Graduation Year

2021

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Organizational Studies

Reader 1

Jeff Lewis

Reader 2

Maryan Soliman

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Abstract

This thesis explores the intersections present between the multifaceted, sociopolitical institutions of Marxism and communism with a highlight on their seedling Maoism; the revolutionary organization that is the Black Panther Party; and the art of fashion and processes that create modes of dress, that emblazon dress with identity, meaning, and purpose. The lenses with which these complex topics will showcase themselves and intersect are through militarism and militarization. These lenses and topics of intersection work in tandem to produce an examination of the Black Panther Party’s subversion and redefinition of the practices of militarism and militarization. Specifically, the main point of knowledge production occurring in this thesis lives in how the Party utilized a major focus on dress aesthetics or fashion to form dress behaviors inspired by the impact of the civil rights and art movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The framework wherein this thesis develops exists vested in analyzing and employing quotations that aided in the formation of the institution of Maoism: quotations housed in Mao’s Little Red Book, one of the Black Panther Party’s principal guiding muses.

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