A New Semester

Next Monday, the 2012-2013 school year begins, and I'm thrilled that my syllabus is all ready, and after a year of relaxed and boring (but comfortable) study wear, I'm eager to get back to exploring professional yet fun academic fashion again. I cannot promise any regular blogging, but I do hope to get back to it now and then. I just signed up for dry cleaning delivery and as you can see, I'm starting to get my clothes organized before Monday. I have a month until my PhD exam, so I'm going to be quite stressed and distracted until I pass exams, and I'm going to a conference (the NOLOSE conference) at the beginning of September, so I'll be incredibly busy. But I'm trying to take one day at a time. 

I think my look for this semester is going to be mostly blazers over dresses, a look I started wearing earlier this summer. Here I am at my parents' house (in my mom and dad's amazing closet) back in May, wearing a blazer from SWAK, and a dress from Lane Bryant. I love the mix of hard and soft, masculine & feminine in this look, and I like mixing a solid color with a bright pattern.

This semester, I'm teaching two back-to-back sections of Rhetoric & Composition, and I'm focusing a lot on social justice issues. Standing in front of the classroom as a disabled (I use a cane on campus because there's so much walking), fat, queer person in a very conservative state makes me turn my thoughts once again to the impact fashion has in the classroom. There has been so much active hatred toward difference lately, through hate crimes against queers, to attacks on Sikh gurdwaras and Muslim mosques, and I feel a great responsibility to help my students feel compassion and understanding toward those who are different than themselves. I am the most visible and immediate example of difference for them, and I take that responsibility seriously. In my office, I have posted an Audre Lorde quote:

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Concern with sartorial choices often gets accused of superficiality, but I think the way we present ourselves to the world, and the ways, for better or worse, that people perceive us based in part by those choices, but also by the bodies in the clothes, is deeply relevant, and I look forward to continuing my own questions and exploration this school year.

For the rest of you going back to school, I wish you a smooth transition from summer!