Fountain School of Performing Arts

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Hilary Doda

Part-Time Academic

Fountain School of Performing Arts

Email: hdoda@dal.ca
Phone: 902.494.3772
Mailing Address: 
Room 514, Dalhousie Arts Centre 6101 University Avenue PO Box 15000, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2
 
Research Topics:
  • Costume Studies
  • Dress, culture, society, and style tribes
  • Material culture
  • Textiles, fabrication, and making
  • The technology of dress
  • Early modern history
  • Historical archaeology

Education

  • BA (McGill University)
  • Diploma in Costume Studies (Dalhousie)
  • MA (Dalhousie)
  • PhD (Dalhousie)

Hilary Doda teaches Costume Studies in the Fountain School of Performing Arts. She completed an Interdisciplinary PhD at Dalhousie University, in the mixed fields of Dress Studies, Material Culture Studies, Archaeology, and Atlantic history. Prior to this, she received her MA in History (Early Modern) from Dalhousie University, and her BA in Anthropology from McGill University.

Research & creative activity

Dr. Doda’s research interests focus on dress as a system of symbolic communication. As part of that overarching program, she studies the intersections of dress and political culture in the historical North Atlantic, the role of dress in the performance of identity, early modern trade and technology related to dress and adornment, and dress as expressions of gender roles and sexuality. Her first book project, “The Acadian of our Fancy, or Fancy Acadians? Clothing and Accessories in Acadia, 1650-1750” is under advance contract with McGill-Queens University Press.

Teaching

  • Caves to Castles: Fashion History to 1450 (THEA 2401)
  • Castles to Cafés: Fashion History from 1450 – 1700 (THEA 2402)
  • Baroque to Bustles: Fashion History from 1700 – 1900 (THEA 3402)
  • Bustles to Boardrooms: Modern Fashion from 1900 (THEA 3403)

Selected publications

  • “Scissors, Embellishment and Womanhood: The Material Culture of Acadian Sewing To 1755.” Acadiensis. Forthcoming, Spring 2021.
  • “Lady Mary to Queen of England: Transformation, Ritual, and the Wardrobe of the Robes.” In The Birth of a Queen, Palgrave-MacMillan 2016. Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, Eds. pp. 49-68.
  • “Saide Monstrous Hose”: Compliance, Transgression and English Sumptuary Legislation. Textile History. (Vol. 39, no. 2, November 2014): 171-191.
  • “Rounde Heades in Square Cappes: The Role of the Vestments in the Vestiarian Controversy.” Dress, The Journal of the Costume Society of America. 39, no 2 (November 2013): 93-110.

Awards and honours

  • Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship, 2016 – 2019
  • SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral (CGS-D), 2015 – 2018