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Chrystie Neidhardt ’05 (Whippany, N.J.) never thought there was a correlation between politics and fashion until conducting research for a professor writing a book about the topic.
“Most people don’t link fashion with politics,” says Neidhardt, who studied the connection last semester with Joshua Miller, professor of government and law. “Working with Professor Miller showed me how they are related.”
“A lot of [ideas] are represented through fashion,” says the double major in government & law and English. She is studying in Florence, Italy, this semester, taking both government and fashion classes.
For example, many feminists have seen fashion as part of a broader cultural effort to weaken women socially and politically, says Miller, and fashion has been blamed for the epidemic of eating disorders among young women. Some consider fashion to be a symbol of wealth, mindlessness, conformity, and the degradation of women, while others view it as a means of cultural resistance and an aesthetic pleasure, especially for women.
The two worked through Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, in which students collaborate with faculty in research while earning a stipend. Lafayette is a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate in EXCEL each year go on to publish papers in scholarly journals and/or present their research at conferences.
A political theory specialist, Miller has written two books and is working on a third, The Politics of Fashion. A former Fellow at the National Humanities Center, he also has shared this research through numerous conference presentations and articles published in academic journals and books.
Miller included Neidhardt in his work after she approached him about a research opportunity that would involve her interest in fashion.
In addition to editing some of Miller’s articles about fashion and politics, she read numerous books and selected information relevant to his thesis. She looked for the role of fashion in political-driven books and the role of politics in fashion-driven books.
“If I saw a concept that jumped out at me, I furthered my research on the topic,” she says.
Neidhardt also helped Miller to establish where the material might be useful in his book. Miller then read the material she selected and decided if he wanted to use it.
“I had no idea what I was getting into,” she admits. “Professor Miller was willing to take me individually and go through it piece by piece. He’s very understanding, and went out of his way to make sure I knew what I was doing.”
Neidhardt says it was a challenge to find materials that associated fashion with politics, and vice versa.
“It’s kind of hard to break the barrier,” she says. “But, there’s a lot of information that you don’t see on the surface.”
Miller found Neidhardt to be a valuable research partner.
“She is great. She has a personal interest in fashion and gave me insight into how my ideas might appear to a young woman,” Miller says.
The EXCEL Scholars program gave Neidhardt the chance to study things that she normally would not encounter in the classroom. She was surprised at how much opportunity was available through the program.
“It’s real experience. You’re getting to do what you want to do,” she says.
A graduate of Whippany Park High School, Neidhardt is vice president of the Delta Gamma sorority and a member of Kirby Government and Law Society. She hopes to work for a political journal or fashion magazine upon graduation.