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:
   -

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

      Chapter title
      -

      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 (
   [log in to unmask]) and Suzanne Scott ([log in to unmask])



-- 
Elizabeth Affuso
[log in to unmask]

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