Dr. Karin Bohleke
Director of the Fashion Archives and Museum
Degrees
- D., Yale University (French)
- MA and M Phil., Yale University (French)
- Double-Major, Brigham Young University (French and Russian) – summa cum laude
Research Interests
- Early Photography
- Needle Arts and Historic Textile Processing Methods
- 19th-Century Social Dance History
- History of Travel in Egypt
- 19th-Century Women’s Social and Material Culture History
Courses Taught
- History 541: Museum Education
- History 542: Textile History and Museum Methods
Major Publications
- “Our Patterns Can Be Used For All Sizes': French Miniature Pattern Drafts, 1830s-1840s." Sewn in America: Making—Meaning—Memory. Ed. Alden O’Brien. 42-57. Washington, DC: DAR Museum, 2024.
- “Reading Textiles as Text: Katharina von Bora’s Self-Representation through Dress.” Reformers in Early Modern Europe: Profiles, Texts, and Contexts. Edited by Kirsi I. Stjerna. 301-311. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press/Media 1517, 2022.
- “The Sterb-Spiegel: A Fashionable Eighteenth-Century Dance of Death.” Costume (2018): 188-216.
- "Identifying Stages of Grief in Nineteenth-Century Images." Daguerriean Annual (2015): 166- 191. Available at http://www.academia.edu.
- “It Was Not Supposed to Turn Out This Way: Sewing and Fitting Errors as Indicators of Social Class.” Daguerreian Annual (2015): 92-109. Available at http://www.academia.edu.
- “Assimilation, Amalgamation and Defiance: The `Admirable Figure of the Negro’ and African American Dress in Daguerreotypes and Early Photographs.” Daguerreian Annual (2014): 10-33. Available at http://www.academia.edu.
- “Mummies are Called Upon to Contribute to Fashion: Pre-Tutankhamun Egyptian Revivalism in Dress." Dress 40, no. 2 (2014): 95-115.
- “Ê»Une dame européenne qui voyage en homme:’ Ida Saint-Elme and Dress across Borders, Cultures and Religion.” Shippensburg Journal of Modern Languages. Issue 2 (Fall 2011): 7-14.
- “Nile Style: Nineteenth-Century Women Travelers in Egypt and the Crisis of Personal, Religious, and Social Identity.” Dress 36 (2010): 63-86.
- “Americanizing French Fashion Plates: Godey’s and Peterson’s Cultural and Socio-Economic Translation of Les Modes Parisiennes.” American Periodicals 20:2 (2010): 120-155.
Profile
Since 2007, Karin J. Bohleke has served as the director of the Fashion Archives and Museum of Shippensburg University. She holds a Ph.D. in French language and literature from Yale University. She also teaches graduate courses in the Applied History M.A. program. She has presented her continuing research at annual symposia of the Costume Society of America as well as published in Dress, The Daguerreian Annual, American Periodicals, Civil War Historian, Piecework, and Costume. Her research interests focus on the nineteenth century and include fashion, early photography, the dissemination of French fashions in the United States, and other fashion-related topics. Her current book project involves the study of clothing in nineteenth-century photos of African Americans.