Bard Graduate Center is excited to announce the 2022 Undergraduate Summer School in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Open to undergraduates and recent college graduates, the program draws on resources at BGC and around New York City to provide an intensive, two-week program on material culture studies. Our topic for 2022 is “Re-Dress and Re-Form: Innovations in the History of Fashion and Design, 1850 to Today.” The course will introduce students to the history of design and fashion in the United States and Europe from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, with an emphasis on the revolutionary significance of this period for both fields. In particular, the course will explore how the interconnected nature of social categorizations including race, class, and gender create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage. Led by professor Freyja Hartzell and PhD candidate Pierre-Jean Desemerie, this summer school will combine small seminars and behind-the-scenes access to collections. Eligible for three upper-level undergraduate credits.

Program dates: Wednesday, July 6–Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Applications due: April 15, 2022
Contact: summer.school@bgc.bard.edu