Join Kelly for her studio presentation after her Humanities PhD exam!
Wednesday, April 18th
Noon to 1pm
Room EV 11-705, behind Milieux ‘nerve centre’
Kelly Arlene Grant
When people ask me what my research is about, I often half-jokingly say, “I knit lots of socks!” But it is more than that, to be truthful.
Living history interpretation is a profession within the museum field. It involves the wearing of reproduction historical clothing and ‘living’ the lives of the people who once walked the halls of those historic sites. By wearing and using these reproductions, we are able to better understand how the material culture was created and used, and how relationships with the body develop through that creation, use, or wearing, as is the case with clothing.
For my research/creation dissertation project through Concordia’s Humanities Doctoral Program, I am closely examining the ‘progressive’ living history movement. This new field emphasizes a quest for accuracy. These historians research and recreate the clothing and accoutrements they use in their own interpretation programming, so that they can better understand how clothing can ‘make the wo/man’ but also how that wo/man’s body can give the clothing a life.
So yes, I knit a lot of socks. I am looking into how eighteenth century stockings were knit, and how those methods changed from the seventeenth century, and then again into the modern method of sock construction.
textiles + materiality research cluster 