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Slaves to Fashion : Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity by Monica L. Miller (2009, Trade Paperback)
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherDuke University Press
ISBN-100822346036
ISBN-139780822346036
eBay Product ID (ePID)73208048
Product Key Features
Number of Pages277 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication NameSlaves to Fashion : Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity
SubjectTheater / History & Criticism, Fashion & Accessories, Lgbt Studies / Gay Studies, Fashion & Style, Ethnic Studies / African American Studies
Publication Year2009
TypeTextbook
Subject AreaDesign, Performing Arts, Social Science, Self-Help
AuthorMonica L. Miller
FormatTrade Paperback
Dimensions
Item Height1.3 in
Item Weight19.9 Oz
Item Length9.4 in
Item Width6.5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional
LCCN2009-013116
Dewey Edition22
Reviews"Clothes make the man and other intergendered subjectivities in this stimulating study of the social meaning of fashion in the black community. Barnard English professor Miller surveys the history of sartorial style and flamboyance among black dandies and the cultural responses, both fascinated and alarmed, they have provoked. She paints a broad and teeming panorama...she offers an incisive, nuanced analysis of a rich vein of cultural history." Publisher's Weekly 3rd Aug 2009"Monica L. Miller's close readings dazzle, and her historical reach--confident and unforced--is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good."--Maurice O. Wallace, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995"Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning."--E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, "Monica L. Miller's close readings dazzle, and her historical reach--confident and unforced--is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good."-- Maurice O. Wallace , author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995, "Clothes make the man and other intergendered subjectivities in this stimulating study of the social meaning of fashion in the black community. Barnard English professor Miller surveys the history of sartorial style and flamboyance among black dandies and the cultural responses, both fascinated and alarmed, they have provoked. She paints a broad and teeming panorama...she offers an incisive, nuanced analysis of a rich vein of cultural history."Publisher's Weekly3rd Aug 2009 "Monica L. Miller's close readings dazzle, and her historical reach-confident and unforced-is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good."-Maurice O. Wallace, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 17751995 "Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning."-E. Patrick Johnson, author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, "Monica L. Miller's book is the first of its kind: a lengthy written study of the history of black dandyism and the role that style has played in the politics and aesthetics of African and African American identity. She draws from literature, film, photography, print ads, and music to reveal the black dandy's underground cultural history and generate possibilities for the future. . . . [U]ncanny feats of scholarship that illustrate ways in which the figure of the black dandy has been an elephant-in-the-room - albeit a particularly well-dressed one." - D. Scot Miller, San Francisco Bay Guardian, "Monica L. Miller's close readings dazzle, and her historical reach-confident and unforced-is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good."- Maurice O. Wallace , author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 17751995, "Miller's study incites a much-needed dialogue between existing scholarship on the figure of the dandy-particularly its performative queering of modern narratives of masculinity and nationhood-and the legacies of imperialism and slavery that attest to the constant, if silent, presence of race and racializing discourse in those same narratives. . . . [A]n absorbing and timely study of the black dandy." - Jaime Hanneken, Comparative Literature, "Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning."- E. Patrick Johnson , author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, “Monica L. Miller’s close readings dazzle, and her historical reach-confident and unforced-is as long as the transnational arc of black dandyism here is wide. Arresting, discerning, responsible, and urgent, Slaves to Fashion is path-breaking. Literary criticism, visual history, and black Atlantic studies never looked so good.�- Maurice O. Wallace , author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775–1995, "Miller has performed a cultural excavation, sifting through fragments of visual and literary culture to trace a history of black style and assemble the first history of black dandyism. Her work deserves a place among the finer recent contributions to black performance studies. . . ." - Kristin Moriah, Callaloo, "Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning."-- E. Patrick Johnson , author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, “Revising and augmenting scholarship on minstrelsy, literary representations of blackness, and black sartorial aesthetics and visual culture, Slaves to Fashion is an impressive and meticulously researched treatise on the history of the black dandy. It fills a gap in the scholarship on the cultural politics of black self-fashioning.�- E. Patrick Johnson , author of Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity, "Encompassing the genres of drama, fiction, photography, film, and sculpture, Miller's study highlights the ways in which diaspora can be located in the image and the imagination of the body and its garments. . . . The value of Miller's text is in its historical range." - Alisa K. Braithwaite, Modern Fiction Studies, "A model for cultural studies, Slaves to Fashion brings the rich,interdisciplinary scholarship of the black dandy into the twenty-first century, serving the fields of both black and American studies." - Pamela J. Rader, MELUS, "Monica L. Miller's book is the first of its kind: a lengthy written study of the history of black dandyism and the role that style has played in the politics and aesthetics of African and African American identity. She draws from literature, film, photography, print ads, and music to reveal the black dandy's underground cultural history and generate possibilities for the future. . . . [U]ncanny feats of scholarship that illustrate ways in which the figure of the black dandy has been an elephant-in-the-room -- albeit a particularly well-dressed one." - D. Scot Miller, San Francisco Bay Guardian, "Miller's study incites a much-needed dialogue between existing scholarship on the figure of the dandy--particularly its performative queering of modern narratives of masculinity and nationhood--and the legacies of imperialism and slavery that attest to the constant, if silent, presence of race and racializing discourse in those same narratives. . . . [A]n absorbing and timely study of the black dandy." - Jaime Hanneken, Comparative Literature
IllustratedYes
Dewey Decimal305.38/896073
Table Of ContentAcknowledgments ix Introduction. Stylin' Out 1 1. Mungo Macaroni: The Slavish Swell 27 2. Crimes of Fashion: Dressing the Part from Slavery to Freedom 77 3. W. E. B. Du Bois's "Different Diasporic Race Man 137 4. "Passing Fancies": Dandyism, Harlem Modernism, and the Politics of Visuality 176 5. "You Look Beautiful Like That": Black Dandyism and the Histories of Black Cosmopolitanism 219 Notes 291 Bibliography 347 Index 371
SynopsisSlaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora. Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. "Luxury slaves" tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy's signature tools-clothing, gesture, and wit-to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois's reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art., Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora. Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. "Luxury slaves" tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy's signature tools--clothing, gesture, and wit--to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois's reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art., Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as Julius Soubise, a freed slave who sometimes wore diamond-buckled, red-heeled shoes as he circulated through the social scene of eighteenth-century London, and Yinka Shonibare, a prominent Afro-British artist who not only styles himself as a fop but also creates ironic commentaries on black dandyism in his work. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora. Dandyism was initially imposed on black men in eighteenth-century England, as the Atlantic slave trade and an emerging culture of conspicuous consumption generated a vogue in dandified black servants. "Luxury slaves" tweaked and reworked their uniforms, and were soon known for their sartorial novelty and sometimes flamboyant personalities. Tracing the history of the black dandy forward to contemporary celebrity incarnations such as Andre 3000 and Sean Combs, Miller explains how black people became arbiters of style and how they have historically used the dandy's signature tools--clothing, gesture, and wit--to break down limiting identity markers and propose new ways of fashioning political and social possibility in the black Atlantic world. With an aplomb worthy of her iconographic subject, she considers the black dandy in relation to nineteenth-century American literature and drama, W. E. B. Du Bois's reflections on black masculinity and cultural nationalism, the modernist aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, and representations of black cosmopolitanism in contemporary visual art.
LC Classification NumberE185
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