Venue: RC4, Level B1, Seminar Rooms 1/2
All on campus are invited to hear Dr. Conekin present her latest book, Lee Miller In Fashion and to join a discussion hosted by Professor Rajeev Patke.
Lee Miller was the ‘it girl’ of 1927, a gorgeous model who embodied elegance, refinement, and flapper chic. She moved to Paris, apprenticed herself to the artist Man Ray and steadily became one of the most important photographers of her generation. She worked for decades for Vogue magazine in New York, Paris and London. Her brilliant photos helped revolutionize the fashion industry, but she also photographed war, poverty, and politics.
According to The New York Times, Dr. Conekin’s book “expands our view of that protean spirit, an American model who became a European Surrealist, a fearless photojournalist, and other things besides.” The Huffington Post calls it “a lush page-turner that offers a very intimate look at a visionary and risk-taker who lived her life to the fullest.”
About Becky Conekin
Becky E. Conekin joined Yale in the Autumn of 2009. She holds a PhD in Modern European History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is currently Senior Research Fellow in European Studies, at the Whitney & Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, as well as Senior Lecturer in History at Yale University. Prior to arriving at Yale, she taught at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, where she was Reader in Historical and Cultural Studies and the Course Director of their MA in the History & Culture of Fashion.
Dr. Conekin is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and author of numerous publications including: The Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain; Vernier: Fashion, Femininity & Form with Robin Muir; and as co-editor, The Englishness of English Dress and Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945-1964, as well as the 10th anniversary issue of Fashion Theory dedicated to Vogue magazine. Her work has appeared in the international, interdisciplinary anthologies,The Design History Reader, (2010) and The Men’s Fashion Reader (2009).
Dr. Conekin has written and spoken extensively on the model-turned photographer-turned-war correspondent, Lee Miller, and her book, Lee Miller in Fashion, 1927-1953, was published by Thames and Hudson in 2013. Her next monographic project is funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust and tentatively entitled “Pretty Hard Work: A History of Fashion Modelling in London from the Bomb to Bowie”. Her most recent articles are: Fashioning Mod Twiggy & the Moped in ‘Swinging’ London and ‘Fierce Fragility’: Models, an invited contribution to Nick Knight’s Showstudio. She has supervised and examined PhD dissertations in Modern British history of art, music, fashion, education and contemporary culture.
Dr. Conekin is on the international editorial board of Twentieth Century British History. She has held fellowships and visiting professorships at the Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), the University of Cambridge; Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris; the Center for British Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin; The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and the International Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
