The global history of wax prints and its implications on female dress in urban South Ghana

The Orfalea Center for Global & International Studies presents
“The global history of wax prints and its implications on female dress in urban South Ghana”

Silvia Ruschak
Global History Working Group
University of Vienna

WHEN: Thursday, June 4, 2009 — 12:00
WHERE: Orfalea Center seminar Room, 1005 Robertson Gym

This presentation will focus on the history of textiles – specifically, the
global history of industrially printed fabrics for the Ghanaian market
called wax prints. The usually colourful and manifold fabrics are nowadays
commonly known as traditional Ghanaian fabrics. However, their history is
rather young and the result of complex colonial, economic and cultural
interactions.

In the mid 19th century Dutch factory owners and merchants tried to conquer
the Indonesian batik market with industrially printed imitations of hand
made Javanese batik. They however were not successful in satisfying the
local market for various reasons. Entangled economic and colonial
interactions brought the fabrics to the former Gold Coast – today’s Ghana –
where they quickly got very popular. Especially since Ghana’s independence
from Britain in 1957 the fabrics have been carrying national as well as
gendered significances.

After giving a quick overview of the global history of wax prints in the
19th century and the adaptation of designs to the Ghanaian context I am
going to analyse their importance in contemporary urban South Ghana. How
are wax prints incorporated into everyday dressing? Who wears clothes made
of wax prints and when? What is the gender of wax prints? How do they
communicate different constructions of social status, sexuality and
nationality? Selected examples from oral history material and public media
serve as starting point for analysing these questions. They are
additionally read against mainly sociological and anthropological theories
of dressing and fashion. The aim of the presentation is to show how fabrics
and dressing can be used as rich historic sources to elaborate
socio-economic, cultural and gender related research questions.

Silvia Ruschak
Silvia Ruschak is a contemporary historian with a special focus on global
gender and fashion history. She is working at the Department of
Contemporary History at the University of Vienna where she also teaches and
is part of the Global History Work Group. She has recently submitted her
PhD with the title: Fabrics that create global history. Stations in the
cultural biography of wax prints in urban South Ghana for which she has
gathered archival material as well as oral sources in Ghana, Great Britain
and the Netherlands. During her stay at the Orfalea Center, Silvia Ruschak
is going to research into the question in how far fabrics produced in or
for West Africa are relevant for identity constructions of African
Americans. Thus she wants to follow the global history of the Ghanaian wax
prints within the US.

hm 5/28/09