History Happy Hour: Tiki Thursday

Thursday, May 20, 2021

5:00 PM-6:00 PM

Monica Stevens Smyth, Collections Manager of Drexel’s Fox Historic Costume Collection, will host Anya Kurennaya, scholar and doctoral candidate in Drexel University’s Media, Culture and Communication PhD program, for a History Happy Hour on Thursday, May 20th, at 5 pm.

Join Anya and Monica as they discuss the history of the American "tiki bar" and the 20th-century trend of tropical-inspired fashion and design. Anya will discuss the historical and cultural context of the bar and its fashions, and Monica will share pieces from the collection that reflect the era's cultural embrace of tropical aesthetics and cocktail culture. And of course, no History Happy Hour would be complete without a #TikiThursday Mai Tai tutorial!

Register to attend!

About Anya Kurennaya:
Anya Kurennaya is a doctoral student in Drexel University’s Media, Culture and Communication PhD program. She holds an MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design, The New School. She has published and presented on the relationships between fashion, music, and youth culture, as well as design pedagogy and language learner support. Her doctoral dissertation, "Authenticity, Exoticism, and Revival: Contemporary Tiki Bars and their 20th Century Predecessors," looks at the contemporary "tiki" scene and considers how enthusiasts in the scene construct notions of authenticity and how they negotiate tensions about the cultural symbolism of objects within the space, which both reference history and also re-imagine and re-invent it.