Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion (Becoming Modern/Reading Dress)

Grounded in the ubiquitous, ever-changing matter of fashion, Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion places women at the heart of modern culture. Rich and cohesive, this collection demonstrates how fashion shaped and emerged from diverse cultures of femininity and modernity. By recovering fashion as a dynamic and far-reaching force in culture and politics, the volume examines the nuanced and conflicted terrain of femininity from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Revealing the inextricability of fashion from modern life, the volume argues for placing gender, everyday life, and materiality at the forefront of our accounts of modernity. This transatlantic and truly interdisciplinary collection, with an afterword by distinguished literary scholar Rita Felski, is also notable for its mix of established and emerging scholars. The contributors address diverse aspects of women's engagement with fashion in modernity, through such topics as Sapphic architecture, tea gowns, secondhand clothing, transnational identity, the coquette, nursing uniforms, and Harlem Renaissance photographs. Cultures of Femininity in Modern Fashion traces a unique and often surprising history of modernity and its entwinement with the gendered phenomenon of fashion. Introduction : Cultures Of Femininity In Modern Fashion / Ilya Parkins And Elizabeth M. Sheehan -- Part I. Fashion And Relationships Among Modern Women -- Ch. 1. Fashioning Sapphic Architecture : Eileen Gray And Radclyffe Hall / Jasmine Rault -- Ch. 2. A Domesticated Exoticism : Fashioning Gender In Nineteenth-century British Tea Gowns / Kimberly Wahl -- Ch. 3. Smart Clothes At Low Prices : Alliances And Negotiations In The British Interwar Secondhand Clothing Trade / Celia Marshik -- Part Ii. Fashion And Cultural Anxiety -- Ch. 4. Fear Of Fashion ; Or, How The Coquetter Got Her Bad Name / Ellen Bayuk Rosenman -- Ch. 5. The Discerning Eye : Viewing The Mid-victorian Modern Woman / Kara Tennant -- Ch. 6. Housewife Or Harlot : Art, Fashion, And Morality In The Paris Salon Of 1868 / Justine De Young -- Part Iii. Fashion And The Materiality Of Gender -- Ch. 7. Their Uniforms All Esthetic And Antiseptic : Fashioning Modern Nursing Identity, 1870-1900 / Christina Bates -- Ch. 8. The Face Of Fashion : Race And Fantasy In James Vanderzee’s Photography And Jessie Fauset’s Fiction / Elizabeth M. Sheehan -- Ch. 9. More Than A Garment : Edna Ferber And The Fashioning Of Transnational Identity / Lori Harrison-kahan. Ilya Parkins And Elizabeth M. Sheehan, Editors. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. An Interdisciplinary Collection Illuminating How Fashion Shaped Concepts And Practices Of Femininity And Modernity