Patricia is a Puerto Rican anthropologist and filmmaker whose scholarly research and creative practice develops in the folds between ethnography, critical theory, visual and material culture, sensory ethnography, and the documentary arts. She is currently working on her book manuscript Moral Fibers: Making Fashion Ethical. The book critically explores the Peruvian alpaca wool supply chain analyzing how, through the intervention of development projects, indigenous women artisans and their aesthetic traditions are interpolated into “ethical fashion” manufacturing networks. How fashion is made ethical and how is an aesthetic of ethics and social responsibility produced? Moral Fibers unites the fields of political economy, ethnic studies, aesthetic theory, fashion studies and gender studies to expand our thinking about the parameters and exclusions encoded into “ethical capitalism.” Her latest film Entretejido, weaves together the different sites and communities involved in this supply chain, bringing viewers into contact with the ways objects we wear are entangled in national racial politics and histories. She is working on an ethnography and film project on the color magenta exploring its material, cultural, racial, gendered, political and industrial life. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at Brandeis University and the co-director of the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival.

palvarez@brandeis.edu | http://www.patricia-alvarez.com