Undergraduate curators: Production of a justice-oriented fashion museum exhibition

Abstract

The purpose of this scholarship on teaching is to examine how undergraduate students can engage with justice-oriented fashion history through curating a small fashion exhibition as a group project in a single 17-week semester. I explore how both scaffolding and formative assessment techniques shaped this undergraduate learning experience. To build this case study, I drew upon multiple sources including the syllabus, course materials provided to the students, literature used to build the course and my faculty self-ratings. The instructions for the entire project were broken down into smaller tasks due throughout the semester. I found that students were heavily engaged throughout the entire process, particularly when browsing the fashion collection for potential objects. Overall, this project serves as an example for undergraduates curating exhibitions in a one-semester format using a smaller university fashion collection with modest resources overcoming the previously documented roadblocks to using fashion teaching collections.