Previous: Teaching Improvement Activities
Works-in-Progress
Brooklyn Style: The Sartorial Roots of Downtown Brooklyn
-Previous work with the Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center on a breakfast talk about the fashion history of nearby Fulton Street was a pathway to additional collaboration with Professor Denise Sutton. Professor Sutton reached out to gauge my interest in expanding our respective presentations into a book project. Over a series of meetings, we brainstormed, planned, and whittled our multitude of ideas down to something that would work as an edited collection. We reached out to a publisher and were delighted to be offered constructive feedback and an invitation to meet for a chat. It was a generative conversation that helped define our next steps and laid the groundwork for the project. We are in the process of finalizing our contributor list before presenting the publisher with our revised proposal.
NYMASA Summer Institute
–The New York Metro American Studies Association (NYMASA) will hold a week-long summer institute June 24-27, 2024, exploring the multiple manifestations of abolition and abolitionism in the United States. Board members will lead each of the four days, I will helm day three – The Materiality of Abolition: Visual Culture, Objects and Textile Production – which will consist of a lecture, Q&A, demonstration of textile skills (fiber prep, spinning, weaving) and after lunch, a tour of a textile archive and community farm.
Interdisciplinary Studies Conference
-City Tech’s Interdisciplinary Studies Committee will host an ID conference in Fall 2024. The committee is in the beginning planning stages. This in-person event will be held in the Academic building at City Tech. We hope to attract participants within and from outside CUNY.
Science Fiction Collection
-Dr Laura Westengard was awarded grants funds, LGBTQIA+ Faculty+Staff Collective Grant. Applications for proposals were announced early fall 2023. I submitted, and have been awarded funds for, three ideas to benefit the science fiction collection. This year, we are able to offer an honorarium to the keynote speaker for our annual symposium. Additionally, we will be purchasing a book scanner which will be used to scan LGBTQQIA+ materials in the collection. This material will be identified and then digitized by an intern who will be working with me in the spring.
Goals
Teaching
Black Fashion History Interdisciplinary course:
-Draft a course proposal for an interdisciplinary course which will explore the intersection of Black history and fashion with guest lecturers from the Business of Fashion, African American Studies and English department. Curriculum planning, syllabi drafting and guest lecturer recruiting to begin in fall 2024.
Business of Fashion:
-Guest lectures and collaboration with the Textile Lab – I have proposed, and garnered interest in, several ideas to work with BOF faculty and students in the textile lab and in textile-based coursework offered in the department. These will include field trips, instruction in sewing, mending and weaving to culminate in physical objects to be presented in the library’s display windows with a corresponding book display, blog post and podcast episode. This work is slated to begin in spring 2024.
Writing/Scholarship
Memoir/Ethnographic Research:
-Continue working on memoir entries begun as a member of the 2023 cohort of Medgar Evers Center for Black Literature’s weeklong writers retreat. The collection of stories/memories will have a focus on tactile experiences in my family’s past. Research and writing will begin in earnest at the conclusion of NYMASA’s 2024 summer institute.
Archives
-Enact the beginning stages of the archives master plan, to begin with an inventory and damage assessment of the current contents, update to policies and procedures and the finding aid. Consultations on inventory best practices to commence in summer 2024.
-Textile Lab x Archives collaboration using visuals contained in the university archives photographic and yearbook collections and science fiction collection’s periodicals. I envision this as an ongoing project to document student and faculty garment construction with the planning stages to begin in summer 2024.
