Description:

This conference, part of the XIX Century Series, assembles the historical process of visibility and rejection of the ruana, a Colombian poncho-like piece that traces its roots to South American Indigenous and Spanish garments. The conference proposes a genealogical account of the ruana’s configuration, negotiations, and resistance to colonial power until the 19th century, focusing the attention on its primary creators and users (poor, racialized, and peasant people). By analyzing ruana’s permanence and ever-changing meanings as a fashionable object, the conference seeks to challenge the hegemonic history and understanding of fashion.