Using the Concept of Fashion to Link Diverse Programs

Abstract

Departments housed in US land grant agricultural colleges often have the unenviable and difficult task of justifying their existence as collaborative entities that complement each other. Programs like fashion design and merchandising, family resources, and agricultural sciences have historic roots with seemingly little relevance to each other in today’s academic milieu. Putting politics aside, educators in such programs are tasked with developing cross-disciplinary curriculum that can address the linkages between individual programs yet still educate students for careers in their respective fields. This conceptual paper demonstrates how the concept of fashion is relative to many of the disparate disciplines found these colleges. Fashion is often described as a temporal trend illustrated with a bell curve; an item or behavior is adopted in increasing frequency until a saturation point is reach as adoption declines, and is most-frequently applied to appearance behaviors and modes of dress. This paper seeks to apply the concept of fashion to areas other than appearance and dress in order to demonstrate its usefulness for studying other topics, as well as describing how programs with diverse curricula can be linked together. Specifically, we look at fashion in adoption of specific breeds of dogs as pets and farming practices in the US.

Save as a Favourite

Author Information
Andrew Reilly, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
Loriena Yancura, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
Youngjin Bahng, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
Douglas Vincent, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States

• Category: ACEID2017, Oral Presentation
• Tag: Education for interdisciplinary thinking,

Posted by James Alexander Gordon

All Posts