[Commlist] CFP: Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty Culture, and Identity

Call for Chapter Proposals for Anthology

Title: Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty Culture, and Identity

Editors: Elizabeth Affuso (Pitzer College) and Suzanne Scott (University 
of Texas at Austin)


In recent years, geeks have become chic and the fashion and beauty 
industries have responded to this trend with a plethora of 
fashion-forward merchandise aimed at this audience.  This cultural 
ascendence can be seen in the glut of pop culture t-shirts lining the 
aisles of big box retailers as well as the proliferation of geek culture 
lifestyle brands and digital retailers over the past decade. While 
fashion and beauty have long been integrated into the media industry 
with tie-in lines, franchise products, and other forms of merchandise, 
there has been limited study of fans’ relationship to these industries.  
Fashion and beauty cultures are significant areas for study due to their 
role as markers of identity and position as industries that prop up 
forms of hegemony along the lines of race, gender, age, ability, size, 
and so on. We are particularly interested in how fan fashion and beauty 
cultures reflect larger socio-cultural trends related to normative 
values, consumer culture, capitalism, and identity performance.


This collection seeks to think about fashion and beauty as related to 
fandom across a range of modes of practice including retailers, branded 
products, fan-made objects, and fandom of these. Fan fashion and 
fan-oriented beauty products also offer a space to productively expand 
what we consider to be a “fan object,” as media texts, musicians, sports 
teams, celebrities, and retail lines all involve distinct forms of 
sartorial fan expression. These forms of expression range from 
purchasing and collecting to wearing and sharing (often via social 
media) and frequently convey messages about imagined or desirable fan 
identities, bodies, and demographics. This collection pointedly uses the 
word “fashion,” rather than the more general designation of “fan 
merchandise,” to acknowledge both the industrial specificities of the 
fashion and beauty industries, as well as the cultural significance of 
style. Just as Dick Hebdige and others have engaged subcultural style as 
a politically charged space, this collection aims to address both the 
affective and performative dimensions of fan fashion, as well as the 
identity politics that inform sartorial expressions of fan identity.


Our goal is to explore how fan fashion has evolved over time, and how it 
is performed in a wide array of fan communities and cultures, from early 
fan magazines to sports arenas to comic book conventions to theme parks 
to music venues. We also welcome considerations of digital incarnations 
of fan fashion, from hair/make-up tutorial videos on YouTube to analyses 
of specific social media accounts (e.g. Instagram, Tumblr) of fan 
fashion influencers, brands, or subcultures. Centrally, essays in this 
collection will explore how identity (broadly defined) intersects with 
fan fashion and beauty culture as a consumer lifestyle brand.


Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  *

    Historical approaches to fan fashion (or histories of fan-oriented
    fashion and beauty products)

  *

    Fan cultures surrounding celebrity fashion and beauty lines  (e.g.
    Fenty, Yeezy, Ivy Park, Goop, etc.)

  *

    Fantrepreneurialism and fashion

  *

    Fashion and/as performance of fan identity (gender, class, age,
    sexuality, and so on)

  *

    The legalities of fan fashion (licensing, copyright, trademark, etc.)

  *

    Fan culture retailers and lifestyle brands (Thinkgeek, Her Universe,
    Jordandene, Espionage Cosmetics, etc.)

  *

    Fan fashion and merchandise subscription services (and unboxing or
    “haul” videos)

  *

    Cosplay (or Everyday Cosplay, Disneybounding, etc.)

  *

    Auctions and fashion and/as memorabilia

  *

    Fan-centric Jewelry and Accessories (purses, hairbows, etc.)

  *

    Couture fan fashion and class

  *

    Identity and model selection for fan fashion lines

  *

    Fan lingerie and intimates

  *

    Fan-produced fashion (Etsy, crafting cultures, etc.)

  *

    Fan-oriented make-up and hair tutorials

  *

    Fan fashion shows

  *

    Fandom or geek culture as fashion “trend”

  *

    Fandoms around specific products or brands (sneakerheads,
    hypebeasts, etc.)



Proposal guidelines:

  *

    Seeking essays of 5000-6000 words, inclusive of references

  *

    Proposals should contain the following:

      o

        Contributors’ contact information (name, title, affiliation,
        email, highest degree obtained)

      o

        Chapter title

      o

        Chapter abstract of 250-500 words that illustrate the chapter’s

          +

            a) topic/subject matter

          +

            b) methodological approach

          +

            c) conclusions/argument

  *

    Proposals are due *March 1, 2019*.

  *

    Proposals or questions should be emailed to Elizabeth Affuso
    ((Elizabeth_Affuso /at/ pitzer.edu) <mailto:(Elizabeth_Affuso /at/ pitzer.edu)>)
    and Suzanne Scott ((suzanne.scott /at/ utexas.edu)
    <mailto:(suzanne.scott /at/ utexas.edu)>)

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