How do fashion, media, and identity intersect? That’s what Giulia Baldini, an instructor in the Africana Studies department, asks her students to think about.
Baldini, a Lehman alumna, teaches “The Africana experience through fashion media.” The course fuses aspects of journalism, history, and Africana studies disciplines, basically “anything that is related to Africana experience through the lenses of fashion media,” she said. “So not only journalism, but I also offer networking experiences for the students.”
She does this is by inviting Black creators to class sessions to talk about their work, what it means to build a Black-centered business, where students can find resources, and why it's important to support these efforts.
Baldini’s personal history was the genesis for the course. Raised in Italy in a multicultural household, she dipped a toe in the fashion industry as a model before coming to the U.S. to study journalism and screenwriting at Hofstra University.
It was a course assignment in 2020 that inspired Baldini to create the website Fashion on the Beat, then publish a book of the same name, where she explores fashion as a means to promote entrepreneurship, advance social justice, and achieve self-realization.
Looking to continue her education, she chose Lehman for its diverse student body, faculty, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program.
“I enrolled at Lehman to develop a better understanding of the Africana experience, and the variety of journeys and narratives within this diaspora,” she said. But “I always had this interest in fashion and anything related to the creative industries. So why not try to understand my identity through my passions?”
She encourages her students to do the same, in part by broadening their understanding of what fashion can be.
“My students are not necessarily Africana Studies majors. Most of them are STEM majors, and their direct experience with fashion, will be. ‘Oh, I'm a sneaker head. I love shoes.’ Or, they have a thing for jewelry. They do have an interest in fashion, but they don't see themselves in these spaces, and they don't know how to start navigating that world.”
The course is part of Lehman’s ATLAS program which stands for Anchored in the Liberal Arts, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Teagle Foundation. It’s a series of seminars for transfer students structured around transformative texts that helps to bridge the perceived gap between liberal arts and professional careers—all while introducing students to the vibrant and diverse Lehman community.
Baldini stresses that to be successful students must read widely, diversify their media consumption, and engage with it in a critical way—skills that translate to the broader college experience and the world beyond fashion.
“My philosophy in the classroom is ‘work smarter, not harder.’ I ask students to think about what it means to be a scholar, and how can they use their scholarship and knowledge to understand and digest and enjoy the media they consume. How can they use these stories in the fashion industry to shape their own identities and understand where they come from and where they want to be in the future?”
Watch Giulia Baldini's Tik Tok feature here.