An Interview with Ben Barry, Faculty of Fashion’s New Dean

February 24, 2022

An Job interview with Ben Barry, School of Fashion’s New Dean

Ben Barry is an educator, writer, researcher, and activist who has invested additional than 15 yrs advancing inclusive trend pedagogy and research to create a upcoming in which bodies that are at the moment stigmatized and excluded are as an alternative valued and sought after. Last July, he joined the University of Manner as Dean, the place he prospects and oversees all parts of the college including an progressive curriculum that encompasses the BFA in Manner Structure AAS diploma packages in Fashion Structure and Vogue Advertising MFA in Style Design and style and Society MFA in Textiles and MPS in Vogue Administration.

New School News recently spoke with Dr. Barry on a wide variety of topics, which includes his eyesight for the University of Trend, the reasons he was attracted to signing up for Parsons, and the leaders who inspire him.

What captivated you to The New University / Parsons?

When I was in graduate school, I’d on a regular basis electronic mail the Dean of the Faculty of Style at Parsons and inquire about work possibilities. He normally generously responded, even although there were no open positions at that time. To me, The New College and Parsons represented a place of radical risk in artwork and layout education. I would read about the experimental and creative strategies to teaching that connected idea and producing, welcomed-in community and field collaborators, and grounded social and climate justice. I preferred to be part of that!

How have your previous roles/experiences ready you for your current function as Dean of Trend?

I joined Parsons from X College (previously Ryerson) in Tkaronto (Toronto), Canada wherever I started my training job. I was most lately Chair of their fashion section the place I worked with colleagues to build a curriculum and tradition that prioritized inclusion, decolonization and sustainability. Performing to convey about this systemic transformation taught me about the requirement of academic leadership that is grounded in humility, local community and love, as very well as about the choices and challenges of navigating change within the colonial college method.

What are some of the matters you hope to transform about the School of Manner and what do you hope to introduce to the faculty?

I am completely influenced by the legacy of quite a few Faculty of Style colleagues and learners who have grounded fairness and justice into their function and usually in the deal with of resistance and road blocks. As Dean, I hope to honor, amplify and go on their pathbreaking vision and procedures. I am at this time doing the job with the college, team, students and alumni to create a revised eyesight, guiding principles and actions to understand them for the University of Trend. Our VisionSoF: Reimaging Our Function task will articulate and established into movement a philosophy and politics of style instruction at Parsons that redresses the damage triggered by the continuing legacies of settler colonialism and trans-Atlantic slave trade and that grounds transformative justice. 

Are there any leaders or artists from the earlier or existing that you turn to for inspiration and whose words or function you assume inspire other people?

My understanding of the planet, my position in, and how I can add to additional just futures is indebted to Black feminist thinkers and activists. In unique, the brilliance of bell hooks and adrienne maree brown have shaped my ways to pedagogy, management and just becoming human.  As I do the job to assistance provide about institutional transform, adrienne maree brown has been my guidepost in navigating its messiness by grounding interdependence, humility, accountability and pleasure. 

From a manner viewpoint, I am consistently impressed by those who use manner heritage and design and style as a political resource for re-creating worlds grounded in transformative justice. Sky Cubacub and Rebirth Clothes, Theresa Stevenson and Iskwew Soaring, and Kimberly Jenkins and the Fashion and Race Database all show how fashion can be in the support of collective liberation. 

What excites you most about operating / training on campus?

I’m training a new elective this semester termed Trend and Incapacity Justice. We’re exploring how fashion style can articulate motivation for incapacity and how access opens up aesthetic choices. In the system, we master about the knowledge created by queer and trans disabled folks, specially individuals of coloration. We then work interdependently with multiply marginalized disability communities to style garments that supply access of their mind-bodies and express their desired identities. When the training course is on campus, we’re applying our experiences of studying and fostering relations digitally over the earlier two a long time to consider how collaboratively building as a result of numerous mediums can offer entry for extra human body-minds in style.

What books are on your bedside desk correct now? And which Tv set exhibits are you currently binging?

Suitable now I’m finishing up Crip Kinship by Shayda Kadai that tells the tale of the disability justice functionality group Sins Invalid. This guide not only inspires my present-day teaching and analysis exercise, but it will help me to hook up with the histories and knowledges of my neighborhood as a disability-discovered queer particular person. I have been binging “We Are Below,” as effectively as the continuous new seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, irrespective of the tragic elimination of my fellow Canadian Jimbo from “UK vs The Globe!” Every single minute of queer joy nourishes my remaining!