We are soliciting academic papers for an anthology on feminism and
fashion. Fashion is a powerful way we express our politics,
personalities, and preferences for whom and how we love. Yet fashion
can also repress freedom and sexual expression. Fashion encourages
profound creativity, rebellion, and defiant self-definition while
simultaneously controlling and disciplining the body. Fashion signals
resistance to sexual morés and it can also promote a problematic
consumer culture. Fashion creates collective identity, but also
constrains individual voice. In other words, fashion contains the
paradoxical potential for pleasure and subjugation, expression and
conformity.
This book explores the productive tensions generated by fashion and
style. We are interested in essays that take up fashion, style, and
gender with special attention to race, class, sexuality, age, and
ethnicity. This collection blends theory and pop culture analysis in
exciting ways, focusing on contemporary trends and controversies.
Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
Theories of agency, style, and the presentation of self
Performing identity: race, class, gender and sexuality through style
Consumerist pleasure and anxiety
Fashion production in the context of global capital and trade
Bois, grrls, trannies and styles of queerness
Hardcore, metro, punk, khakis: constructing masculinities through
fashion
Body art and ethnic appropriations
Debates in plastic surgery and re-fashioning the body
Class identity and decorating domestic space
Feminist fashion: debates over style and politics
The ethics of green production and marketing
Everyday pornography and fashion fetish
Virtual style and online identities
Material culture and craft in a postmodern world
Slumming and radical chic: tensions of authenticity and irony
Vintage and thrift fashion: nostalgia and class signifiers
DIY Style: fashion off the corporate grid
Deadline for abstracts is August 15, 2008.
Format for abstracts: Word document, double-spaced, between 300 and
500 words. Include contact information and short bio.
Send abstracts, bios and questions to: FashionBook1@yahoo.com
Shira Tarrant
Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies Department
California State University, Long Beach
and
Marjorie Jolles
Assistant Professor, Women’s & Gender Studies Program
Roosevelt University