Author: Kathryn Hodge

This week I’m visiting two more of my classmates websites for feedback.

First, I’m looking at UMW’s site comparing national trends of the 1980s with the trends on their campus.

The overall aesthetic of the site looks great, and it is easy to navigate. I look forward to reading an introduction to the project on the homepage of the site  once it has been written. The slideshows and timelines are a great way to give an overview of the information that you are presenting. However, in the national women’s trends timeline, I would’ve liked to see images that corresponded to the event better. For instance, show an image of Olivia Newton-John in the “Physical’ video, Jane Fonda in one of her fitness videos, Janet Jackson in the 80s. These are all about videos, so could you use a still image from the videos? It would probably make your point more clear. Also for the national trends, it would be nice to have images of average people embracing these trends. The part about androgynous fashion was really interesting, and the excerpt from the interview with McCluskey made a really great point when he said that the closest thing that we really have to androgynous fashion is jeans and a t-shirt. I like that you are acknowledging that this is a complicated topic. It seems like this page is focused on more overt instances of androgyny, but the interview gave you a way to analyze androgyny in everyday fashion. What trends do we see both men and women embracing equally (perms, oversized glasses, oversized clothing in general)? Also, the oversized clothing could work with his point about how androgyny is not entirely possible because the person’s body is always visible underneath–oversized clothing makes it harder to see the shape of people’s bodies. Sorry for that long, stream-of-consciousness mess, but this is a really interesting topic, and there is a lot that you all can do to fully explore androgyny as a concept.

Next, Montevallo’s project comparing 1980s campus fashion with today.

Looking at your home page, I can tell that you intend to look at trends that are shared between now and the 1980s. It looks like plaid will be one of those trends, but are there others? You mention androgyny on the home page, which would be an interesting idea to explore, but keep in mind that this is a very complicated topic, as UMW has made clear on their site. I’m excited to see which trends you will be exploring! My other comments are nit-picky things–hyperlink the source for history of Montevallo, give some context to the photos on the 80s page. Also, are you planning on writing more about the present day? I’m unsure if this page is finished or not. Currently, this section needs more analysis, and relies too heavily on the writing in the newspaper.

For both sites, it is clear what you are hoping to accomplish, and you’ve chosen really interesting topics!

At this point, I am happy with the direction that the website is going and the work that has been done so far. I think that the format of the website is easy to navigate, and the feedback that we received reflected that. However, the only completed page at this point is the one that I did on the 1950s. We are still working on researching, and need to collect more images from the other decades.

I was able to make the images bigger after Katherine showed me how to in class yesterday, so thanks to Katherine! All of the images look much better now that they’re big enough to see.

Aside from completing the pages for the decades, I need to add some more information about Truman and the project onto the homepage. Also, this is where the timeline will go, so I need to put that together. That said, I am about halfway done with the portions of the site that I am responsible for, and I look forward to presenting that final project!

This week I’m giving feedback on the websites that my peers have been working on. If you all are like me, there’s still a lot of work to do before the drafts are due on Sunday, but I’ll randomly pick two websites.

First, MSU Texas!

Your site looks really good and you’ve made a lot of progress with it. It is easy to navigate and read. That said, I have two criticisms. First, it would be a little more reader-friendly if your images were placed next to where they are discussed rather than in the Flickr gallery. I’m glad that you specifically mentioned that you were referring to images in the gallery, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have figured it out. If you have to tell me where to look, then it isn’t a very intuitive way to integrate the images with the text. Second, I would have liked to see the analysis deal with identity more. Who is typically part of these organizations? How does their clothing reflect their identity or personal interests? What makes each group different from the others?

Second, UVA Wise!

From the skeleton site you have now, I can tell where you’re planning to go with the project, and I’m excited to see the final product! Reading the transcript of the interview was interesting because these are people who are clearly not very interested in keeping up with fashion trends. Did you get any photos from them? From what I can tell, it looks like you’ll be looking at the particular concerns of people living in that area, and how that played in role in their clothing choices. I’m looking forward to reading about the regional background because I’m interested in learning more about the context of Appalachian fashion choices.

Good luck to everyone! This is new to most of us, and it seems like we’re handling it well!

There is quite a bit of work to be done on Carley’s and my project website before the draft is due in just over a week. I have changed the theme and set up pages for each decade. I think that giving each decade its own page makes the website easy to navigate. Once we have added images, I think it will be much better looking. Carley and I have split up the decades evenly, so I will be writing on the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s, and making the overall timeline and introduction on the homepage.  Getting the writing done will be my priority over the next week, and the images may come later. I’m hoping to at least present a framework of the argument that we are making.

Truman’s midterm break is next week, so we will not be able to visit Special Collections again for research and scanning images until after the draft is due. I will have no trouble completing most of the writing, but we still haven’t looked at much material from the 1990s.

I have my work cut out for me over the next week, but since I’m not worrying about images for now, it is manageable.

After looking through plenty of student handbooks and yearbooks, I have quite a few photos available for this post. However, we still have decades worth of yearbooks to look through, so this timeline I made is definitely lacking photos form large periods of time.

We will probably include a timeline of major changes in dress on campus, so I was curious if Timeline JS would give me any problems. It was surprisingly easy to use! The only issue that I encountered, which I have no idea how to fix, is that some of the images rotated, and are displayed sideways or upside down. If anyone could give me some pointers on how to prevent that from happening, I would appreciate it!

The photos that I included were taken with my phone in Special Collections, and Carley and I will be scanning the images that we most want to use for our website so that we will have high quality versions.

Oh boy, I had to use a new technology today.  Even worse, I didn’t budget much time for this. So this was quite an experience.

I went home for the weekend, so I decided to interview my mom about the way that my dad dresses. We were both pretty awkward about being recorded, which I’m sure you can hear. I kept it short because she was a bit apprehensive about being interviewed. She was afraid someone would put it on Youtube and laugh at her, so don’t do that I guess? Please don’t make my mom a meme.

I had to amplify my mom’s voice because I think she was a bit further from my computer than I was. I also cut out some laughing. Also, I don’t think the sound quality is all that great, but I think that may be because my computer is old, and the microphone may not be the best. If anyone knows if there’s something I can do to make the sound quality sound a bit better, let me know.

I edited my blog so that the appearance would relate a bit more to the content of my project. I changed the theme to Hemingway because I like the font and the placement of the header text. I then changed my header to a pretty generic photo of an apple on a teacher’s desk to relate to the idea of school and dress codes. I may change this later if I get any good photos that relate directly to my project. Lastly, I changed the background color to a very light blue to

make the whole thing look more finished.

On another note, here is a link to an exhibition at the St. Louis Art Museum that I might go see when I’m home for spring break next month.

Finally, this image is one of my favorite things ever. It’s an old meme, I know, but my little art historian heart is so happy whenever I see it.

For the major project in this class, Carley and I have agreed that we would like to research dress codes. There are a few different directions that would could possibly go with this topic, and the one that we choose will ultimately come down to what kinds of resources are available to us. We have contacted Special Collections in Truman’s library to see what sort of documentation they have, such as past student handbooks and codes of conduct for Truman or other schools in Kirksville. They responded that they have quite a few documents that we could look through for information in the University Archives, so that seems like a great place to start. I checked Truman’s current student handbook and code of conduct, and it does not look like there is a dress code. While that on its own may be significant, it is possible that colleges in general do not have dress codes that are as strict as middle and high schools. Therefore, it is a possibility that we will not be researching colleges at all.

Here are the directions that I could foresee this project going:
1. We focus on a specific school in Kirksville (not necessarily Truman) and analyze changes in dress code over time. I am not sure who our interviewees would be, but we may be able to find people through research.
2. We focus on a time period (I’m partial to the 70s), and look at schools around the country. We can research a school in Kirksville, and get information on other schools through interviews with our parents, our friends’ parents, and professors who would have been in school during this time.