Please join us for the launch of the Costumes and Collapse Reading Group at UChicago, focusing on the histories and theories of wearable art, textiles, and costuming. Costumes and Collapse is a three-year interdisciplinary project at the Neubauer Collegium led by UChicago Comparative Literature professors Leah Feldman and Hoda El Shakry in collaboration with the Berlin-based artist collective Slavs and Tatars and Rikki Byrd (Northwestern University). The project will feature a series of reading groups, lectures, performances, and exhibitions across Chicago, Berlin, Tbilisi, and Paris. At these events the research team will explore wearable art, textiles, and costuming practices against the backdrop of imperial, social, and ecological collapse across the comparative axes of North Africa, Central Asia, and the Caucasus.

The first meeting of the Costumes and Collapse Reading Group will focus on introductions, with a few short readings available here. Join the mailing list here.