This proposed panel examines the political life of women’s headwear as a form of activism. The session will feature research-based presentations responding to the theme Hats of the Resistance. It explores how headdresses have functioned as visible, wearable tools through which women have expressed dissent, identity, and political presence across cultures and historical moments.

The panel was initially inspired by accounts of fashion resistance in Nazi-occupied France, where Parisian women transformed hats into sites of subtle dissent. These gestures resonate with other instances in which women have mobilized craft and dress into embodied resistance. Contemporary examples in the US include the knitted “pussy hats” of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington and the 2026 “Melt the ICE” hats in Minneapolis, inspired by the Norwegian cap historically worn in protest of Nazi occupation.

Yet the history of resisting hats within women’s sartorial culture is broader. In eighteenth-century New Orleans, Creole women transformed the restrictive “tignon law” into aesthetic defiance through elaborate headwraps. African American church hats have long signified dignity and resilience within Black women’s traditions. In North Africa and the Middle East, the tarboosh occupied a liminal space between Orientalist representation and anti-colonial activism, later echoed by the political symbolism of the kiffiyeh. During the French Revolution, the Phrygian cap emerged as an enduring symbol of liberation.

Papers engaging with the historical, political, cultural, or artistic dimensions of women’s headdress as a site of resistance are welcome and will be considered for inclusion in the panel.