Overview
Denise Nicole Green is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design and Director of the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC). Professor Green's research uses ethnography, video production, archival methods, and curatorial practice to explore production of fashion, textiles, identities, and visual design. She is also a faculty member in American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, and the American Studies Program, as well as a graduate field member in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell.
Professor Green received a PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of British Columbia. With the Ethnographic Film Unit at UBC and Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations communities, she directed a series of documentary films exploring textiles, identity, and Aboriginal title. She has continued this work, and recently directed the film, Mapping Regalia in Hupacasath Territory, which debuted at the Textile Society of America's Biennial Conference Film Festival. Prior to her work on the Northwest Coast, Professor Green earned a Master of Science in Textiles from the University of California--Davis where she researched fashion and gender expression at the Burning Man Festival. During her undergraduate program at Cornell University she studied fashioned youth subcultures and completed an honors thesis about redesigning 4-H clothing club curriculum for the 21st century.
In her curatorial practice, Professor Green uses fashion to engage with important social, cultural, and political issues. Most recently, she curated Fashion & Feathers (2019 - 2020) in collaboration with colleagues at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates and the Lab of Ornithology. Professor Green's award-winning exhibitions include The Biggest Little Fashion City: Ithaca and Silent Film Style (2016, recipient of the Richard Martin Award) and Union-Made: Fashioning America in the 20th Century (2017, recipient of the Betty Kirke Excellence in Research Award). She was the faculty advisor for WOMEN EMPOWERED: Fashions from the Frontline (2018), which received international media attention and was part of the Cornell Council for the Arts 2018 Biennial. Professor Green also serves as the faculty advisor for the Charlotte A. Jirousek Research Fellowship in the CF+TC and mentors students curating historical fashion exhibitions. Curatorial, research, and public outreach aspects of the CF+TC are chronicled on social media, including a Facebook, Instagram (@cornellfashioncollection), and the CF+TC blog.
An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Professor Green runs a media production lab in the Human Ecology Building. Her most recent film, Mapping Regalia in Hupacasath Territory (2018) was shown at the Textile Society of America's juried film festival. Previous films include Histakshitl Ts'awaatskwii - We Come from One Root (2010, recipient of the Jean Rouch Award for Ethnographic Filmmaking and Best Documentary at the Cowichan Aboriginal Film Festival), Mamuu - To Weave/To Work (2013), Somewhere in Between (2009, recipient of Best Documentary award at the UC Davis Student Film Festival), Fifty-Fifty (2009), and Wash and Reuse: Textiles in the Hospital Setting (2009, funded by the National Science Foundation). Professor Green's graduate students are also active filmmakers, and recent films include #NATURALDYE (2017, directed by Kelsie Doty) and Dedicada a Margarita (2016, directed by Amanda Denham).
In addition to ethnographic, curatorial, and documentary work, Professor Green also engages in creative design practice. In 2015, she founded the Cornell Natural Dye Garden and accompanying Natural Dye Studio, and since then has focused her textile and garment design around the production and use of natural dyes. She, along with her students, have collaborated with fashion companies Wool & Prince and Sies Marjan to create naturally-dyed collections. Professor Green's innovative work in natural dyes, particularly around athleticwear applications, was recently covered in Women's Wear Daily.
Professor Green's research, creative design scholarship, and teaching focus on social and cultural aspects of fashion and textiles.
Research Focus
Research areas: fashion anthropology; history of dress and textiles; ethnographic practice; documentary film production; Native American textiles and regalia; history of anthropology; textile printing and dyeing; space and place studies; museum studies and curatorial practice.
Professor Green is formally trained in textile and apparel design, anthropology, museum studies and video production. She uses ethnography in combination with archival and museum-based research methods to explore socio-cultural aspects of style, fashion, and dress. She is working on a number of projects at the intersection of anthropology and fashion studies, including research on Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations' ceremonial textiles and fashion design, phenomenology and hot yoga practice, as well as historical research about pop culture icons, including silent film serial queen heroines and singer-songwriters.
Since 2009, Professor Green has studied ceremonial textiles and regalia produced by the Hupacasath First Nation, an Indigenous group from what is now called the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Her research and documentary film production examines how textiles and dress produce declarations of territorial rights and ceremonial privileges, records of kinship, inter-tribal and ongoing colonial encounters, and relationships between families, communities, and place. She is a consulting scholar for the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society (APS) library, and working to reconnect Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations families more broadly with archival records at the APS.
In her previous research, Professor Green has examined subcultural style and identity negotiation through fashion at the Burning Man Project, 4-H sewing clubs, Northern California roller derby leagues, and small-town communities. She is currently working on an ethnographic project about regular hatha yoga practitioners and how/why yoga practice may transform bodily perceptions and impact clothing choices in everyday life. Professor Green is also interested in histories of fiber, textile and apparel manufacturing in the United States, particularly sericulture and silk production in places like the Auburn Prison and in Northampton, MA. She has recently published a paper about Corticelli Silks and their design collaboration with Irene Castle (1917 - 1927), which is the earliest evidence of a film star developing a self-named fashion brand. In much of her research, Professor Green uses exhibition design, documentary film production, or other forums to make scholarship public and accessible. She directs the Cornell Fashion + Textile Collection (CF+TC) and works with faculty, students, and visiting scholars to use the collection for exhibitions, research, and classroom teaching. Recent exhibitions include, Black Excellence: Fashion that Prevails, Fashion & Feathers, WOMEN EMPOWERED: Fashions from the Frontline, TEXTURE, Go Figure: The Fashion Silhouette and the Female Form, Union-Made: Fashioning America in the 20th Century, Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and The Biggest Little Fashion City: Ithaca and Silent Film Style.
Publications
Green, Denise N. and Nancy E. Breen (accepted/in press) “Silk Mania in the Auburn Prison.” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America.
Green, Denise N. (2020) “Sayach’apis and the Naani (Grizzly Bear) Crest.” In Aldona Jonaitis and Katherine Bunn-Marcuse (eds.) Unsettling Native Art Histories on the Northwest Coast. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 259-273.
Green, Denise N. and Susan B. Kaiser (2020) “Taking Offense: A Discussion of Fashion, Appropriation, and Cultural Insensitivity.” In Sara Marcketti and Elena Karpova (eds.) The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions. London: Bloomsbury: 143 – 160.
Getman, Rachel, Denise N. Green, Kavita Bala, Utkarsh Mall, Nehal Rawat, Sonia Appasamy, and Bharath Hariharan (2020) “Machine Learning (ML) For Tracking Fashion Trends: Documenting the Frequency of the Baseball Cap on Social Media and the Runway.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X20931195
Reddy-Best, Kelly, Denise N. Green, and Kelsie Doty, and (2020). “Fashioned Bodies in Roller Derby League Logos: Critical Analysis of Race, Gender, Body Size and Position, and Aesthetics.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X20930086
Denham, Amanda, and Denise N. Green (2020) “Her Eyes, My Body: Negotiating Embodiment Through Maya Backstrap Weaving.” Journal of Fashion, Style, & Popular Culture, Vol. 7, No. 1, 125-141. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc_00008_1
Green, Denise N., Jenny Leigh Du Puis, Lynda Xepoleas, Chris Hesselbein, Katherine Greder, Victoria Pietsch, Rachel Getman, and Jessica Guadalupe Estrada (2019). “Fashion Exhibitions as Scholarship: Evaluation Criteria for Peer Review.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X19888018
Green, Denise N. (2019) “An Archival Ethnography of Sapir’s “Nootka” (Nuu-chah-nulth) Texts, Correspondence, and Fieldwork through the Douglas Thomas Drawings.” Ethnohistory, Vol. 66, Issue 2, 353-384. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-7299985
Green, Denise N. (2019) “Fashion and Fearlessness in the Wharton Studio’s Silent Film Serials, 1914 - 1918.” Framework Vol. 60, issue 1, 83-115. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13110/framework.60.1.0083
Green, Denise N., Susan B. Kaiser, Kelsie Doty, and Kyra Streck (2019) “Both Sides Now: Articulating Textiles and Fashioned Bodies in the Works of Joni Mitchell, 1968 – 1976.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X19830203
Chapin, Chloe, Denise N. Green, and Samuel Neuberg (2019) “Exhibiting Gender: Exploring the Dynamic Relationships between Fashion, Gender, and Mannequins in Museum Display.” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 45, Issue 1: 75-88. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03612112.2018.1551282
Green, Denise N. (2018) “Producing Place and Declaring Rights Through Thliitsapilthim (Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations’ Ceremonial Curtains).” Textile: Cloth and Culture, Vol. 17, Issue 1, 72-91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14759756.2018.1495349
Mamp, Michael, Ariele Elia, Sara Tatayana Bernstein, Laurie Anne Brewer, and Denise N. Green (2018). “Scholars’ Roundtable Presentation – Engaging Labor, Acknowledging Maker.” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 44, Issue 2: 133-151. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03612112.2018.1507345
Green, Denise N. (2017) “The Best Known and Best Dressed Woman in America: Irene Castle and Silent Film Style.” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 43, Issue 2: 77-98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03612112.2017.1352160
Green, Denise N. and Susan B. Kaiser (2017) “Introduction: Fashion and Appropriation.” Fashion, Style and Popular Culture, Vol. 4, Issue 2: 145-150. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/fspc.4.2.145_2
Mida, Ingrid, Denise N. Green, and Abby Lillethun (2017) “Scholars’ Roundtable Presentation – Technology: Friend or Foe?” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 43, Issue 2: 119 – 138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03612112.2017.1357274
Green, Denise N. (2016) “Fashion(s) from the Northwest Coast: Nuu-chah-nulth Design Iterations.” In Miguel Angel Gardetti and Subramanian Senthikannan (eds.) Ethnic (Aboriginal) Fashion. New York: Springer Publishing: 19 – 46.
Kaiser, Susan B. and Denise N. Green (2016) “Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Fashion Studies: Philosophical Underpinning and Multiple Masculinities.” In Heike Jenss (ed.) Fashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites and Practices. London: Bloomsbury: 160 – 180.
Green, Denise N. (2016) “Genealogies of Knowledge in the Alberni Valley: Reflecting on ethnographic practice in the archive of Dr. Susan Golla.” In Regna Darnell and Frederic Gleach (eds.) Histories of Anthropology Annual: Local Knowledge, Global Stage. Vol. X: 273 – 301.
Green, Denise N. (2016) Cornell’s Sesquicentennial: An Exhibition of Campus Style. Catwalk: The Journal of Fashion, Beauty and Style, Vol. 5, Issue 1: 43 – 62.
Green, Denise N. and Susan B. Kaiser (2016) “Men, Masculinity, and Style in 2008: A Study of Men’s Clothing Considerations in the Latter Aughts.” Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion, Vol. 3, Issue 2: 125 – 140. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/csmf.3.2.125_1
Satinsky, Emily and Denise N. Green (2016) “Negotiating Identities in the Furry Fandom Through Costuming.” Joint special issue of Fashion, Style and Popular Culture and Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion Vol. 3, Issue 2: 107 – 124. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/csmf.3.2.107_1
Green, Denise N. (2014) “A Pair of Hinkiits’am (Serpent Headdresses).” Otsego Institute 2010 Alumni Review. http://www.otsegoinstitute.org/denise-nicole-green.html
Green, Denise N., Van Dyk Lewis, and Charlotte Jirousek (2013) “Fashion Cultures in a Small Town: An Analysis of Fashion- and Place-Making.” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty, Vol. 4, Issue 1: 71 - 106. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb.4.1-2.71_1
Green, Denise N. (2011) “Mamuu—La Pratique du Tissage / Mamuu—The Practice of Weaving.” Cahiers métiers d'art / Craft Journal, Vol. 5, Issue 1: 37 - 59. (Published in French and English, print only.)
Green, Denise N. and Susan B. Kaiser (2011) “From Ephemeral to Everyday Costuming: Negotiations in Masculine Identities at the Burning Man Project.” DRESS: Journal of the Costume Society of America, Vol. 37, Issue 1: 1 – 22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/036121112X13099651318548
ARKEO Courses - Fall 2024
- ARKEO 3000 : Undergraduate Independent Study in Archaeology and Related Fields
- ARKEO 4981 : Honors Thesis Research
- ARKEO 4982 : Honors Thesis Write-Up
- ARKEO 6000 : Graduate Independent Study in Archaeology