Publications
Creativity, Craft, Fashion, and Gender – Special Issue of Clothing Cultures (forthcoming 2024)
Editor: Katrina Sark
Katrina Sark: “Creativity, Craft, Gender, and Fashion,” and “Bauhaus, Gender, Creativity, and Fashion”
This Special Issue of Clothing Cultures focuses on “Creativity, Craft, Gender, and Fashion” have been commissioned from researchers in the UK, Germany, and Denmark following a symposium that I organized at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in March 2023. The aim was to reflect on the intersections of fashion and design cultures, creativity, craft, and gender, with experts, researchers, and students specializing in critical fashion and design. The research collected here ranges from investigations of current issues in ethics and sustainability, craftivism and socio-critical engagement, creative expressions in contemporary fashion practices, to historical gender struggles in creative education and design schools in Denmark and at the Bauhaus. The main goal of this special issue is to provide multi-disciplinary perspectives on craft and fashion, with a particular focus on gender, ethics, and alternative models of creativity (decoupled from neoliberal market values of extraction and growth).
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Creativity, Craft, Gender
Available from Intellect
Katrina Sark: “Creativity, Craft, Gender, and Fashion,” and “Bauhaus, Gender, Creativity, and Fashion”
This Special Issue of Clothing Cultures focuses on “Creativity, Craft, Gender, and Fashion” have been commissioned from researchers in the UK, Germany, and Denmark following a symposium that I organized at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in March 2023. The aim was to reflect on the intersections of fashion and design cultures, creativity, craft, and gender, with experts, researchers, and students specializing in critical fashion and design. The research collected here ranges from investigations of current issues in ethics and sustainability, craftivism and socio-critical engagement, creative expressions in contemporary fashion practices, to historical gender struggles in creative education and design schools in Denmark and at the Bauhaus. The main goal of this special issue is to provide multi-disciplinary perspectives on craft and fashion, with a particular focus on gender, ethics, and alternative models of creativity (decoupled from neoliberal market values of extraction and growth).
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Creativity, Craft, Gender
Available from Intellect
The Future of Fashion Education: Speculation, Experience and Collaboration (London: Routledge, 2024)
Edited by Kirsten Scott, Barry Curtis, Claire Pajaczkowska
Katrina Sark: “Bridging Decoloniality and Sustainability in Fashion”
In order to help transform the global fashion industries (and culture industries in general) towards more ethical, decolonial, and sustainable practices, we have to reform fashion education, which until recently has been primarily Euro-centric, colonial, racist, appropriative, elitist, growth-driven, and non-inclusive. This short summary article recounts how I re-developed the fashion courses at the University of Southern Denmark, to make fashion education more social-justice and climate-justice focused, with a strong emphasis on ethics, equity, inclusivity, intersectionality, decoloniality, creativity and innovation, and to help prepare the next generations of change-makers transform the industry from within through their knowledge, competencies, and skills that the industry urgently needs.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Creativity, Sustainability, Decoloniality, Fashion Education
Available from Routledge
Katrina Sark: “Bridging Decoloniality and Sustainability in Fashion”
In order to help transform the global fashion industries (and culture industries in general) towards more ethical, decolonial, and sustainable practices, we have to reform fashion education, which until recently has been primarily Euro-centric, colonial, racist, appropriative, elitist, growth-driven, and non-inclusive. This short summary article recounts how I re-developed the fashion courses at the University of Southern Denmark, to make fashion education more social-justice and climate-justice focused, with a strong emphasis on ethics, equity, inclusivity, intersectionality, decoloniality, creativity and innovation, and to help prepare the next generations of change-makers transform the industry from within through their knowledge, competencies, and skills that the industry urgently needs.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Creativity, Sustainability, Decoloniality, Fashion Education
Available from Routledge
Fashion Theory Journal (28:3, 2024, 1-24)
Katrina Sark: “Locational Fashion Cultures”
This article employs a methodology of locational fashion cultures, which is still under-defined and under-utilized in Fashion Studies, from the interdisciplinary intersections of cultural analysis, cultural history, cultural and media representations of fashion in urban contexts, to help us understand fashion beyond its economic value and systems. As case studies and examples of this methodology, this article outlines four books from my Urban Chic book series (published by Intellect) that examine Berlin, Vienna, Montreal, and Copenhagen cultures through the lens of fashion. The cities in these books are not often considered canonical fashion capitals like Paris, London, and New York, but each has unique and vibrant fashion cultures. By examining their respective fashion cultures, we can investigate the ways in which fashion can be re-inscribed with cultural values independent from its material or trend-driven obsolescence. The article also provides a summary of the various ways in which fashion cultures and fashion cities have been defined and described by fashion scholars to date. It concludes with some suggestions and questions that may be posed to analyze and highlight locational fashion cultures.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Cultures, Cities, Urban Chic Book Series
Available from Taylor & Francis
This article employs a methodology of locational fashion cultures, which is still under-defined and under-utilized in Fashion Studies, from the interdisciplinary intersections of cultural analysis, cultural history, cultural and media representations of fashion in urban contexts, to help us understand fashion beyond its economic value and systems. As case studies and examples of this methodology, this article outlines four books from my Urban Chic book series (published by Intellect) that examine Berlin, Vienna, Montreal, and Copenhagen cultures through the lens of fashion. The cities in these books are not often considered canonical fashion capitals like Paris, London, and New York, but each has unique and vibrant fashion cultures. By examining their respective fashion cultures, we can investigate the ways in which fashion can be re-inscribed with cultural values independent from its material or trend-driven obsolescence. The article also provides a summary of the various ways in which fashion cultures and fashion cities have been defined and described by fashion scholars to date. It concludes with some suggestions and questions that may be posed to analyze and highlight locational fashion cultures.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Cultures, Cities, Urban Chic Book Series
Available from Taylor & Francis
Fashion Theory Journal (28:1, 2024, 35-58, Open Access)
Katrina Sark and Sara Arnold, “Fashion Activism and Extinction Rebellion”
This article examines the fashion activism of Extinction Rebellion (XR) through a comparative analysis of literature, media, and interviews with activists. We argue that their decentralized organizational structure allows the individual local chapters and action groups to function and organize independently, quickly, and more efficiently than many other current and past organizations, in part thanks to social media connectivity, trans-national communication channels, multi-generational involvement of activists and researchers, and the nonhierarchical structure of the action groups. This is significant because despite the criticism they have received from sociologists, media critics, and other analysts, currently they are one of the most effective organizations in terms of raising awareness and provoking public debate about the climate emergency and how it relates to fashion.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Activism, Extinction Rebellion (XR), Fashion Act Now
Available from Taylor & Francis
This article examines the fashion activism of Extinction Rebellion (XR) through a comparative analysis of literature, media, and interviews with activists. We argue that their decentralized organizational structure allows the individual local chapters and action groups to function and organize independently, quickly, and more efficiently than many other current and past organizations, in part thanks to social media connectivity, trans-national communication channels, multi-generational involvement of activists and researchers, and the nonhierarchical structure of the action groups. This is significant because despite the criticism they have received from sociologists, media critics, and other analysts, currently they are one of the most effective organizations in terms of raising awareness and provoking public debate about the climate emergency and how it relates to fashion.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Activism, Extinction Rebellion (XR), Fashion Act Now
Available from Taylor & Francis
Branding Berlin: From Division to the Cultural Capital of Europe (London: Routledge, 2023)
Author: Katrina Sark
This book is a cultural history of post-Wall urban, social, political, and cultural transformations in Berlin. Branding Berlin presents a cultural analysis of Berlin’s cultural production, including literature, film, memoirs and non-fiction works, art, media, urban branding campaigns, and cultural diversity initiatives put forth by the Berlin Senate, and allows readers to understand the various changes that transformed the formerly divided city of voids into a hip cultural capital. The book examines Berlin’s branding, urban-economic development, and its search for a post-Wall identity by focusing on manifestations of nostalgic longing in documentary films and other cultural products. Building on the sociological research of urban branding and linking it with an interpretive analysis of cultural products generated in Berlin during that time, the author examines the intersections and tensions between the nostalgic views of the past and the branded images of Berlin’s present and future.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Post-Wall, Documentaries, Branding, Art, Literature
Available from Routledge
This book is a cultural history of post-Wall urban, social, political, and cultural transformations in Berlin. Branding Berlin presents a cultural analysis of Berlin’s cultural production, including literature, film, memoirs and non-fiction works, art, media, urban branding campaigns, and cultural diversity initiatives put forth by the Berlin Senate, and allows readers to understand the various changes that transformed the formerly divided city of voids into a hip cultural capital. The book examines Berlin’s branding, urban-economic development, and its search for a post-Wall identity by focusing on manifestations of nostalgic longing in documentary films and other cultural products. Building on the sociological research of urban branding and linking it with an interpretive analysis of cultural products generated in Berlin during that time, the author examines the intersections and tensions between the nostalgic views of the past and the branded images of Berlin’s present and future.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Post-Wall, Documentaries, Branding, Art, Literature
Available from Routledge
Social Justice Pedagogies: Multidisciplinary Practices and Approaches (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023)
Editor: Katrina Sark
Katrina Sark: "Editor’s Introduction," "Social Justice, Intersectionality, and Decoloniality"
The idea for this book emerged from my collaborations with some very inspiring people over the past few years, while I was teaching as a sessional lecturer at the University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada, where over the course of four years I designed and developed twelve new courses (out of the twenty-five that I taught) for seven different departments in the Faculty of Humanities and three new courses for the Division of Continuing Studies. During those formative and inspiring, but precarious and exhausting years, I worked with and observed several colleagues re-define what Humanities education can and should do; namely, change the ways we approach our own humanity, vulnerability, creativity, and our understanding of justice. As Humanities faculties around the globe consistently experience budget cuts, and new investments into tenured positions are deprioritized, while more and more universities rely on and perpetuate precarious labour conditions, the obvious place for change and innovation still remains in and around the classrooms.
KEYWORDS: Social Justice, Pedagogies, Education, Innovation
Available from University of Toronto Press
Katrina Sark: "Editor’s Introduction," "Social Justice, Intersectionality, and Decoloniality"
The idea for this book emerged from my collaborations with some very inspiring people over the past few years, while I was teaching as a sessional lecturer at the University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada, where over the course of four years I designed and developed twelve new courses (out of the twenty-five that I taught) for seven different departments in the Faculty of Humanities and three new courses for the Division of Continuing Studies. During those formative and inspiring, but precarious and exhausting years, I worked with and observed several colleagues re-define what Humanities education can and should do; namely, change the ways we approach our own humanity, vulnerability, creativity, and our understanding of justice. As Humanities faculties around the globe consistently experience budget cuts, and new investments into tenured positions are deprioritized, while more and more universities rely on and perpetuate precarious labour conditions, the obvious place for change and innovation still remains in and around the classrooms.
KEYWORDS: Social Justice, Pedagogies, Education, Innovation
Available from University of Toronto Press
Copenhagen Chic: A Locational History of Copenhagen Fashion (Bristol: Intellect, 2023)
Editor: Katrina Sark
Katrina Sark: "Introduction: Fashion Culture," "Scandinavian Chic," "Fashion in Film," "Fashion in TV Shows," "Innovation and Technology," "Conclusion"
Copenhagen Chic is a critical inquiry into the Copenhagen fashion culture, and by extension also the Danish fashion industry and fashion system, through a contemporary and historical analysis of fashion, media, and cultural landscapes to expand our understanding of fashion and of culture. It looks at Copenhagen’s relationship with fashion through history, contemporary practices and trends, queer identities, performativity, and artistic, literary, filmic, and television narratives and representations, as well as attempts to innovate industry practices through new technologies. It also challenges perceptions of Copenhagen fashion as inherently sustainable by pointing to the hypocrisy of conventional, unsustainable paradigms and business practices that unethical marketing promises greenwash; yet it also showcases the idealism, engagement, and grit of leading and upcoming Danish innovators – all the while situating these developments in their local, national, and global contexts.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Copenhagen, Sustainability, Innovation
Available from Intellect
Katrina Sark: "Introduction: Fashion Culture," "Scandinavian Chic," "Fashion in Film," "Fashion in TV Shows," "Innovation and Technology," "Conclusion"
Copenhagen Chic is a critical inquiry into the Copenhagen fashion culture, and by extension also the Danish fashion industry and fashion system, through a contemporary and historical analysis of fashion, media, and cultural landscapes to expand our understanding of fashion and of culture. It looks at Copenhagen’s relationship with fashion through history, contemporary practices and trends, queer identities, performativity, and artistic, literary, filmic, and television narratives and representations, as well as attempts to innovate industry practices through new technologies. It also challenges perceptions of Copenhagen fashion as inherently sustainable by pointing to the hypocrisy of conventional, unsustainable paradigms and business practices that unethical marketing promises greenwash; yet it also showcases the idealism, engagement, and grit of leading and upcoming Danish innovators – all the while situating these developments in their local, national, and global contexts.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Copenhagen, Sustainability, Innovation
Available from Intellect
Routledge History of Fashion and Dress, 1800 to Present (New York: Routledge, 2023, Open Access)
Edited by: Véronique Pouillard and Vincent Dubé-Senécal
Katrina Sark: “De-Gendering Fashion in Mainstream Media”
This chapter examines several examples of de-gendering fashion in mainstream media, music, entertainment, and social media, with a particular focus on the representations of (Gen Z) masculinities in the years 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use the methodologies of cultural and media analysis to examine the intersections between fashion, gender, mediation, media representations, as well as power dynamics, to gain a better understanding of cultural patterns, developments, and innovations. While de-gendering fashion has been part of fashion culture from the beginning of time, while non-binary activists have been calling for gender-neutral fashion not only as a fashionable renaissance, but also as an “anti-violence imperative” (Vaid-Menon 2019), and while many cis and heterosexual male celebrities and musicians have always been wearing skirts and dresses simply because they can, this chapter investigates the cultural changes manifested in fashion and culture that took place in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they were reflected and represented in the media.
KEYWORDS: Fashion, Gender, Media, Entertainment, Gen Z Masculinities
Available from Routledge
Katrina Sark: “De-Gendering Fashion in Mainstream Media”
This chapter examines several examples of de-gendering fashion in mainstream media, music, entertainment, and social media, with a particular focus on the representations of (Gen Z) masculinities in the years 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. I use the methodologies of cultural and media analysis to examine the intersections between fashion, gender, mediation, media representations, as well as power dynamics, to gain a better understanding of cultural patterns, developments, and innovations. While de-gendering fashion has been part of fashion culture from the beginning of time, while non-binary activists have been calling for gender-neutral fashion not only as a fashionable renaissance, but also as an “anti-violence imperative” (Vaid-Menon 2019), and while many cis and heterosexual male celebrities and musicians have always been wearing skirts and dresses simply because they can, this chapter investigates the cultural changes manifested in fashion and culture that took place in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they were reflected and represented in the media.
KEYWORDS: Fashion, Gender, Media, Entertainment, Gen Z Masculinities
Available from Routledge
Ethical Fashion and Empowerment, Special Issue of Clothing Cultures (7:1, 2021)
Editor: Katrina Sark
Katrina Sark: "The Fashion Paradox"
This Special Issue of Clothing Cultures focuses on ethical fashion and empowerment in a collective effort to shift the fashion discourse away from the business-as-usual approaches and towards a more just conceptual framework and practice of fashion across disciplines. This issue is about the paradoxes of fashion, with a particular emphasis on trans- and plus-size fashion, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, ethics and empowerment in constructive and solution-based ways. The articles in this collection have both a Canadian perspective and a global scope in understanding diverse fashion experiences within their respective cultures and urban settings. All articles engage with fashion as an intersectional, locational and paradoxical construct because of its very diversified practices and performative means to undermine its own value. These articles are not aimed at cataloguing or explaining the many unethical practices or abuses within the fashion industry, but rather engage in critical thinking about the ethical dimensions of fashion identities, representation, inclusivity, diversity, consumption practices, social justice issues and various forms of empowerment through fashion, as well as reconfiguring the ethical dimension of everyday interaction with clothes on an individual level. Together, the articles in this special issue allow us to reimagine fashion from a position of empowerment, rather than scarcity, lack or under-representation at a critical time in fashion history.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Empowerment, Paradoxes, Ethics, Inclusivity
Available from Intellect
Katrina Sark: "The Fashion Paradox"
This Special Issue of Clothing Cultures focuses on ethical fashion and empowerment in a collective effort to shift the fashion discourse away from the business-as-usual approaches and towards a more just conceptual framework and practice of fashion across disciplines. This issue is about the paradoxes of fashion, with a particular emphasis on trans- and plus-size fashion, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, ethics and empowerment in constructive and solution-based ways. The articles in this collection have both a Canadian perspective and a global scope in understanding diverse fashion experiences within their respective cultures and urban settings. All articles engage with fashion as an intersectional, locational and paradoxical construct because of its very diversified practices and performative means to undermine its own value. These articles are not aimed at cataloguing or explaining the many unethical practices or abuses within the fashion industry, but rather engage in critical thinking about the ethical dimensions of fashion identities, representation, inclusivity, diversity, consumption practices, social justice issues and various forms of empowerment through fashion, as well as reconfiguring the ethical dimension of everyday interaction with clothes on an individual level. Together, the articles in this special issue allow us to reimagine fashion from a position of empowerment, rather than scarcity, lack or under-representation at a critical time in fashion history.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Culture, Empowerment, Paradoxes, Ethics, Inclusivity
Available from Intellect
| The Fashion Paradox.pdf |
From Far and Wide: German Studies in Canada, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik. (Reihe A – Band 141. Bern: Peter Lang, 2021)
Editor: Andrea Speltz, Nikola von Merveldt, and Gaby Pailer
Katrina Sark: “Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen (2009) and the Nostalgia for Babylon in the New Berlin” (pp.40-62)
Katrina Sark: “Report on the Future of German Studies in Canada” (pp.107-109)
This article locates “nostalgia for Babylon” in the documentary short film Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen (The Path We Do Not Walk Together, dir. Dominik Graf and Martin Gressmann, 2009), which engages with contemporary nostalgia both in its theme of disappearing architecture in Berlin and other cities in Germany, and through its form of pre-digital, celluloid film medium. The film is part of the compilation Deutschland 09 – 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation (Germany 09 – 13 Short Films about the State of Nation), which is an homage to the New German Cinema’s omnibus film, Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, 1979), which presented glimpses of German society in light of West-German terrorism of the 1970s. Der Weg links the theme of disappearance of old, unwanted buildings, and the replacement of historically problematic ones with the New Berlin’s “architecture of transparency.”
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Film, Gentrification, Culture, Architecture
Available from Peter Lang
Katrina Sark: “Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen (2009) and the Nostalgia for Babylon in the New Berlin” (pp.40-62)
Katrina Sark: “Report on the Future of German Studies in Canada” (pp.107-109)
This article locates “nostalgia for Babylon” in the documentary short film Der Weg, den wir nicht zusammen gehen (The Path We Do Not Walk Together, dir. Dominik Graf and Martin Gressmann, 2009), which engages with contemporary nostalgia both in its theme of disappearing architecture in Berlin and other cities in Germany, and through its form of pre-digital, celluloid film medium. The film is part of the compilation Deutschland 09 – 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation (Germany 09 – 13 Short Films about the State of Nation), which is an homage to the New German Cinema’s omnibus film, Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, 1979), which presented glimpses of German society in light of West-German terrorism of the 1970s. Der Weg links the theme of disappearance of old, unwanted buildings, and the replacement of historically problematic ones with the New Berlin’s “architecture of transparency.”
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Film, Gentrification, Culture, Architecture
Available from Peter Lang
Imaginations: Journal Of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (9:2, 2018)
Editors: Katrina Sark and Elena Siemens
Katrina Sark: "The Canadian Fashion Scholars Network"
This special issue on Fashion Culture and Media is the first digital collection of scholarship and artistic contributions by the members of the Canadian Fashion Scholars Network. In my contribution to this issue I detail the history and objectives of this network, while the other articles address the representation of fashion across a variety of media—from hockey broadcasts to comics, novels to advertising campaigns, and films to urban imaginaries—, and engage critically with various constructions of fashion cultures. My co-editor Elena Siemens and I decided to focus on both fashion media and fashion cultures for this issue because they are inextricably linked, as the scholarly and artistic contributions to this volume demonstrate. The network’s goal is to foster a stronger community of fashion scholars and to expand the discipline of Fashion Studies across Canada. I believe that critical engagement with fashion media and fashion cultures is still largely underrepresented in Canadian Fashion Studies and would like, through this volume and other activities of the network, to foster and expand these fields of inquiry.
KEYWORDS: Canadian Fashion Culture and Media, Canadian Fashion Scholars Network, Fashion Culture
Download the magazine as pdf here.
Katrina Sark: "The Canadian Fashion Scholars Network"
This special issue on Fashion Culture and Media is the first digital collection of scholarship and artistic contributions by the members of the Canadian Fashion Scholars Network. In my contribution to this issue I detail the history and objectives of this network, while the other articles address the representation of fashion across a variety of media—from hockey broadcasts to comics, novels to advertising campaigns, and films to urban imaginaries—, and engage critically with various constructions of fashion cultures. My co-editor Elena Siemens and I decided to focus on both fashion media and fashion cultures for this issue because they are inextricably linked, as the scholarly and artistic contributions to this volume demonstrate. The network’s goal is to foster a stronger community of fashion scholars and to expand the discipline of Fashion Studies across Canada. I believe that critical engagement with fashion media and fashion cultures is still largely underrepresented in Canadian Fashion Studies and would like, through this volume and other activities of the network, to foster and expand these fields of inquiry.
KEYWORDS: Canadian Fashion Culture and Media, Canadian Fashion Scholars Network, Fashion Culture
Download the magazine as pdf here.
The Fashion Studies Journal (No. 3, February, 2018)
- Katrina Sark: “Creating the Canadian Fashion Scholars Network”
A network, in today’s digital world, is about instant access, connectivity, communication, quick exchange of ideas and resources, as well as about possibilities of creation and collaboration. The technological innovations of the past decade have made it easier to stay connected through social networking platforms, as well as to create online communication and research hubs that foster creative, professional, and academic collaborations. Speaking from experience, I can attest that technological innovations also make it possible to create different networks relatively quickly, with little to no cost, and without relying on the expertise of programmers or IT support. Building a network can start quickly, single-handedly, and spread widely and even globally with the help of other established networks and social media platforms.
KEYWORDS: Fashion Scholars Network, Canadian Fashion, Fashion Culture
Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin (New York: Berghahn, 2017)
- Editors: Karin Bauer and Jennifer Hosek
- Katrina Sark, “Cultural History of Post-Wall Berlin: From Utopian Longing to Nostalgia for Babylon”
Since Unification and the end of the Cold War, Berlin has witnessed a series of uncommonly intense social, political, and cultural transformations. While positioning itself as a creative center populated by young and cosmopolitan global citizens, the “New Berlin” is at the same time a rich site of historical memory, defined inescapably by its past even as it articulates German and European hopes for the future. Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin presents a fascinating cross-section of life in Germany’s largest city, revealing the complex ways in which globalization, ethnicity, economics, memory, and national identity inflect how its urban spaces are inhabited and depicted.
KEYWORDS: Post-Wall Berlin, Documentary Films, Gentrification, Media, Art, Culture, Nostalgia
Available from Berghahn
Forum Deutsch: Unterrichtsforum (25:1, 2017)
- Editors: Canadian Association of Teachers of German (CAUTG)
- Katrina Sark, “Gender and Media: Course, Website, and Research Report.”
“If we do not know our own history, we are doomed to live as though it were our private fate.” (Hannah Arendt) Arendt’s quote does not only apply to German-Jewish cultural and political history, but also to the history of women’s liberation, feminism, and gender studies. The way feminism has been traditionally taught within the field of German Studies in North America has often been through the works of women writers, poets, and filmmakers. It is only in the last few years that scholars have begun to teach Feminist German Studies with a focus on contemporary gender and media discourses and developments in Germany and beyond. In this article, I present a report on a course and a website I developed while working as a sessional instructor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria in 2017. I begin with an overview of the course, the learning goals, web resources, and the outcomes.
KEYWORDS: Germany, Media, Gender, Feminism, Culture
Journal of European Popular Culture (8:1, 2017)
- Sark, Katrina. “Mauerpark: Berlin’s Gentrifying Scene Park,” pp. 39-56.
Mauerpark (dir. Dennis Karsten, 2011) is a documentary film shot in Berlin’s most notorious
park in Prenzlauer Berg in the summer of 2009. It portrays diverse protagonists –
artists, musicians, activists, performers and visitors – who frequent the park and
participate in its array of activities, such as mass karaoke, flea market, outdoor
basketball and other recreational sports, performances, arts, music, etc. Through
their narratives, the park is presented as the last public space in Prenzlauer Berg
that has not yet been completely gentrified and allows for sub- and countercultural,
unregulated creativity and leisure. This article examines Karsten’s film and the
gentrifying landscape of the New Berlin.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Documentary Films, Gentrification, Germany
| Maurpark (K.Sark) |
The Polyglot Magazine of Poetry and Art (Issue 2: Subjective Fashion, Fall 2017)
Guest Editor: Elena Siemens
Katrina Sark: “Alice, I Have Once Been, Indeed”
I have always been fascinated by the character of Alice in Wonderland and the various representations and imaginations of her in pop culture. I was first inspired to write a blog post entitled "Alice Does" about the various versions of Alice, and then a poem about an aging Alice that is included in this issue on Subjective Fashion. I imagine Alice as an eternally stylish and wise multilingual world-traveler, who has life-long friendships and loves, and many, many dresses.
KEYWORDS: Alice in Wonderland, Fashion, Dress, Dress-Making, Costume
Download the magazine as pdf here.
Katrina Sark: “Alice, I Have Once Been, Indeed”
I have always been fascinated by the character of Alice in Wonderland and the various representations and imaginations of her in pop culture. I was first inspired to write a blog post entitled "Alice Does" about the various versions of Alice, and then a poem about an aging Alice that is included in this issue on Subjective Fashion. I imagine Alice as an eternally stylish and wise multilingual world-traveler, who has life-long friendships and loves, and many, many dresses.
KEYWORDS: Alice in Wonderland, Fashion, Dress, Dress-Making, Costume
Download the magazine as pdf here.
Film International (14:2, 2016)
Katrina Sark: "Post-Wall Berlin Documentary Films" pp.70-88
The Berlin documentary film corpus produced after the Fall of the Wall in 1989 deserves closer attention and examination. The body of films that take post-Wall Berlin as their primary focus has grown exponentially since 1999, and then again after 2009. This can be explained by the changes in the city’s urban-economic development, when the very act of documenting became a way of making sense of the rapid changes and disappearances witnessed during that time. In a way, documenting can be seen as a way of engaging, preserving, questioning, affirming and even mourning the transformations evident in the New Berlin. I examine post-Wall Berlin documentary films because they have an immediacy of representation and engagement with the city and its various neighbourhoods, as well as its rapid transformations, which very few fiction films and literary works provide.
KEYWORDS: Germany, Documentary Film, Post-Wall Berlin, New Berlin, Gentrification
The Berlin documentary film corpus produced after the Fall of the Wall in 1989 deserves closer attention and examination. The body of films that take post-Wall Berlin as their primary focus has grown exponentially since 1999, and then again after 2009. This can be explained by the changes in the city’s urban-economic development, when the very act of documenting became a way of making sense of the rapid changes and disappearances witnessed during that time. In a way, documenting can be seen as a way of engaging, preserving, questioning, affirming and even mourning the transformations evident in the New Berlin. I examine post-Wall Berlin documentary films because they have an immediacy of representation and engagement with the city and its various neighbourhoods, as well as its rapid transformations, which very few fiction films and literary works provide.
KEYWORDS: Germany, Documentary Film, Post-Wall Berlin, New Berlin, Gentrification
| Post-Wall Berlin Documentaries (K. Sark) |
Women in German Yearbook (Volume 32, 2016)
Katrina Sark: "Interview with Anne Wizorek"
Anne Wizorek is a German feminist activist and media consultant. She is the author of Weil ein #Aufschrei nicht reicht (Because an #Outcry is Not Enough, 2014), a book she wrote after her anti-sexism twitter campaign #aufschrei went viral in 2013. I first interviewed Anne in January 2016, shortly after the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne, while she was in the process of collaborating on the #ausnahmslos campaign against sexism and racism. That interview can be accessed on my blog: Suites Culturelles. We then met in Berlin in June 2016 and recorded a podcast (in German) about feminism in Germany and Canada for her feminist online magazine Kleinerdrei. Finally, we met again in July 2016 and recorded a follow-up interview (this time in English) for the online contribution of the Women in German Yearbook about her current work. What follows below is a transcription of the above interview on Sound Cloud.
KEYWORDS: Germany, Feminism, Gender, Berlin, Digital Media
Anne Wizorek is a German feminist activist and media consultant. She is the author of Weil ein #Aufschrei nicht reicht (Because an #Outcry is Not Enough, 2014), a book she wrote after her anti-sexism twitter campaign #aufschrei went viral in 2013. I first interviewed Anne in January 2016, shortly after the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne, while she was in the process of collaborating on the #ausnahmslos campaign against sexism and racism. That interview can be accessed on my blog: Suites Culturelles. We then met in Berlin in June 2016 and recorded a podcast (in German) about feminism in Germany and Canada for her feminist online magazine Kleinerdrei. Finally, we met again in July 2016 and recorded a follow-up interview (this time in English) for the online contribution of the Women in German Yearbook about her current work. What follows below is a transcription of the above interview on Sound Cloud.
KEYWORDS: Germany, Feminism, Gender, Berlin, Digital Media
Film International (14:1, 2016)
Issue: Dialogue around the Moving Image
Katrina Sark: "Everything We Want And The Documenting Of Personal Quests" pp.44-58
Beatrice Moeller's documentary film Everything We Want (Alles Was Wir Wollen, 2013) is a rare document of the female experience of what Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1988) described as questing – pursuing a personal quest. With the help of three female protagonists and their mothers, Moeller constructs an observational document of contemporary Berlin women and their various struggles in personal, professional and spiritual quests. I examine the film in relation to feminist scholarship.
KEYWORDS: Documentary, Feminism, Gender, Berlin, German Cinema
Katrina Sark: "Everything We Want And The Documenting Of Personal Quests" pp.44-58
Beatrice Moeller's documentary film Everything We Want (Alles Was Wir Wollen, 2013) is a rare document of the female experience of what Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1988) described as questing – pursuing a personal quest. With the help of three female protagonists and their mothers, Moeller constructs an observational document of contemporary Berlin women and their various struggles in personal, professional and spiritual quests. I examine the film in relation to feminist scholarship.
KEYWORDS: Documentary, Feminism, Gender, Berlin, German Cinema
| Everything We Want (K. Sark) |
Montréal Chic: A Locational History Of Montreal Fashion (Bristol: Intellect, 2016)
After co-authoring Berliner Chic (2011) and assisting with the research on Wiener Chic (2013) I completed the third book in the series, on Montreal fashion culture - the first in the series that focuses on Canadian fashion history and culture. Just as the other two books, published by the British publishing house, Intellect, Montréal Chic outlines the intersections of fashion and other cultural fields, such as film, music, museums, and the contemporary fashion scene in Montreal, and provides a well-researched view into the urban culture of Montreal. Simultaneously, the study attempts to call for a re-conceptualization of traditional value systems that privilege the fashion industry (which in the case of Montreal and other former manufacturing capitals has deteriorated in the course of globalization and creative economies) over fashion culture.
In this third volume, I focused specifically on gender issues, the roles of women in fashion production, consumption, and exhibition, women’s labour, as well as gay, lesbian, and transgendered representations in film, media, fashion and culture. It was important to me not only to expand the field of Canadian Fashion Studies, but to focus on gender issues and representations within Urban Cultural Studies as well. Both the Berlin and Montreal volumes are dedicated to the women of Berlin and of Montreal respectively because I was inspired by their hard work and dedication to telling the (untold and underrepresented) stories of their cities through fashion.
KEYWORDS: Montreal, Fashion History, Fashion Culture, Fashion and Technology
Available from Intellect
In this third volume, I focused specifically on gender issues, the roles of women in fashion production, consumption, and exhibition, women’s labour, as well as gay, lesbian, and transgendered representations in film, media, fashion and culture. It was important to me not only to expand the field of Canadian Fashion Studies, but to focus on gender issues and representations within Urban Cultural Studies as well. Both the Berlin and Montreal volumes are dedicated to the women of Berlin and of Montreal respectively because I was inspired by their hard work and dedication to telling the (untold and underrepresented) stories of their cities through fashion.
KEYWORDS: Montreal, Fashion History, Fashion Culture, Fashion and Technology
Available from Intellect
Synoptique: online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies (4:2, 2016)
Issue: Locating the Intimate within the Global: Xavier Dolan, Queer Nations and Québec Cinema
Katrina Sark: "Viewing Laurence Anyways: Three Perspectives: The Language of Fashion and (Trans)Gender in Dolan’s Laurence Anyways"
In August 2012, after the release of Xavier Dolan’s third film, Laurence Anyways, Montréal’s Musée des beaux-arts hosted an event entitled the “Colour-Block Party” in conjunction with its exhibition on “Tom Wesselmann: Beyond Pop Art” and the annual Festival Mode et Design, bringing together young local designers whose creations were inspired by pop art and the colour-block style which Dolan explored in his films. The sea of bright colours worn by the museum guests complemented Wesselmann’s colour celebrations on the walls and the local designers’ fashion creations on display, and alluded to a scene from Dolan’s Laurence Anyways, when brightly-coloured pieces of clothing fall from the sky and envelop the two main protagonists. The Colour-Block event marked an important intersection of Montréal fashion, art, film, and cultural scenes, underscoring the collaborative and inter-connected nature of its creative industries.
KEYWORDS: Xavier Dolan, Film and Fashion, Colour Blocks
Katrina Sark: "Viewing Laurence Anyways: Three Perspectives: The Language of Fashion and (Trans)Gender in Dolan’s Laurence Anyways"
In August 2012, after the release of Xavier Dolan’s third film, Laurence Anyways, Montréal’s Musée des beaux-arts hosted an event entitled the “Colour-Block Party” in conjunction with its exhibition on “Tom Wesselmann: Beyond Pop Art” and the annual Festival Mode et Design, bringing together young local designers whose creations were inspired by pop art and the colour-block style which Dolan explored in his films. The sea of bright colours worn by the museum guests complemented Wesselmann’s colour celebrations on the walls and the local designers’ fashion creations on display, and alluded to a scene from Dolan’s Laurence Anyways, when brightly-coloured pieces of clothing fall from the sky and envelop the two main protagonists. The Colour-Block event marked an important intersection of Montréal fashion, art, film, and cultural scenes, underscoring the collaborative and inter-connected nature of its creative industries.
KEYWORDS: Xavier Dolan, Film and Fashion, Colour Blocks
| Laurence Anyways - Synoptique (K. Sark) |
Fashion Theory Journal (19.3, 2015)
Katrina Sark and Sara Danièle Bélanger-Michaud: "Montréal Chic: Institutions of Fashion – Fashions of Institutions"
This article examines and contrast the fashion collections at three of Montréal’s cultural institutions, the Musée McCord, an urban and historical museum that houses over 18,000 pieces of costume and textile artifacts, the Musée du Costume et du Textile du Québec, which owns and exhibits a collection of 8000 items worn, collected, and donated by Québecers and contemporary fashion by Montréal-based designers, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, whose director Nathalie Bondil has made locally-produced international fashion exhibitions one of the key point of its curatorial practice since 2008.
Fashion Theory takes as its starting point a definition of "fashion" as the cultural construction of the embodied identity. The importance of studying the body as a site for the deployment of discourses has been well established in a number of disciplines. Until Fashion Theory’s launch in 1997 the dressed body had suffered from a lack of critical analysis. Increasingly scholars have recognized the cultural significance of self-fashioning, including not only clothing but also such body alterations as tattooing and piercing.
KEYWORDS: Montreal, Fashion Culture, Fashion and Museums, Fashion Exhibitions
This article examines and contrast the fashion collections at three of Montréal’s cultural institutions, the Musée McCord, an urban and historical museum that houses over 18,000 pieces of costume and textile artifacts, the Musée du Costume et du Textile du Québec, which owns and exhibits a collection of 8000 items worn, collected, and donated by Québecers and contemporary fashion by Montréal-based designers, and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, whose director Nathalie Bondil has made locally-produced international fashion exhibitions one of the key point of its curatorial practice since 2008.
Fashion Theory takes as its starting point a definition of "fashion" as the cultural construction of the embodied identity. The importance of studying the body as a site for the deployment of discourses has been well established in a number of disciplines. Until Fashion Theory’s launch in 1997 the dressed body had suffered from a lack of critical analysis. Increasingly scholars have recognized the cultural significance of self-fashioning, including not only clothing but also such body alterations as tattooing and piercing.
KEYWORDS: Montreal, Fashion Culture, Fashion and Museums, Fashion Exhibitions
| Montreal Chic: Institutions of Fashion (K. Sark) |
Descant 166: The Berlin Project (45:3, Fall 2014)
Katrina Sark: “Berlin, May 1946,” pp. 1-6.
Katrina Sark: “Berlin Freedom – November 9, 2009,” pp. 187-190.
Descant is a quarterly journal publishing new and established contemporary writers and visual artists from Canada and around the world. Begun in 1970 as a mimeograph, Descant has evolved into an exquisitely produced journal of international acclaim. Descant is devoted to the discovery and development of new writers, and to placing their work in the company of celebrated writers. After 45 years, Descant has now closed.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Post-Wall, Reunification, 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall
Katrina Sark: “Berlin Freedom – November 9, 2009,” pp. 187-190.
Descant is a quarterly journal publishing new and established contemporary writers and visual artists from Canada and around the world. Begun in 1970 as a mimeograph, Descant has evolved into an exquisitely produced journal of international acclaim. Descant is devoted to the discovery and development of new writers, and to placing their work in the company of celebrated writers. After 45 years, Descant has now closed.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Post-Wall, Reunification, 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Wall
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Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (2014)
Katrina Sark: “Interview: Artist Profile and Photography”
Imaginations is a multilingual, open-access journal of international visual cultural studies. It is published twice yearly and is double-blind peer-reviewed. As a knowledge democracy project, Imaginations is free to submit to and free to read. Founded at the University of Alberta in 2010, the journal is funded by the federal granting agency of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Imaginations showcases artistic work and scholarly research. It focuses on innovative artistic practices and interdisciplinary, intercultural theoretical understandings of images, screens and visual culture. The journal provides an online installation venue for original artwork and publishes academic articles in original languages and translated into French or English.
KEYWORDS: Cities and Culture, Photography, Montreal
Download the artist profile as a pdf.
Imaginations is a multilingual, open-access journal of international visual cultural studies. It is published twice yearly and is double-blind peer-reviewed. As a knowledge democracy project, Imaginations is free to submit to and free to read. Founded at the University of Alberta in 2010, the journal is funded by the federal granting agency of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Imaginations showcases artistic work and scholarly research. It focuses on innovative artistic practices and interdisciplinary, intercultural theoretical understandings of images, screens and visual culture. The journal provides an online installation venue for original artwork and publishes academic articles in original languages and translated into French or English.
KEYWORDS: Cities and Culture, Photography, Montreal
Download the artist profile as a pdf.
| Imaginations Artists Profile and Interview: K. Sark |
World Film Locations: Berlin (Bristol: Intellect, 2012)
Editor: Susan Ingram
Katrina Sark: "Spotlight: Baustelle Berlin"
Scene descriptions: "Sommer vorm Balkon," "Die Legende von Paul und Paula," "Das Leben der Anderen," "Wir sind die Nacht"
Photography contributions: Berlin film locations
The World Film Locations series explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema by using a predominantly visual approach perfectly suited to the medium of film. The city continues to play a central role in a multitude of films, helping us to frame our understanding of place and of the world around us. Whether as elaborate directorial love letters or as time specific cultural settings, the city acts as a vital character in helping to tell a story.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Film Locations, Scene Descriptions, Reunification, Cinema
Katrina Sark: "Spotlight: Baustelle Berlin"
Scene descriptions: "Sommer vorm Balkon," "Die Legende von Paul und Paula," "Das Leben der Anderen," "Wir sind die Nacht"
Photography contributions: Berlin film locations
The World Film Locations series explores and reveals the relationship between the city and cinema by using a predominantly visual approach perfectly suited to the medium of film. The city continues to play a central role in a multitude of films, helping us to frame our understanding of place and of the world around us. Whether as elaborate directorial love letters or as time specific cultural settings, the city acts as a vital character in helping to tell a story.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Film Locations, Scene Descriptions, Reunification, Cinema
| Baustelle Berlin (by K.Sark) |
Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies (Volume XLVIII, Nr. 2, May 2012)
Katrina Sark, "Fashioning a New Brand of Germanness: 2006 World Cup and Beyond" pp.254-66
Founded in 1965, Seminar is one of the leading journals today for the study of Germanic literature, media and culture. It seeks to publish the highest-quality scholarship on a range of fields including philology, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, visual culture, gender studies, and transnationalism in so far as they relate to German-language material or other languages in a German-cultural context. Jointly sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German and the German division of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, the journal endeavors to promote German studies across a broad international context.
KEYWORDS: German Post-Wall Identity, Post-Wall Berlin, Reunification, Culture, World Cup 2006
Founded in 1965, Seminar is one of the leading journals today for the study of Germanic literature, media and culture. It seeks to publish the highest-quality scholarship on a range of fields including philology, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, visual culture, gender studies, and transnationalism in so far as they relate to German-language material or other languages in a German-cultural context. Jointly sponsored by the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German and the German division of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, the journal endeavors to promote German studies across a broad international context.
KEYWORDS: German Post-Wall Identity, Post-Wall Berlin, Reunification, Culture, World Cup 2006
| Fashioning a New Brand of Germanness (by K. Sark) |
Berliner Chic: A Locational History of Berlin Fashion (Bristol: Intellect, 2011)
Susan Ingram, York University
Katrina Sark, McGill University
Since becoming the capital of reunited Germany, Berlin has had a dose of global money and international style added to its already impressive cultural veneer. Once home to emperors and dictators, peddlers and spies, it is now a fashion showplace that attracts the young and hip. Moving beyond descriptions of Berlin's fashion industry and its ready-to-wear clothing, Berliner Chic charts the turbulent stories of entrepreneurially-savvy manufacturers and cultural workers striving to establish their city as a fashion capital, and being repeatedly interrupted by politics, ideology, and war. There are many stories to tell about Berlin's fashion industry and Berliner Chic tells them all with considerable expertise.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Fashion History, Fashion Culture, Photography, Museums, Film, Music
Available from Intellect
Katrina Sark, McGill University
Since becoming the capital of reunited Germany, Berlin has had a dose of global money and international style added to its already impressive cultural veneer. Once home to emperors and dictators, peddlers and spies, it is now a fashion showplace that attracts the young and hip. Moving beyond descriptions of Berlin's fashion industry and its ready-to-wear clothing, Berliner Chic charts the turbulent stories of entrepreneurially-savvy manufacturers and cultural workers striving to establish their city as a fashion capital, and being repeatedly interrupted by politics, ideology, and war. There are many stories to tell about Berlin's fashion industry and Berliner Chic tells them all with considerable expertise.
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Fashion History, Fashion Culture, Photography, Museums, Film, Music
Available from Intellect
| Berliner Chic |
CineAction (Issue 80, 2010)
Katrina Sark, "City Spaces and National Identity" pp.56-59
There is a noticeable tendency to focus on the Eastern topography in recent German films set in Berlin (Goodbye Lenin!, The Lives of Others, Summer in Berlin). Urban space becomes imbued with meaning precisely because of the directors’ choice to shoot on location in the former East. This paper will analyze the intersections of cinematically constructed city spaces and the way in which we engage with them. This engagement with space also raises socially vital questions of East-West dichotomies and the construction of a new, post-reunification German identity. How do Berlin films approach the cosmopolitan concept of ‘Berlinness’ (as opposed to ‘Germanness’)? What is a metropolitan notion of identity vs. a national one (particularly in the post-national European climate).
KEYWORDS: German Film, Berlin, Post-Wall, Cinema
Full text available at The Free Library
There is a noticeable tendency to focus on the Eastern topography in recent German films set in Berlin (Goodbye Lenin!, The Lives of Others, Summer in Berlin). Urban space becomes imbued with meaning precisely because of the directors’ choice to shoot on location in the former East. This paper will analyze the intersections of cinematically constructed city spaces and the way in which we engage with them. This engagement with space also raises socially vital questions of East-West dichotomies and the construction of a new, post-reunification German identity. How do Berlin films approach the cosmopolitan concept of ‘Berlinness’ (as opposed to ‘Germanness’)? What is a metropolitan notion of identity vs. a national one (particularly in the post-national European climate).
KEYWORDS: German Film, Berlin, Post-Wall, Cinema
Full text available at The Free Library
| City Spaces and National Identity (by K. Sark) |
Berlin's Culturescape: In the Twentieth Century (Regina: CPRC, 2008)
Editors: Thomas Bredohl and Michael Zimmermann
Katrina Sark, “Fashion among Ruins: Fashion in Berlin 1945-46” pp. 113-128.
My chapter in this volume examines the resurrection of Berlin fashion industry in the ruins of 1945.
Fashion plays an increasingly important role in Berlin today, with the re-organization of Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum into a fashion museum in the recent years, and various exhibitions on fashion taking place at several museums in Berlin simultaneously. Today there are more and more attempts by the curators to tell the story of the Berlin fashion industry. This paper follows this tradition, examining the revival of the fashion industry and women’s work within that industry, as well as the social conditions in which the industry sprung up after the allied liberation in 1945-46. The juxtaposition of fashion and ruins opens up social questions of the production and manufacturing conditions, as well as the role of women in the post-war “economy of pleasure.”
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Fashion, War, Ruins, Post-War Fashion
Katrina Sark, “Fashion among Ruins: Fashion in Berlin 1945-46” pp. 113-128.
My chapter in this volume examines the resurrection of Berlin fashion industry in the ruins of 1945.
Fashion plays an increasingly important role in Berlin today, with the re-organization of Berlin’s Kunstgewerbemuseum into a fashion museum in the recent years, and various exhibitions on fashion taking place at several museums in Berlin simultaneously. Today there are more and more attempts by the curators to tell the story of the Berlin fashion industry. This paper follows this tradition, examining the revival of the fashion industry and women’s work within that industry, as well as the social conditions in which the industry sprung up after the allied liberation in 1945-46. The juxtaposition of fashion and ruins opens up social questions of the production and manufacturing conditions, as well as the role of women in the post-war “economy of pleasure.”
KEYWORDS: Berlin, Fashion, War, Ruins, Post-War Fashion
| Fashion among Ruins (by K. Sark) |
