The Fabric of Aviation
On Saturday 4 December 2021, at 9.45am Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time (AEDT) the Aviation Cultures team will present the second of a series of Spotlight online events, and we’d like you to join us!
How, where and when? On Saturday, 4 December 2021, 9.45 am AEDT. The event should run for no more than 2 hours 15 minutes.
The Spotlight will be held on Zoom: please register here, before the event.
Dr Lisa Hackett, Second World War Female Pilots and their Uniforms
Lisa’s talk will focus on the relationships between women pilots who served during the Second World War and their uniforms. Female pilots served in varying capacities for belligerent nations on both sides of the conflict. These include the ferrying pilots in the US (WASP) and the UK (ATA), the test pilots of Nazi Germany, medical pilots of Romania and the combat pilots of the Soviet Russia. The women pilots who served in the second world war not only had to step into roles traditionally seen as male, they also had to step into uniforms that were traditionally designed for the masculine body. This talk will examine both the physical and philosophical aspects of the uniforms and how the women who wore them negotiated these elements.
Dr Lisa J Hackett completed her Ph.D. in Sociology in August 2020 at the University of New England in Armidale. Her thesis interrogated the reasons why women choose to wear 1950s style clothing in the current context. Her research incorporates material culture studies, fashion history, media, and popular culture.
Contact: Twitter.
Dr Pru Black, Never a Mere Fastener: The Rivet in Aviation and Cultural History
The rivet’s cultural value – never a mere fastener.
Dr Prudence Black is a Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide and a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. She is a Primary Investigator on the ARC Linkage project, Heritage of the Air: How Aviation Transformed Australia. Her research relating to aviation cultures has resulted in two books, The Flight Attendant’s Shoe, a design history of the flight attendants’ uniforms and her most recent book Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather: The Era of the Australian Airline Hostess which outlines the development and the history of the flight attendant profession in Australia.
Madelyn Shaw
Madelyn’s talk will focus on aviation-related textile and clothing objects from the various museums she has worked in – why they were collected, and what was known about them. In her career Madelyn Shaw came across numerous aviation-related textile and clothing objects in various museums. She will be talking about why they were collected, what we knew about them, what we did NOT know and what textile and clothing historians who did not have my connections to her self-professed peculiar affection for, and obsession with aviation did not know to ask about or look for.
Contact: LinkedIn.