Dr Prudence Black

Dr Prudence Black is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow. Prudence completed her PhD in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney in 2009. She has published mainly in the areas of design, modernism, fashion and popular culture. The Flight Attendant’s Shoe (NewSouth Books 2011) is a design and cultural history that uses the flight attendants’ uniforms to chart the links between the Australian fashion and textile industry and versions of Australian nationalism, militarism, cosmopolitanism, and the corporate world.

Prudence has taught courses in the areas of cultural studies, fashion, industrial design, design history and theory at the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of New South Wales. As well as her academic roles she has worked at the Powerhouse Museum and the Australian Museum as a curator and researcher for exhibitions about Australian popular culture, fashion, design and Indigenous culture.

Current research projects include a study of occupational dress for disadvantaged and incarcerated women re-entering the workforce, intimacy and affect in home dressmaking and the industrial and gendered history of flight attendants in Australia.

She is a member of the Gender and Modernity Research Group and the Australian Fashion Studies Network.

She has had consultancies at the Centre for Olympic Studies, University of NSW, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Museum Business Services and Global Campus Management.

Select Publications

Book
Black, P. (2011) The Flight Attendant’s Shoe, Sydney: New South Press.

Edited Journals
Black, P. and M. Hardy (eds.), (forthcoming 2012). ‘On Mad Men’, Cultural Studies Review.

Black, P. and J. Craik (eds.), (2009). ‘Australian Fashion Perspectives’ edition of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture.

Refereed Journal Articles
Black, P. and C, Driscoll (forthcoming September 2012). ‘Don, Betty and Jackie Kennedy: Periodisation in Mad Men’, Cultural Studies Review.

Black, P. and Catherine Driscoll, (2011) ‘Strapped to the Drainpipe: Mrs Peel and the Vinyl Catsuit ‘, The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 1/1.

Black, P. (2009). ‘Fashion Takes Flight: Amy Johnson, Schiaparelli and Australian Modernism’ in Hecate, 35.1/2.

Black, P. (2000). ‘Consuming Jackie: Jacqueline Kennedy and the Cultural Politics of Sixties Fashion’ in Form/Work Journal, Number 4.

Book Chapters
Black, P. and S. Muecke, (2010). ‘Antipodean Modernisms’ in The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms, (Eds.) P. Brooker (et al), Melbourne & Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Black, P. (2010). ‘The Australian Wool Industry’ in Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, (Eds.) J. Eicher (et al), London: Berg.

Black, P. (2000). ‘Fashion’ in Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women’s Issues and Knowledge, (Eds.) C. Kramarae & D. Spender, London: Routledge.

Plenary and Invited Addresses and Conference Activity

Plenary and Invited Addresses
Black, P and J. Idle, (2011) “It’s just what you did”: Mothers, daughters and sewing in the 1960s, Transforming Cultures Seminar Series, University of Technology, Sydney.

Black, P. and J. Idle, (2010).‘Something for Best, Something for Play: Mothers, daughters and sewing in the 1960s’, Biennial Australian Studies Conference, University of Sydney.

Black, P. (2009). ‘Is an Ecological Modernism Possible?’, the inaugural Australian Modernist Studies Network symposium, University of Queensland.

Selected Conference Papers and Presentations
Black, P. (2011). ‘Nevil Shute: The Comet, the Constellation and the Holden’, PopCAANZ, Auckland New Zealand.

Black, P and C. Driscoll, (2010). ‘Don, Betty and Jackie Kennedy: Mad Men and the 60s’, Mad Men Seminar, Gender and Modernity Group, University of Sydney.

Black, P. (2010). ‘Designed to Death: A Single Man’, Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, University of New South Wales.

Editorial and Broadcasting

Editorial
2010 Editorial Board, Australasian Journal of Popular Culture.
2010 Editorial Advisory Board, Fashion, Film and Consumption.

Broadcasting
Black, P and C. Freyne, (2009). ‘Pink Collar Workers in the Sky’, Hindsight. ABC
Radio National, November 29.

Forthcoming conferences and other research presentations

Invited Participant (2012). ‘Minor Cosmopolitanisms’, International Summer School, University of Potsdam 9-13 July.
Black, P. (2012). ‘Practices of Intimacy: The Touch of the Cloth’, Modernism, Intimacy and Emotion conference, University of Western Sydney.

Black, P. (2012). ‘Marx, Hegel and Pan Am: Why History Won’t Save the Airlines’, Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Paris.