Academic Staff Profile by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Books by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities, 2023
Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities critically investigates auto/biographical... more Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities critically investigates auto/biographical memories of past sartorial practices from multiple standpoints with a theoretical underpinning. It combines approaches from dress history, fashion studies and material culture to explore ways in which dress is remembered and how narratives of personal dress practices fit into or subvert wider concepts of fashion and style locally, nationally and internationally. The volume recognizes the value of material culture approaches but focuses on the immaterial meanings contained within and around clothing at the time it was worn and the time of recollection. Termed ‘material identities’, this approach encourages discussions of personal sartorial motivations and tensions with collective understandings of public appearance to be articulated and explored. Memories of Dress brings together multiple voices to encompass and contextualize different circumstances and experiences under four themes: Concepts, which frames autobiographical memories in relation concepts of self; Histories, which focuses on personal experiences of dress contextualized in the social and cultural circumstances where the clothing was worn; Objects, which explores memory through the lens of material culture, surviving garments, and associated ephemera; and Practices, which frames practice-led approaches to memories of dress including autoethnography, autobiography, and making. At the heart of the volume are auto/biographical narratives of everyday dress and life. The exploration of material identities through theories of memory offers a unique perspective by articulating, examining, and contextualizing the meanings and motivations, both collective and public, personal and private, behind the clothes we wear in different times, places, and life stages.
Book Chapters by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Memories of Dress: Recollections of Material Identities, 2023
This chapter introduces the term ‘body dressing work’ to articulate the author’s experience negot... more This chapter introduces the term ‘body dressing work’ to articulate the author’s experience negotiating the social norms and expectations of clothing the suburban American female body with the anxiety of living with a spinal deformity. Two disciplines of memory are employed in this chapter: personal memory and cultural memory. Personal memory is articulated via photographs and autoethnographic prose, and cultural memory is explored through a study of the casual fashion style of sportswear known as ‘The American Look’, and, in particular, the shift dress, a key garment to emerge from this style. This chapter will demonstrate that the cultural myths of America, which have developed through official and popular channels, are embedded into expectations of the body politic and the dressed body corpus: what we ought to fit into.
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Culture Costume and Dress:Proceedings of the 1st International Conference, 10-12 May 2017, 2018
This paper will offer a historic analysis of the shift dress as essential to the middle and upper... more This paper will offer a historic analysis of the shift dress as essential to the middle and upper-middle class American woman’s wardrobe and its lasting influence on American sportswear and the collections of luxury brands as a signifier of understated feminine youthful health through movement.
This paper will argue that the shift dress’s key place in the American woman’s wardrobe reflects the unique historical and cultural influences on American dress from the birth of the new democratic nation in the eighteenth century to the dominance of New York City’s ready-to-wear sportswear industry in the mid-twentieth century.
The shift dress can be traced back to the 1920s chemise. Dresses of that era, particularly those of Coco Chanel, featured exposed legs and arms, simple cuts, loose shapes and little waist definition. This was a move away from corsets and offered women both style and ease of movement. It became a staple of the American woman’s wardrobe in the 1960s and signified a new trend in women’s clothing as the garment promoted independence, modernity, a redefinition of the female shape, and concurrent ideological expectations of the female form.
This article will consider student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practic... more This article will consider student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practices I have developed within a series of bookbinding workshops in which I acquire new skills alongside my students. The bookbinding workshop developed from my desire to seek ways to engage with and alongside students in my practice and research to ground my own making within my pedagogic practice. In this way students are not being ‘instructed’ by a skilled specialist but rather collaborating with a committed enthusiast and researcher learning from their practice and experience. This article will discuss the impact these workshops have had on participating students, their practice and their sense of ‘creative self’ through the analysis of anonymous surveys carried over the span of two years.
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice, Dec 2013
This article considers how the act of making through embodied activity can enhance levels of know... more This article considers how the act of making through embodied activity can enhance levels of knowledge of complex theoretical frameworks. W. G. Sebald’s use of narrative and image in The Emigrants (1993) to conjure up ghosts that reside in our memory of significant places influenced the development of a hand stitched artist book of collaged photographs taken on a final farewell walk. This article examines the journey undertaken to develop the book from the walk over two years ago to the recent binding of the spine and consider the tacit understanding of the theoretical concepts which developed into explicit knowledge through the making of the book.
Conference Papers by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Let me tell you the straight and narrow of it, how I tried to straighten up and fly right but my ... more Let me tell you the straight and narrow of it, how I tried to straighten up and fly right but my spine kept me bending to the left. It was a town where the citizens stood as tall and as solid as their oaks and maples, church spires and clock towers. I was different; my body was different. I left to join the wider world.
Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social and personal perceptions about its function and use.
Thirty years later I returned to explore the memories of that place and that girl through walking and photographic practices. The outcomes are handbound books: souvenirs, talismans and objects of desire representing those same walks taken by the girl with the curved spine who was anything but crooked.
“…(A)sserting the possession of memories as one’s own constitutes in linguistic practice a model... more “…(A)sserting the possession of memories as one’s own constitutes in linguistic practice a model of mineness for all psychical phenomena.” (Ricoeur, 2004, p.124)
This paper will consider how memories are past experiences articulated at particular times for particular reasons. This articulation is a signifying practice (Hall, 1997) , making and negotiating meaning within the present through re-collecting chosen aspects of the past.
This paper will explore and critically discuss the material making of an artist book as an autoethnographic performance which visually and physically articulates tensions found in my own personal and social identity which emerged from a sense of displacement and rejection from the place of my childhood. Paul Ricoeur (2004) notes that we will have an initial corporeal relationship to a place which will support the articulation of personal memory: …”my place is where my body is`(Ricoeur, 2004 p.149). Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social perceptions about its function and use.
Reid and Solomonides (2007) which suggest that for creative students to engage successfully in their studies they must have the opportunity to “develop a robust Sense of Being [sic]” . The most valuable pedagogic conditions, according to Reid and Solomonides, will be those that create learning opportunities that encourage this embodiment of the creative self. This paper will suggest memory work and the use of the autoethnographic voice will further stimulate this creative self.
“Art education is a dynamic expression of eagerness, total intellectual energy, and inquisitivene... more “Art education is a dynamic expression of eagerness, total intellectual energy, and inquisitiveness…” (Buckley & Conomos, 2009)
Trowler & Trowler, in their 2010 report for the HEA’s Student Engagement Project, note that studies have consistently shown associations between student engagement and improvements in identified desired outcomes, including cognitive development, critical thinking skills, practical competence, and skills transferability. They also note that there are specific features of engagement which improve outcomes, including student-staff contact, active learning, and cooperation amongst students such as group work and peer support
This paper considers student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practices I have developed within a series of bookbinding workshops away from the studio environment in which I develop new skills alongside my students. In this way students are not being ‘instructed’ by a skilled specialist but rather collaborating with a committed enthusiast.
Buckley, B. & Conomos, J.(eds)(2009) Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy, Halifax Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Trowler, V. & Trowler, P. (2010) Student Engagement Evidence Summary: Deliverable 2 for the Higher Education Academy Student Engagement Project, York: HEA.
Doctoral Study by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Kealy-Morris, E. (2016), "The Artist's Book: Making as embodied knowledge of Practice and the Self", PhD thesis, University of Chester, UK, 2016
The initial research question for this practice-based doctoral research project was to ask, “Is i... more The initial research question for this practice-based doctoral research project was to ask, “Is it possible to develop a more confident, self-conscious creative voice able to articulate one’s identity more clearly through the making of handmade artefacts?”; this thesis applies the methodologies of autoethnography and pedagogy to consider an answer. My original contribution to knowledge through this enquiry is the identification of the ways in which the exploration of identity through autoethnographic, creative and pedagogic methods encourages an expanded field of self-knowledge, self-confidence and sense of creative self.
This autoethnographic study focuses on the analysis of my experiences as a working class girl growing up in an upper middle class suburb of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Diagnosed with a spine deformity at the age of ten, I utilise autoethnographic theory, methods and analysis in this thesis to gain knowledge of myself and the culture I grew up in to understand the possible reasons for my sense of shame and rejection, and my subsequent development of a fragile identity. This thesis evidences that the study of one’s culture and its signifying practices develops knowledge of the self, that they are necessarily intertwined.
Central to this study has been my development of embodied, theoretical and material knowledge through learning the craft-based skill of hand bookbinding, and my emergent confidence to encase my visual practice in hand-bound artist’s books. The visual element of this practice-based PhD is a series of handmade artist’s books which contain collaged digital photographs of walks I took in my home town. This thesis evidences that through learning these skills I have developed greater self-knowledge as an artist/designer/maker. This approach has been successfully translated to the teaching of bookbinding skills through workshops influenced by Wenger’s (1998) theory of ‘communities of practice’ in a collaborative learning setting. This thesis reports that participating students’ perceptions of themselves have changed through their development of the skills and knowledge involved in encasing their individual creative work into hand-bound artist’s books.
Through the critical analysis of empirical and practice-based methods engaged in during this study, I argue that the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book.
Visual Work by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Student Bookbinding (examples) by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
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Academic Staff Profile by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Books by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Book Chapters by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Peer-reviewed Journal Articles by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
This paper will argue that the shift dress’s key place in the American woman’s wardrobe reflects the unique historical and cultural influences on American dress from the birth of the new democratic nation in the eighteenth century to the dominance of New York City’s ready-to-wear sportswear industry in the mid-twentieth century.
The shift dress can be traced back to the 1920s chemise. Dresses of that era, particularly those of Coco Chanel, featured exposed legs and arms, simple cuts, loose shapes and little waist definition. This was a move away from corsets and offered women both style and ease of movement. It became a staple of the American woman’s wardrobe in the 1960s and signified a new trend in women’s clothing as the garment promoted independence, modernity, a redefinition of the female shape, and concurrent ideological expectations of the female form.
Conference Papers by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social and personal perceptions about its function and use.
Thirty years later I returned to explore the memories of that place and that girl through walking and photographic practices. The outcomes are handbound books: souvenirs, talismans and objects of desire representing those same walks taken by the girl with the curved spine who was anything but crooked.
This paper will consider how memories are past experiences articulated at particular times for particular reasons. This articulation is a signifying practice (Hall, 1997) , making and negotiating meaning within the present through re-collecting chosen aspects of the past.
This paper will explore and critically discuss the material making of an artist book as an autoethnographic performance which visually and physically articulates tensions found in my own personal and social identity which emerged from a sense of displacement and rejection from the place of my childhood. Paul Ricoeur (2004) notes that we will have an initial corporeal relationship to a place which will support the articulation of personal memory: …”my place is where my body is`(Ricoeur, 2004 p.149). Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social perceptions about its function and use.
Reid and Solomonides (2007) which suggest that for creative students to engage successfully in their studies they must have the opportunity to “develop a robust Sense of Being [sic]” . The most valuable pedagogic conditions, according to Reid and Solomonides, will be those that create learning opportunities that encourage this embodiment of the creative self. This paper will suggest memory work and the use of the autoethnographic voice will further stimulate this creative self.
Trowler & Trowler, in their 2010 report for the HEA’s Student Engagement Project, note that studies have consistently shown associations between student engagement and improvements in identified desired outcomes, including cognitive development, critical thinking skills, practical competence, and skills transferability. They also note that there are specific features of engagement which improve outcomes, including student-staff contact, active learning, and cooperation amongst students such as group work and peer support
This paper considers student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practices I have developed within a series of bookbinding workshops away from the studio environment in which I develop new skills alongside my students. In this way students are not being ‘instructed’ by a skilled specialist but rather collaborating with a committed enthusiast.
Buckley, B. & Conomos, J.(eds)(2009) Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy, Halifax Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Trowler, V. & Trowler, P. (2010) Student Engagement Evidence Summary: Deliverable 2 for the Higher Education Academy Student Engagement Project, York: HEA.
Doctoral Study by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
This autoethnographic study focuses on the analysis of my experiences as a working class girl growing up in an upper middle class suburb of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Diagnosed with a spine deformity at the age of ten, I utilise autoethnographic theory, methods and analysis in this thesis to gain knowledge of myself and the culture I grew up in to understand the possible reasons for my sense of shame and rejection, and my subsequent development of a fragile identity. This thesis evidences that the study of one’s culture and its signifying practices develops knowledge of the self, that they are necessarily intertwined.
Central to this study has been my development of embodied, theoretical and material knowledge through learning the craft-based skill of hand bookbinding, and my emergent confidence to encase my visual practice in hand-bound artist’s books. The visual element of this practice-based PhD is a series of handmade artist’s books which contain collaged digital photographs of walks I took in my home town. This thesis evidences that through learning these skills I have developed greater self-knowledge as an artist/designer/maker. This approach has been successfully translated to the teaching of bookbinding skills through workshops influenced by Wenger’s (1998) theory of ‘communities of practice’ in a collaborative learning setting. This thesis reports that participating students’ perceptions of themselves have changed through their development of the skills and knowledge involved in encasing their individual creative work into hand-bound artist’s books.
Through the critical analysis of empirical and practice-based methods engaged in during this study, I argue that the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book.
Visual Work by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
Student Bookbinding (examples) by Dr. Elizabeth Kealy-Morris
This paper will argue that the shift dress’s key place in the American woman’s wardrobe reflects the unique historical and cultural influences on American dress from the birth of the new democratic nation in the eighteenth century to the dominance of New York City’s ready-to-wear sportswear industry in the mid-twentieth century.
The shift dress can be traced back to the 1920s chemise. Dresses of that era, particularly those of Coco Chanel, featured exposed legs and arms, simple cuts, loose shapes and little waist definition. This was a move away from corsets and offered women both style and ease of movement. It became a staple of the American woman’s wardrobe in the 1960s and signified a new trend in women’s clothing as the garment promoted independence, modernity, a redefinition of the female shape, and concurrent ideological expectations of the female form.
Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social and personal perceptions about its function and use.
Thirty years later I returned to explore the memories of that place and that girl through walking and photographic practices. The outcomes are handbound books: souvenirs, talismans and objects of desire representing those same walks taken by the girl with the curved spine who was anything but crooked.
This paper will consider how memories are past experiences articulated at particular times for particular reasons. This articulation is a signifying practice (Hall, 1997) , making and negotiating meaning within the present through re-collecting chosen aspects of the past.
This paper will explore and critically discuss the material making of an artist book as an autoethnographic performance which visually and physically articulates tensions found in my own personal and social identity which emerged from a sense of displacement and rejection from the place of my childhood. Paul Ricoeur (2004) notes that we will have an initial corporeal relationship to a place which will support the articulation of personal memory: …”my place is where my body is`(Ricoeur, 2004 p.149). Pierre Nora’s (1989) work documenting the diverse range of French national sites of memory demonstrates that the “where” of memory changes over time and that official memory can be challenged by alternative forms of cultural memory. Just like memory, then, place is also unstable and open to shifting social perceptions about its function and use.
Reid and Solomonides (2007) which suggest that for creative students to engage successfully in their studies they must have the opportunity to “develop a robust Sense of Being [sic]” . The most valuable pedagogic conditions, according to Reid and Solomonides, will be those that create learning opportunities that encourage this embodiment of the creative self. This paper will suggest memory work and the use of the autoethnographic voice will further stimulate this creative self.
Trowler & Trowler, in their 2010 report for the HEA’s Student Engagement Project, note that studies have consistently shown associations between student engagement and improvements in identified desired outcomes, including cognitive development, critical thinking skills, practical competence, and skills transferability. They also note that there are specific features of engagement which improve outcomes, including student-staff contact, active learning, and cooperation amongst students such as group work and peer support
This paper considers student engagement through collaborative teaching and learning practices I have developed within a series of bookbinding workshops away from the studio environment in which I develop new skills alongside my students. In this way students are not being ‘instructed’ by a skilled specialist but rather collaborating with a committed enthusiast.
Buckley, B. & Conomos, J.(eds)(2009) Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: The Artist, the PhD, and the Academy, Halifax Nova Scotia: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.
Trowler, V. & Trowler, P. (2010) Student Engagement Evidence Summary: Deliverable 2 for the Higher Education Academy Student Engagement Project, York: HEA.
This autoethnographic study focuses on the analysis of my experiences as a working class girl growing up in an upper middle class suburb of Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Diagnosed with a spine deformity at the age of ten, I utilise autoethnographic theory, methods and analysis in this thesis to gain knowledge of myself and the culture I grew up in to understand the possible reasons for my sense of shame and rejection, and my subsequent development of a fragile identity. This thesis evidences that the study of one’s culture and its signifying practices develops knowledge of the self, that they are necessarily intertwined.
Central to this study has been my development of embodied, theoretical and material knowledge through learning the craft-based skill of hand bookbinding, and my emergent confidence to encase my visual practice in hand-bound artist’s books. The visual element of this practice-based PhD is a series of handmade artist’s books which contain collaged digital photographs of walks I took in my home town. This thesis evidences that through learning these skills I have developed greater self-knowledge as an artist/designer/maker. This approach has been successfully translated to the teaching of bookbinding skills through workshops influenced by Wenger’s (1998) theory of ‘communities of practice’ in a collaborative learning setting. This thesis reports that participating students’ perceptions of themselves have changed through their development of the skills and knowledge involved in encasing their individual creative work into hand-bound artist’s books.
Through the critical analysis of empirical and practice-based methods engaged in during this study, I argue that the artist’s book, as performative autoethnographic practice, evidences embodied knowledge of one’s identity and creativity by encasing the self within the book.