/fashioning/introduction). Such projects have been made possible by ten years of effort to provide digital access to the Vassar College Drama Department's research collection of historic clothing. This project has moved through different formats (Excel, Filemaker, and now Omeka), has involved many students, and has largely remained a "Do-it-Yourself" effort, with little funding or technical support. Detailed data and images are included, showing garments inside and out and including videos and ObjectVRs, animated views that show each garment mounted on a mannequin, which the viewer can rotate and zoom. Also included are an array of materials that provide context for the objects, such as photographs, letters, magazine articles, and illustrations. The growth of the digital project has helped to show the interdisciplinary nature of the study of clothing through the examination of articles of women's clothing as primary source materials: historical evidence of women's lives.

Update: this presentation is now available in PDF form to be downloaded below, or in its original Prezi form at http://prezi.com/g_eif_uu0y8i/fashioning-an-education/

Related resources:

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Mar 23rd, 2:30 PM Mar 23rd, 3:45 PM

Fashioning an Education: 150 Years of Vassar Students and What They Wore

The online exhibit "Fashioning an Education: 150 Years of Vassar Students and What They Wore" highlights current student and faculty collaboration to use clothing as the starting point for research on the lives of late 19th and early 20th century Vassar students, and the effect of fashion on education (and vice versa - http://vcomeka.com/vccc/exhibits/show/fashioning/introduction). Such projects have been made possible by ten years of effort to provide digital access to the Vassar College Drama Department's research collection of historic clothing. This project has moved through different formats (Excel, Filemaker, and now Omeka), has involved many students, and has largely remained a "Do-it-Yourself" effort, with little funding or technical support. Detailed data and images are included, showing garments inside and out and including videos and ObjectVRs, animated views that show each garment mounted on a mannequin, which the viewer can rotate and zoom. Also included are an array of materials that provide context for the objects, such as photographs, letters, magazine articles, and illustrations. The growth of the digital project has helped to show the interdisciplinary nature of the study of clothing through the examination of articles of women's clothing as primary source materials: historical evidence of women's lives.

Update: this presentation is now available in PDF form to be downloaded below, or in its original Prezi form at http://prezi.com/g_eif_uu0y8i/fashioning-an-education/

Related resources:

https://repository.brynmawr.edu/greenfield_conference/papers/saturday/28