Islamic Studies Program

Phone:

(812) 855-6163

Email:

hakou@indiana.edu

Department:

Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design

Campus:

IU Bloomington

Heather Akou is a fashion historian and director of the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, which includes the Glenn Close costume collection. In addition to serving on the editorial advisory board for Bloomsbury Fashion Central, she has published in numerous anthologies, encyclopedias, and academic journals. Recent articles have appeared (or will soon appear) in ‘Fashion Theory,’ ‘Dress,’ ‘International Journal of Fashion Studies,’ ‘Fashion, Style & Popular Culture,’ and ‘American Craft Inquiry.’ A co-edited anthology, ‘Creating African Fashion Histories,’ will be published by Indiana University Press.

Her research interests include the cultures and histories of non-Western dress (primarily African and Islamic), the politics of dress, the embodiment of religion, working-class histories of dress, narratives surrounding dress and the body, and how non-Western and minority dress is represented in museum collections. Her classes currently include textile labs, cultural aspects of dress, autobiographies of dress and the body, fashion history, and aesthetics.