Biography
Rebecca E. Schuiling is a Teaching Academic Specialist, and the Coordinator of the Apparel and Textile Design Program at Michigan State University. Her courses examine fashion theory, design processes, illustration, knitwear, and collection development.
Schuiling’s research contributes to scholarship in dress studies, visual culture, and material culture. She explores the symbolic dimensions of dress and the cultural systems through which fashion acquires and communicates meaning in popular culture, gender, and systems of representation.
Her previous scholarship explores makers and creative labor at the intersection of art and craft, with particular interest in how practices of making function as sites of ritual, agency, and embodied knowledge.
Her recent scholarship engages with the macabre, true crime media, and the cultural fascination with criminality through the lens of aesthetic violence. This work considers how dress and material circulate within systems of consumption, memory, and myth making, and how they become entangled with narratives of spectacle and notoriety.
Schuiling’s work further interrogates dressing practices, both contemporary and historical, through a critical lens on the wellness and beauty industry, examining how fashion practices participate in the construction and commodification of ideals surrounding health, self care, self optimization, and the body.
Works
ARTICLES
Schuiling, R.E. 2024. Knitted in Stardust: The Knits of David Bowie. Clothing Culture journal, Issue 9.1.
Schuiling, R.E. 2021. Quarantine Pajama Party: From the Bedroom to the Boardroom, Pajamas Cause Unheimlich. In The New Normal: Dressing and Body Practices in the Pandemic Era, Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture (Russian Edition).
ISBN: 978-5-4448-1292-5
CHAPTERS
Schuiling, R.E. and Winge, T.M. 2018. Penetrating Knits: Feminists Knits “Cunty First” and “The Pussyhats.” In K. Medvedev and A. Lynch (Eds.), Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment: Performing Agency, Following Script. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishers. ISBN: 9781350058262. Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment
TEACHING PUBLICATIONS
Schuiling, R. 2019. Knitwear: Casting On Around The World.
Berg Fashion Library. Bloomsbury.
CREATIVE SCHOLARSHIP
Winge, T. M. and Schuiling, R.E. March-April 2010.. Triquetrum Menarche: Mother, Virgin, Crone. Subversive Handicrafts: Taboos in Our Cultural Fabric. Group/International Exhibition. Juried by Artevida Zavod. Modra Hisa Gallery. Ljubljana, SLOVENIA. [international]
RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
Schuiling, R.E. April 8-11, 2026. The Black Dahlia as Tableau: Gendered Material Culture and the Aestheticization of the Female Body. Popular Culture Association Conference. Atlanta. GA. . [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. April 16-19, 2025. Would You Wear a Serial Killer’s Sweater? Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. New Orleans, LA. [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. April 15, 2022. The Seamy Anatomy of the Sweater: A Comparative Analysis between True Crime and Knitting a Sweater. Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. Online [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. June 17, 2021. Crafting Mother Nature: Revealing and Underscoring Matricultural Knowledge and Praxis.The Centre for the Study of Fashion and Cultural Production. Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Fashion Tales: Politics Through the Wardrobes. Online. Milan, Italy. [peer-reviewed; international]
Schuiling, R.E. June 5, 2021. Knitting the Yarns of Edgar Allan Poe’s Prophecies: Reflections of the “Masque of the Red Death” in Covid-19 Pandemic. Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. Online [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. November 25, 2020. Lockdown Wardrobe: Comfort and the Professional Body. Russian Fashion Theory. Round Table Discussion. Lockdown Wardrobe: Time, Space and the Body in the Quarantine Era. Online. [invited; international]
Schuiling, R.E. November 14, 2020. Welcome to the Uncanny Valley: Exteriorized Interiors through the Lens of Knitwear. Dress & Body Association. Virtually (Un) Dressed: Researching the Body in the Digital Age. Online. [peer-reviewed; international]
Schuiling, R.E. June 10, 2020. Quarantine Pajama Party: From the Bedroom to the Boardroom, Pajamas Cause Unheimlich. The New Literary Observer Publishing House and Russian Fashion Theory. The New Normal: Sartorial and Body Practices of the Quarantine Era Conference. Um Online. [peer-reviewed; international]
Schuiling, R.E. April 17-20, 2019. Lana Turner, a.k.a., Sweater Girl: Unraveling the Sweater to Save the Girl. Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. Washington D.C. [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. June 13-16, 2018. Gone with the Knits: 1930’s Knitwear Aesthetic through the Lens of Popular Culture. 10th Biennial International Interdisciplinary Gender, Work, and Organization. Sydney, AUSTRALIA. [peer-reviewed; international]
Schuiling, R.E. March 28-31, 2018. Pistols and Purls: The Aesthetics of 1920s Knitwear in Pop Culture. Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. Indianapolis, IN. [peer-reviewed;national]
Schuiling, R.E. April 12-15, 2017. Knitted of Stardust: The Knits of David Bowie. Popular Culture Association/ American Culture Association Annual Conference. San Diego, CA. [peer-reviewed; national]
Schuiling, R.E. September 11-12, 2016. Cunty First: Lisa Anne Auerbach’s Subversive Knit Artwork. Fashion, Sex and Power Symposium. College of Design, University of Minnesota. [peer-reviewed; international]
ACADEMIC RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
Winge, T.M. and Schuiling, R.E. February 5, 2017 #pussyhats: Knitting Resistance and Agency lecture. Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. [regional/campus, invited].
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