Textiles in Contexts, 7.5 hp

The course provides a means for you to orient your practice in design, marketing, and management of fashion and furnishings in relationship to larger issues, meanings, and mindsets.

Human-made textiles are documented to be at least 30,000 years old, but may very well be several million years old.

This course begins with a brief overview of the physical properties of fibers and fabrics and focuses on how textiles have shaped human development and functioned in various social, economic, and cultural contexts from pre-history to today. Textiles have been and remain important manifestations of status, belief and religious systems, agents of technological innovation and globalization, foundations for capitalism, industrialization, and modern economic development, political agents for transformation, and treasuries of both mundane and sublime aesthetic expression.