NeMLA (April 2018) Creating a Space for Critical Fashion and Critical Luxury Studies

Nigel Lezama (he/him) Announcement
Location
Canada
Subject Fields
Cultural History / Studies, Film and Film History, Fine Arts, Humanities, Modern European History / Studies

From Barthes’ Le Système de la mode (1967) and Hollander’s Seeing Through Clothes (1978) to Bourdieu’s La Distinction (1978), Steele’s Paris Fashion (1998), and John Armitage and Joanne Roberts Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media (2016), both Critical Fashion and Critical Luxury Studies have become broad, interdisciplinary fields, expanding outside of the space of fashion schools to engage with artistic and literary studies, business, history, museum studies, philosophy and sociology, to name just a few. Originally, Fashion Studies focused either on material diachronic or synchronic moments of cultural production. Currently, the field has opened up to question the role of authenticity, ethics, identity, and sustainability in the practice of making, marketing, and consuming.

The fields of fashion and luxury are also currently in flux. Consumers have begun to understand and act on the value of their purchasing power to direct change for fast-fashion giants. Reduced profits for big luxury conglomerates have changed the creative processes that determine product creation. Companies are redefining high-end brands to appeal to a younger, more “adulescent” market composed of customers no longer consuming within the confines of a habitus, but wishing to play with identity, assert a personal “right” or live a unique experience. Together, producers, purveyors, and consumers are building a new meaningful space for fashion and luxury objects to express social and personal meaning and create value beyond the pecuniary.

This panel is an opportunity for emerging and established scholars working with fashion or luxury objects or their representations to share research in development. All topics related to fashion and luxury are welcome; however, special consideration will be given to abstracts that focus on luxury and fashion spaces.

To submit a 250-300 word abstract with title (limit 100 characters), click on the NeMLA URL. Please paste your text into the boxes. You cannot upload documents to the site. Deadline September 30, 2017. NeMLA will take place from April 12 to 15, 2018, in Pittsburgh, PA.

Contact Information
nigel lezama | assistant professor | 19th-century french literature & culture brock university | modern languages, literatures & cultures | 1812 sir isaac brock way  | mc a 232 | st. catharines, on l2s 3a1 | nlezama@brocku.ca | 905 688 5550 x5688
Contact Email
nlezama@brocku.ca