(re)search the archive: This project intends to collect a visual history of hoopskirts (photographs, ads, cartoons, descriptions, and mentions) in two phases that center a different archive/collection. During the first phase of the archival work, we intend to engage with Rubenstein Library’s Rare books collection of Harper’s Magazine focusing on the height of the steel cage crinoline fashion between 1856 and 1873. The second phase of our archival journey will look at a digital archive of the fourteen seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-present) searching for the use of hoopskirts, petticoats, and crinoline particularly in the “final looks” worn by the top three or four drag queens of the competition each season. Additionally, we will engage the series’ fan base and commentary that reference the hoopskirt or crinoline “look” and take note of any contextual information such as the drag queen’s biographical information, drag persona, and artistic influences to understand the artist’s design choices. These two phases of archival research will offer emergent researchers the opportunity to investigate an object (such as the hoopskirt) through the lens of two distinct time periods and through two distinct media forms: published magazine and a digital streaming reality TV series. This project recognizes the challenge emergent researchers may experience when using contemporary digital archives that are often considered “popular,” “less serious,” or associated with a “Netflix and chill” culture. Experiencing these two divergent archives help young researchers establish standards of archival practice with tangle historical documents and translate those standards of practice to a current, digital archive such as Rupaul’s Drag Race.

(re)construct the artefact: The second sphere of research centers the (re)construction of the artefact or research object itself. In this case, the hoopskirt is an object that researchers can engage and quickly garner the skills to draft, measure, sew, and build a hoopskirt as a practice-based research method. The project sponsor (in collaboration with Duke costume designer, Erin West) offer the opportunity for researchers to immerse themselves in three different construction approaches to the hoopskirt/crinoline/petticoat. Among these three construct methods students will investigate both traditional and fashion-forward methods of construction and contemporary aesthetic.

(re)hearse the performance: The third hoop of research will be an embodied inquiry of the archives and constructed artefacts. Early in the six weeks, researchers will be offered critical frames for movement centering performativity and gender expression as a daily warm-up/practice between the archival work and hoopskirt construction. Through spatial awareness, movement, and gesture, researchers will explore a series of improvisation-provocations facilitated by the team sponsor: ways of queer walking, posing, voguing, turning, camping, dropping, etc. within various dynamics of space and time. Later, researchers will be challenged to explore these critical movement “queerings” while wearing the hoopskirts dresses they have constructed. As the researchers label and compile the archival data, researchers will also be challenged to embody the images, improvise scenarios from the cartoons, ads, and mentions, and construct dramatic/poetic materials from the found texts. In the final weeks, together with the team sponsor, the team will devise a dramaturgy for a brief sharing, performance installation, and/or runaway incorporating these devised fragments, projected images, and found texts from the archives.