Professor Abby Lillethun gives a keynote address at the 10th International Conference on Language, Literature & Culture

Professor Abby Lillethun shares her experience on delivering a captivating keynote address showcasing her expertise and insights in the field, at the 10th International Conference on Language, Literature & Culture that took place on September 15th & 16th of 2023.

This international conference is a peer-reviewed academic event and comprehensive venue for the free exchange and dissemination of ideas on language, translation, literary and cultural studies, and aims to bring together scholars and graduates researching the intersections of these fields in the welcoming atmosphere of the event. This year’s theme, “Fashion as Material Culture” covered a wide variety of interdisciplinary studies.

This conference was organized jointly by Gümüşhane University, Ankara Science University in Turkey, and University of Évora in Portugal. All submissions to the conference were reviewed by at least two independent peers for technical merit and content. Selected papers presented at the conference will be published either in an edited book or ULAKBIM University Journals.

“In my keynote address titled ‘Spinning Fashion’, I drew an analogy between laboring to spinning (twist) thousands of fibers into a cohesive and flexible whole called a yarn (string, thread) and the labor of knowledge creation. I also explored the problems in critically addressing humans and their fashioning of appearance in the English language that were partly due to gendered associations with ‘fashion’ and partly due to narrowly framed conceptions of fashion and dressing that developed in the West. The current wide acceptance of fashion studies as a key field in understanding individuals and cultures past and present, emerged from the inclusionary paradigm shift.”

– Abby Lillethun

Professor Abby Lillethun specializes in the study of culture through dress and appearance, exploring how they are created, expressed, and experienced. History is a significant part of her work in the realm of fashion. Additionally, she holds the role of Deputy Chairperson in the Department of Art and Design. Her teaching encompasses fashion history, fashion forecasting, and the cultural aspects of fashion and style, with a global perspective, recognizing dressing as a fundamental aspect of human life that impacts social, psychological, and economic dimensions. Abby’s research focuses on areas such as Bronze Age Aegean dress using experimental archaeology techniques and the intersection of East Asian and Western design between 1885 and 1935. Abby is also affiliated with The Research Collective for Decoloniality and Fashion, incorporating decolonial theoretical perspectives into historical design investigations. She has co-authored essays in “The Fashion Reader” and authored “Fashion History: A Global View” in collaboration with Linda Welters, shedding light on often-overlooked fashion cultures and their historical contexts. These books are available through Bloomsbury Publishers.