[Commlist] Call for Papers: ‘Beau Brummell and New Masculinities’

CALL FOR PAPERS


Spring International Conference


The Association of Dress Historians in conjunction with University of 
the Arts London Central Saint Martins


4 & 5 April 2024


‘Beau Brummell and New Masculinities’


View the full call here>>

https://dresshistorians.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CFP-Beau-Brummell-New-Masculinities.docx.pdf 
<https://dresshistorians.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CFP-Beau-Brummell-New-Masculinities.docx.pdf>


George Bryan “Beau” Brummell (1778 - 1840) was a famous figure in his 
day, for his beauty and for his influential relationship with British 
nobility. Brummell was discussed, sought-after and critiqued by the most 
significant writers, politicians, and socialites of his time. He has 
been the subject of many semi-biographical and fictional retellings of 
his life. He was both embraced and rejected by his socio-political world.


Obsessively meticulous in his dress, Brummell is widely regarded as the 
first dandy and was more than just a significant fashion influencer. His 
ethos is still apparent in tailoring and contemporary menswear over 180 
years after his death. It can also be traced in the work of writers as 
diverse as Barbey d’Aurevilly, Benjamin Disraeli, Alexander Pushkin and 
W. E. B. Du Bois.


Brummell took the ideals that emerged from La Directoire and British 
Regency eras and honed them to create a look and a persona that was bold 
and whose appeal transcended social class, gender and political 
boundaries. In an age that saw increased consumption of the new 
commodities produced by enslaved labour and acquired through aggressive 
colonial expansion, Brummell renounced conspicuous consumption in 
preference for restraint and understatement. It was a look that 
influenced the emerging Savile Row tailors who fashioned some of the 
emblematic commodities of this new consumer culture.


Brummell’s fashioned identity remains mythologised and, since its 
inception, the new masculinity of the ‘dandy’ has been utilized in the 
formation of gendered and raced identities that resist established 
behaviour, looks, influences and ethics. This two-day interdisciplinary 
conference poses Beau Brummell as a point of discursive departure in 
considering how contemporary and historic masculinities have been 
conceptualised and reworked. It invites papers that explore the wider 
implications of these reworkings, as well as the interactions between 
sartorial expression and both resistant and hegemonic masculinities.


Papers are invited, but not limited to:

  *

    Beau Brummel and his textual legacies

  *

    Black dandies

  *

    Contemporary men’s fashion and the legacy of dandyism

  *

    Dandyism in the age of revolution

  *

    Dress and celebrity

  *

    Fashion and sartorial expression as cultural, social and/or
    political resistance

  *

    Female dandies

  *

    Queer, fluid and trans masculinities

  *

    Masculinities, fame and heroism

  *

    Masculinities, hegemony and modernity

  *

    Saville Row tailoring


There will be an opportunity for papers to be published in a special 
issue of the Association of Dress Historians' journal and in an edited 
book volume.


To submit a proposal, please send: a 200-word abstract, a 100-word 
biography and an image that can be published in the programme to Melanie 
Davies:

(m.g.davies /at/ csm.arts.ac.uk) <mailto:(m.g.davies /at/ csm.arts.ac.uk)>


Deadline: 00:00 GMT Thursday 30 November 2023


Convened by Melanie Davies (Central Saint Martins) and Emily Taylor (ADH)


Conference committee including Lorraine Henry-King, Jay McCauley 
Bowstead and Michael McMillan

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