Campus News - Classroom

As a new course demonstrates, it's fashionable to be eco-friendly.

After seventeen years as a senior lecturer in the School of Human Ecology, Jody Fossum '82 decided it was time to teach her students the three Rs: recycle, reuse, and reconstruct.

Through her new course, Design Studies 501: Globally Sustainable Textile and Apparel Design, Fossum helps students learn the skills they need to work in fashion. And she's challenging them to make a lasting impact in an industry where, as supermodel Heidi Klum bluntly puts it on TV's Project Runway, "One day you're in, and the next day you're out."

"The fashion industry promotes consumerism hugely, and we need to be really conscientious about it and what we teach our students," Fossum says.

Building sustainability into the work of these budding designers will not only benefit the planet, but also give them a leg up in the growing world of fashion and design, she says. There's evidence to support her reasoning: nearly 200 million Americans buy green products, according to market research firm Mintel Global, and retail giant Wal-Mart just launched a line of T-shirts made from recycled soda bottles.

For one class assignment, students scrutinize magazine ads and talk about how the featured items could be transformed into another product or made in a more sustainable way. At the sight of a glossy ad for expensive Prada shoes - which one student suggests making with hemp - Fossum says of the industry, "We're so bad; we promote something new every six weeks."

But Fossum is also pragmatic, reminding the class that consumers interested in green design don't just want to feel good about the products they buy - they want them to look good, too. The students' designs must not only adhere to the three Rs, but they also need to incorporate current trends. "In the end, you want to be able to sell your product," she says.

Early in the semester, she starts a class by passing around a bag made in part from recycled saris, providing some inspiration for the line of fifteen products each student eventually must design using reclaimed, recycled, organic, or long-lasting materials. As part of a final project, students will construct two prototypes from their sketches, as well as detail the technical specifications to manufacture their products. The raw materials they choose can include sweaters from thrift shops, recycled coats, hemp, linen, and cotton muslin left over from another design class project.

Sarah Gagnon x'08 studies prototypes she has made for a line of table linens, including an elegant runner made with fabric gathered using a technique called a broomstick pleat. The designs are for her brothers, who operate a Madison catering business specializing in organic and seasonal foods for small, boutique weddings. Gagnon says she chose linen because it is produced without pesticides, is long lasting, and any inevitable party stains can be removed without using chemicals.

"I did the research on how to clean them," she says. "After I make the first one, we'll pour a bottle of wine on it and see how it goes."

Lauren Regan x'10 seizes on the class project as a chance to use several squares of fabric remaining from her print-and-dye class. The cotton muslin has been dipped into an indigo vat, and various methods have been used to achieve different effects, including stripes, geometric shapes, and stitch marks.

"They're so pretty. I've always wanted to do something with them," Regan says.

The blue-and-white pieces are now the foundation of a handbag she is making for a line of summer clothing and accessories. Fossum advises Regan about some technical aspects of her design, including what kind of closure she could use, and says, "I'm excited. I hope you are, because it's very cool fabric."

Other class prototypes include lamps made with recycled paper and laptop bags constructed from organic cotton canvas mixed with cast-off outerwear. Penny Bierman '08 unravels a V-neck blue merino wool sweater she purchased at Goodwill and winds the resulting yarn around a reel. She will use the skeins to weave prototypes for a line of rugs she is designing.

"I was really intrigued by the idea of recycling [instead of] just using sustainable materials," she says. "However sustainable these new materials and crops might be, they're still using resources."

Students also learn from visiting speakers, including the owner of a furniture company that salvages birch doors from building demolitions, turning them into desks and conference tables. They also met with Rob Behnke, co-founder of Fair Indigo, a fair-trade clothing retailer founded in 2006. Fossum serves as the company's director of product development.

Fossum enlists the iconic item of American fashion, a cotton T-shirt, as part of her effort to get students to think differently about design. According to the Organic Trade Association, it takes about one-third of a pound of pesticides and fertilizers to grow enough cotton for just one T-shirt. Fossum's students break down every aspect of producing the shirt, considering the product's social, economic, and environmental aspects - from how cotton is grown and who grows it, to how the shirt is made and who ultimately buys and wears it.

That kind of thinking doesn't stop inside the classroom. Emphasizing the broader implications of her class, Fossum gives students one more assignment: do one thing for a week to make a difference in the world. They meet the task by changing behaviors - bringing their own bags to the grocery store, taking the bus to work instead of driving, or setting timers on their thermostats.

"This is not just about designing," she says.

By Jenny Price '96

Religious Studies 352/Folklore 352: Shamanism

Tom DuBois is interested in traditional religion - very traditional. In his course on shamanism, he takes students on an odyssey through the religious practices of a wide variety of indigenous cultures around the globe.

DuBois, a professor of Scandinavian studies, is an expert on the folklore and folk life of the Sami people of northern Finland. But his class stretches far beyond the Arctic to cover the peoples of North and South America, southeast Asia, and Siberia. Although these cultures are so disparate that some academics would argue that their religions should not be classed together, DuBois disagrees. "There's a core of [religious] elements that are very similar," he says. And chief among those is the cultures' reliance on a spiritual mediator.

"A shaman," says DuBois, "is a religious specialist who uses an altered state or trance to communicate with the spirit world to achieve ends for his or her community" ends that typically include gathering information, divining the future, or manipulating luck. DuBois introduces different forms of shamanism through his own nearly-400-page textbook. Though it hasn't yet been published (it's forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), he makes the manuscript available to students for free online. He also shows modern films about shamans, including Pathfinder, about the Sami, and The Fast Runner about the Inuit.

Interest in shamanism has been rising in recent years, for both spiritual and political reasons. The shaman, DuBois notes, makes a powerful symbol for members of indigenous societies who want to reclaim their traditional culture or values.

DuBois created his shamanism course four years ago, and it's proved popular with students. Taught typically one semester each year, the lecture class brings in between sixty and eighty students, and DuBois says he often has to turn students away. Like the cultures they study, those students come from a variety of backgrounds - not just anthropology majors, but from all across the university. And again like the cultures studied, they share at least one core element: "They're a very curious bunch," DuBois says.

By John Allen