Have you ever dressed up as a historical figure?

Drew Fortune , I am really into textiles which play an important role in quite a bit of world history; I've studied and performed world dance for decades; and I teach at a fine arts high school that does Halloween costumes for a week.  So if there's a historical costume possibility, I'm doing it. I've dressed as famous people like Empress Dowager Cixi, La Malinche, Robert Oppenheimer, Frida Kahlo, Queen Victoria, Afonso de Albuquerque, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as representative outfits like a peasant marching on Versailles, a South Korean Farmer, a suffragette, an air warden,  and dancers from several different areas.  I enjoy it and so do the students.  I thought I might get called out for cultural "appropriation," but to the contrary, students bring in their own cultural motifs and traditions to share, and it promotes inquiry.

Drew Fortune , I am really into textiles which play an important role in quite a bit of world history; I've studied and performed world dance for decades; and I teach at a fine arts high school that does Halloween costumes for a week.  So if there's a historical costume possibility, I'm doing it. I've dressed as famous people like Empress Dowager Cixi, La Malinche, Robert Oppenheimer, Frida Kahlo, Queen Victoria, Afonso de Albuquerque, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as representative outfits like a peasant marching on Versailles, a South Korean Farmer, a suffragette, an air warden,  and dancers from several different areas.  I enjoy it and so do the students.  I thought I might get called out for cultural "appropriation," but to the contrary, students bring in their own cultural motifs and traditions to share, and it promotes inquiry.

Rachel Reinhart this is so cool!! It sounds like you have quite a collection of costumes so halloween must be one of your favorite holidays! Do you tell students when you are going to do this or are they always surprised? How do you work this into your lessons?

 Marcella Sykucki (f668c505-b87b-4700-b1a8-b16ca84974cc),It's always a surprise.  Now they're used to it, and try to guess what it's about.  I use bright embroidered silks and more somber, rough wool to highlight the drive for luxury items in trade, as well as the role of workers in textiles.  In the industrial revolution I let them compare hand-knitted to hand-loomed to machine knit/loomed, and students who stitch share their interest/current projects, and how much time hand-making takes. I love other tangible examples too -  I bring iron ore, limestone, coke, slag, water, a jacquard punch card, a maquette of a steam engine, cotton bolls, sugar cane, spices, Asian-stamped Spanish silver coins, whatever I can.

Rachel Reinhart this sounds awesome I'd love to see pictures! How often do you do this? I recently went to Japan and got a nice kimono that I was thinking of wearing but I was nervous to. Maybe I'll do it next year now!

This is awesome! Looking at Robert Oppenheimer pictures and I guess one could say I dress up as him everyday with my suit and jacket, I just don't have the ever present cigarette in my hand like he did.