This course explores the multiple ways the clothes we wear tell stories about our life’s journey and are embedded with meaning and memory. How do our clothes communicate identity, offer protection, and celebrate the past? How do we read or interpret the performance of ourselves and others by the garments we inhabit? How have the rapid changes in fashion and technology since the 16th century altered our physical bodies and rewritten the narrative of our clothing choices? Through the reading of historical and contemporary fiction and non-fiction, personal narrative, and essays, we will explore and make sense of the meaning and memories created by the clothes hanging on our bodies and in our closets. Our goal will be to focus on how scholarly based inquiry can help us to answer our questions, and how this inquiry can inform current discussions about cultural memory. Projects may include oral history, material culture curation, short essays, and the manipulation of garments.