Curriculum Development

Introduction

For my senior project, I  have developed a curriculum for a course I intend to teach, titled "Critical Textile Technologies" (see below). I structured my course around a ten-week course schedule model that is used by Cal Poly Humboldt's Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT). CCAT hosts student teachers, allowing undergraduates to teach a 1-unit semester class on themes related to sustainability and appropriate technologies.

“Critical Textile Technologies” is an introductory, but intensive, course that features both lab and lecture. It is culmination of my various studies throughout my undergraduate career and integrates bodies of knowledge from a multitude of disciplines, including environmental studies, agriculture, economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy (ethics), critical race and gender studies, literature, art, and fashion/design.

Textiles are a fundamental yet often overlooked facet of our lives. Their study is inherently interdisciplinary in nature, and I would argue that a critical examination of our relationship to textiles – individually, culturally, and globally – is of vital importance as we navigate the social and ecological crises of our times. My goal in developing this project is that students who go through this curriculum will develop deeper relationships with textiles, weave new connections between these various disciplines, and dream up ways to move beyond them and towards a transdisciplinary understanding of textiles and their importance in mediating the relationship between nature and culture.  

Purpose and Scope

My curriculum gestures towards decolonial methods of research/knowing/learning by decentering Western epistemologies that are hegemonic and hierarchical, and inviting students to a mode of learning based on their lived experiences of wearing/loving/hating/making/clothes and textiles. I plan to minimize time spent merely lecturing and to center open-forum discussions, personal reflection prompts, hands-on workshops in textile production, field trips to relevant museums/etc., and student-led projects.

My goal was to develop a curriculum that asks questions without necessarily answering them - a curriculum that requires students to question their relationships to textiles; to question their assumptions, and to question the role of textiles in human development. Key questions would revolve around key revolutions: the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the Digital Revolution. These revolutions set the stage for us to discuss the role textiles have played in human history (as well as multispecies histories), and how they might shape our future on this planet. For example, if we consider that the real impetus for the agricultural revolution was not because the burgeoning human civilizations needed more food, but more textiles to cloth people – an arguably more resource intensive process - how would this change our perspective. Whether or not this statement is “true” or “provable”, how might thinking with or through this assumption shape our understanding of early humans and their relationships with nature? How might it reshape the current relationship between humans and nature?

This example alone, regarding the Agricultural Revolution, requires that we explore, move between, and see beyond a multitude of disciplines: agricultural science, environmental studies, critical history, anthropology, and more. It is just one example of how critical textile studies can integrate and expand knowledge in a truly interdisciplinary capacity. My main objective in developing this curriculum is to encourage students to think beyond disciplines, to follow their passions, and to make critical connections – no matter their focus/field of study. I hope that they will be able take the approaches developed within this class into their other studies and apply it to their lives in practical ways.

Methodology

My interest in developing this project is born of my passion for textiles. I have spent the last 6 years engrossed in both formal and informal study of their production, their cultural meanings and significance, and various facets of their relationships to both nature and culture. I have collected numerous resources that look at textiles from different angles and disciplines, including research journals, articles, and books. While I have further research to conduct, I believe my main task for this project is to organize my studies in a coherent manner, and to develop course materials that are engaging for potential students.

In order to develop a well-rounded and well-informed curriculum, I engaged in both quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative research grounds our work in the facts of “consensus reality”: numbers and statistics help us to generalize and understand patterns between variables. Qualitative research grounds us in our shared, lived experience of textiles. This kind of research included personal reflections, ethnographic interviews, and focus groups.

To create a curriculum that is comprehensive but also concise, coherent, accessible, and gripping, I have aimed to focus my research not just on the content of the course, but methods of teaching and engaging with students. I have found the framework of feminist teaching methodology, which centers the co-construction of knowledge in the classroom, to be particularly helpful. This approach encourages students to actively participate in their education and engage with the curriculum in creative ways.