Aesthetics of Defiance: Dress, Fashion, and Hair as Embodied Resistance
Date: 6 June 2025
Time: 15:00-19:00
Location: University of Amsterdam, Roeterseilandcampus – Building B/C/D (entrance B/C), REC B, Room 1.03
Organizers: Jazmín Ruiz Díaz Figueredo & Roberto Filippello
Contact: j.ruizdiazfigueredo@uva.nl
Registration: here
Registration deadline: 2 June 2025
Credits: 1 ECTS (details below)
This masterclass explores how bodies dressed and styled outside dominant norms can become agents of resistance. Focusing on dress, fashion, and hair as embodied political practices, it examines how individuals and communities subvert power structures through everyday aesthetics. By integrating visual analysis and storytelling, the session invites participants to engage critically and personally with how strategies of appearance contest colonial, gendered, and racialised logics. Through a decolonial lens, we will analyse historical and contemporary case studies in which dress and hair unsettle hegemonic (Western, colonial) beauty standards and normative identities and oppose control, surveillance, and/or erasure. Participants will also engage with the work of other scholars and practitioners who theorise the body as a site of creative defiance.
The masterclass is delivered by Jazmín Ruiz Díaz, Visiting Scholar at the Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area.
Programme
The session blends critical theory, visual analysis, and participatory learning, focusing on decolonial resistance through appearance at the core.
15:00-17:00: LECTURE (Including Q&A)
17:00-17:30: COFFEE-BREAK
17:30-19:00: WORKSHOP
17:30 – 17:40: Introduction to Workshop
In small groups, participants choose or develop a case of decolonial resistance through dress, hair, or fashion.
Guiding questions:
- What norms are being resisted?
- How does the body become a site of creative defiance?
- What power structures are being challenged—colonial, racial, gendered?
17:40 – 18:10: Group Work
18:10 – 18:40: Group Sharing
18:40 – 19:00: Closing Reflections
Credit Details
- Attendance and Active Participation
- Full participation in the masterclass session, including the lecture, workshop, and group discussions.
- Required Reading
- Participants will be required to read in advance the following key reading:
Ruiz Díaz Figueredo, J., & Xonorika, K. (2023). Clothing and adornment as resistance, The Fashion Studies Journal. Available at: https://fashionstudiesjournal.com/Clothing-and-Adornment-as-Resistance
- Preparation Assignment
- Participants are required to bring a visual, case study, or cultural example that illustrates resistance through dress, fashion, or hair.
- This material will be shared and discussed in small groups during the workshop.