Faculty Profile

Dr. Heather Marie Akou
Assistant Professor, Strategic Director of Design + Culture
Member of the African Studies and Graduate faculty at IU
Email: hakou@indiana.edu
Phone: (812) 855-7854

Education:
PhD – University of Minnesota, 2005
MA – University of Minnesota, 2001
BA – Macalester College, 1998

I’ve been a professor at Indiana University since Fall 2004 in the department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design (soon to be called Design Studies).  My areas of expertise in this discipline include textiles, cultural aspects of dress, fashion theory, aesthetics, and qualitative research methods.  Along with a PhD in Apparel Studies from the University of Minnesota, I also have a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Macalester College (St. Paul, Minnesota) and six years of professional experience as a weaver.  In my teaching I often build on my research, which focuses on African and Islamic dress as a form of expressive culture.  This refers to types of “artistic” expression that are part of everyday life, such as song lyrics, movies, literature, and clothing. 

In 2007 I had two articles accepted to Fashion Theory and Dress, the two major journals in my discipline (see below for a listing of other publications).  Fashion Theory is an interdisciplinary academic journal on “Dress, Body & Culture” based in the UK; my article on Islamic fashion as an example of a “world fashion” system (equivalent to, but largely separate from Western fashion) appeared in December 2007.  Dress is published once annually by the Costume Society of America; my article on the origins of Somali folk dress will be included in the next issue in early 2008. 

Over the last four years, I’ve also been asked to write nine encyclopedia articles; two on Islamic dress, three on African dress, and four on weaving.  My in-press entries for the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion were particularly substantial; an 8,000 word entry on Somali dress (based entirely on my original research) and a 6,000 word entry on dress in Africa during colonization.  For my discipline—particularly the study of dress as a form of expressive culture—these encyclopedias are a major milestone.  This decade marks the first time that publishers are dedicating entire encyclopedias to the study of dress; not just fashion or “historic costume,” but dress as a universal aspect of culture throughout the world.  As a scholar of African and Islamic dress, I’ve also been asked to review books and manuscripts for Technology & Culture, Textile,and the African Studies Review.

Out of four tenured or tenure-track faculty members in my department, I am the only one with a background in non-Western dress.  The benefit I see for my students is that I rarely assume theories, concepts, and methods from their  textbooks will make sense in the “real world.”  For example, in my course on Cultural  Aspects of Dress we explore some of the benefits and limits of conformity and  individuality: How much is our dress conditioned by the culture(s) we participate in?  Do  we really have freedom to dress (or design) however we want?  One theory we cover is  “conspicuous consumption,” a term developed by sociologist, Thorstein Veblen.  In  Chicago in the late 1800s, Veblen observed that successful businessmen displayed their  wealth and success through their wives; women of “leisure” who could afford to spend  much of their time just looking beautiful.  This concept has been heavily critiqued, but it  still seems to resonate in societies where capitalism is a driving force.  So how does it  apply in other situations?  The defining feature of Islamic dress, for instance, is  modesty—fashion does exist (some of my current research is about a growing number  of Islamic fashion retail websites), but conspicuous consumption does not play a major  role; in fact, the religion cautions against making a display of the body or personal  wealth.  This kind of contrast really challenges students to think and opens possibilities.   A dress with bare shoulders and deep cleavage might look great on a physically-fit  woman in her 20s (the demographic of most college students), but what about clients  who are older?  What about clients who have a different body type, are disabled, or would never consider wearing a dress with cleavage?  There are many different conceptions of “beauty” in this world; students just need someone to open their eyes a little.

Soon, this will be a required course for a new minor in Design + Culture (which we plan to build into a four-year degree).  This program will merge hands-on experience in design with knowledge of the cultures and histories that make design meaningful, preparing students for graduate study as well as satisfying careers in higher education, museums, and other cultural industries.

Selected publications:
Akou, Heather Marie (in review).  “Is There an ‘Islamic’ Dress? Evidence from the Internet Generation.”  Khil’a: Journal for Dress and Textiles of the Islamic World.  28 pages plus 17 images.

Akou, Heather Marie (in press).  “Documenting the Origins of Somali Folk Dress: Evidence from the Bonaparte Collection.”  In Dress, 18 pages plus 14 images.

Akou, Heather Marie (in press).  “Dressing Somali (some assembly required).”  Anthology on African fashion for Indiana University Press, ed. Suzanne Gott.  15 pages plus 16 images.

Akou, Heather Marie (in press).  “Somalia.”  In Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, ed. Joanne B. Eicher.  25 pages plus 10 images.

Akou, Heather Marie (in press).  “Colonialism to Independence (Africa).”  In Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, ed. Joanne B. Eicher.  21 pages plus 2 images.

Akou, Heather Marie (2008).  “Body Adornment and Clothing: Trade.”  In New Encyclopedia of Africa, editors John Middleton and Joseph C. Miller.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons

Akou, Heather Marie (2007).  “Building a New World Fashion: Islamic Dress in the 21st Century.”  In Fashion Theory, 11(4): pp 403-421.

Akou, Heather Marie (2007).  “More than Costume History: Dress in Somali Culture.”  In Dress Sense: Emotional and Sensory Experience of the Body and Clothes, eds. Donald Clay Johnson and Helen Bradley Foster.  Oxford: Berg, pp 16-22.

Akou, Heather Marie (2004).  “Nationalism Without a Nation: Understanding the Dress of Somali Women in Minnesota.”  In Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress, ed. Jean Allman.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp 50-63.

Professional Memberships:
International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA)                         
Costume Society of America (CSA)
Textile Society of America (TSA)
African Studies Association (ASA)                                          
Arts Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA)
American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS)           

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