Feb 18
Winter Lefler Lecture - Dr. John Soluri
Title: Creatures of Fashion: Animals and the Transformation of Patagonia, 1800s-2000s
Professor Soluri’s research and teaching explore the relationship between social and environmental change in Latin America. His book, Creatures of Fashion: Animals, Global Markets, and the Transformation of Patagonia (Spring 2024) examines how the commodification of wild and domesticated animals for textiles transformed Patagonia.
Today, the mention of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego conjures images of idyllic landscapes untouched by globalization. Creatures of Fashion upends this, revealing how the exploitation of animals—terrestrial and marine, domesticated and wild, living and dead—was central to the region's transformation from Indigenous lands into the national territories of Argentina and Chile. Drawing on evidence from archives and digital repositories, John Soluri traces the circulation of furs and fibers to explore how the power of fashion stretched far beyond Europe’s houses of haute couture to entangle the fates of Indigenous hunters, migrant workers, and textile manufacturers with those of fur seals, guanacos, and sheep at the "end of the world."
from History