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Book Sprint: Day 2, or, “The Hannah Talks”

hannah arendthannah arendtThe feat of the day was in generating interview questions. The group debated how we might create a series of questions that were specific to the theme of Fashion and Politics, but that also allowed a point of entry for people of all disciplines. We hoped to keep the questions open but specific, accessible and concise. We also wanted to create a space in which interviewees might also share pieces of their own personal narrative(s), without feeling pressured or manipulated by the questions posed.

Transparency and a sincere desire to respect the multiplicity of ideologies and vantage points were at the heart of our aims.  Emerging from day two was a clear desire to create a dialogue that did not shy away from the hard questions, but that propelled our inquiries even further, opening the dialogue up to any persons not in attendance.IMG_8771

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Book Sprint: Day 1

 

Day 1: The Question of Questioning

During day one of the Book Sprint, we attempted to formulate a vocabulary of terms through which to discuss “Fashion and Politics.” We had a free-write session for about 20 minutes, and each wrote down words/phrases on sticky notes that we affixed to the blackboard. From there, we attempted to link different concepts under the categories of either “fashion” or of “politics.” In many cases, the purportedly separate camps bled into one another, and we found ourselves debating which concepts could be considered issues of “fashion” and which were those of “politics.” This only further illustrated the inextricable nature of the two, and the fact that fashion is, inherently, political. The why, who, what, when and how still remained.

But, alas, it was only day one.

The next activity was our take on the “exquisite corpse” exercise, in which we were assigned one of the words from our new ‘vocabulary,’ and produced drawings around them. We then passed each of these drawings around, adding to the content of the last illustrator. The result was quite interesting, and revealed the layered difference of individual methodologies and research interests.

 

 

 

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Fashion/Politics BookSprint

A Book Sprint?

A Book Sprint brings together a group of people in order to produce a book in 3-5 days. There may be no pre-production and the group goes from zero to published book throughout the workshop. The book should have high quality content and be made available immediately at the end of the sprint via print-on-demand services and e-book formats (more details about the format at booksprints.net). The intense collaborative aspect of the work makes it different from traditional academic writing, as well as the open format for dissemination (often on-line and open access). Continue reading “Fashion/Politics BookSprint”