Making + Meaning: History
Parsons School of Design: Sch. Art and Dsgn Hist and Th
CRN: 16881
Credits: 3
Making + Meaning: Fashioning the Otherworld is a hands-on studio and seminar where students collaboratively create personae — not only through building backstories and narratives, but also by crafting masks, accessories, props, costumes, and performative gestures to build these worlds. This hybrid studio-seminar will explore the role of fashion and performance in forging alternative worlds, queering norms, and opening up spaces for otherness. Through textual analysis and hands-on practice, the course examines the political work at the intersections of costume, fashion, and performance through the eyes of artists and designers birthing new personas through the act of extreme self-fashioning, masquerade, dressing up, and renaming. This course brings together the research and resources of faculty working in fashion theory and contemporary art practice, whose work explores the grotesque, abject, and monstrous in contemporary art, performance, and fashion. Making+ Meaning: HISTORY calls into question our assumptions about time and space that form our concepts of history, in particular design history and cultural theory. We will ask what makes, and distinguishes, facts and values. We will imagine alternative futures and consider what it means to “make” our present. Concepts such as contingency, teleology, and progress will be introduced. The course places particular emphasis on imaginaries of time and space that not only make themselves felt in how history is told, but also affects how we encounter other histories. Students are encouraged to integrate the knowledge they acquire from their studio and seminar experiences in this Making + Meaning course.
College: Parsons School of Design (PS)
Department: Sch. Art and Dsgn Hist and Th (ADHT)
Campus: New York City (GV)
Course Format: Seminar (R)
Modality: In-Person
Max Enrollment: 18
Repeat Limit: 8
Add/Drop Deadline: January 27, 2026 (Tuesday)
Online Withdrawal Deadline: March 3, 2026 (Tuesday)
Seats Available: Yes
* Seats available but reserved for a specific population.
Status: Open*
* Status information is updated every few minutes. The status of this course may have changed since the last update. Open seats may have restrictions that will prevent some students from registering. Updated: 7:08pm EDT 10/3/2025