Back to school again

I don't seem to have had a lot of time for sewing this year, and now I'm about to have even less. Starting next month, I am enrolled on a single module of the English degree at the University of Chester. Called "Fashioning Fictions", it looks at the role of clothing, fabric, objects and, of course, fashion in fiction.

My reading matter for the next few months

For anyone squinting at the above picture on their phone, the books are:
The Ladies’ Paradise, Émile Zola
Gigi, Collette
The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Quicksand, Nella Larsen
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Blue Nights, Joan Didion

There is one other set text, "Girl, Woman, Other" by Bernadine Evaristo. A friend is lending me her copy, but she has just moved house and has yet to unearth it! Fortunately it is studied later in the course. I rarely seem to read fiction these days, so this is going to be a bit of a change. However, the 'historical' texts cover some of my favourite periods, costuming-wise, so reading them with a particular interest in references to clothing and fashion will hardly be a hardship.

On top of that, one of the things which drew me to the module was the fact that there is an option to submit a sewn or knitted piece in one of the assignments. I am hoping that this may be the prompt for me to take up my long-neglected historical dressmaking again. I am also really looking forward to having the run of an academic library once more!