Fashioning The Modern Middle East

In the first book to address the critical role of the (un)dressed body in the formation of the modern Middle East, these essays unveil contemporary struggles over nation, gender, modernity and post-modernity. Contributions from leading interdisciplinary scholars, exploring gender representation, photography, dress and visual culture, recount the role of the visible elite body in campaigns for gender and social emancipation, dress histories concerning early nationalist women and men, and legal frameworks used by those who seek to control the movement of gendered bodies. The result is a rich picture of a historical period and cultural landscape which brings dress and visual culture back into historical narratives of the modern Middle East. Recognising multiple modernities, multiple imperialisms and diverse regional experiences of post-colonialism, Fashioning the Modern Middle East contains a range of theoretical frameworks invaluable to students of fashion studies, Middle Eastern studies, anthropology, photography and gender. Bringing forward new primary material and re-investigating extant sources from new perspectives, this is the essential introduction to the role of the dressed and undressed body in the formation of the modern Middle East.

In the first book to address the critical role of the (un)dressed body in the formation of the modern Middle East, these essays unveil contemporary struggles over nation, gender, modernity and post-modernity. Contributions from leading interdisciplinary scholars, exploring gender representation, photography, dress and visual culture, recount the role of the visible elite body in campaigns for gender and social emancipation, dress histories concerning early nationalist women and men, and legal frameworks used by those who seek to control the movement of gendered bodies. The result is a rich picture of a historical period and cultural landscape which brings dress and visual culture back into historical narratives of the modern Middle East. Recognising multiple modernities, multiple imperialisms and diverse regional experiences of post-colonialism, Fashioning the Modern Middle East contains a range of theoretical frameworks invaluable to students of fashion studies, Middle Eastern studies, anthropology, photography and gender. Bringing forward new primary material and re-investigating extant sources from new perspectives, this is the essential introduction to the role of the dressed and undressed body in the formation of the modern Middle East.

Crafts and Craftsmen of the Middle East presents research on craft workers within and outside the guild structure from the modern and contemporary Mediterranean world. From the late sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire to traditional style crafts in twentieth-century Turkey and Egypt, the book surveys a multitude of traditions. It begins in 1582 when Istanbul artisans paraded in front of Sultan Murad III; moves through to the eighteenth-century struggles between artisans and tax farmers in Tokat, the artisans of Cairo and the craftsmen of Adana; and into nineteenth-century accounts of Istanbul's women workers and Jewish butchers. This book is essential to all those interested in the history of the culture and society of the Islamic Mediterranean.

This richly illustrated volume is a historical and ethnographic study of one important aspect of Arab and Islamic material culture - clothing. While in part descriptive, its principal focus is on the evolution and transformations of modes of dress over the past 1400 years throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and for the Middle Ages, Islamic Spain. Arab clothing is treated as part of an Islamic vestimentary system and is discussed within the context of the social, religious, esthetic, and political trends of each age. In addition to the five historical chapters, three chapters are devoted to major themes of Arab costume history - the dress code for non-Muslims, the important socio-economic and political institution of luxury fabrics and garments of honor, and the most well-known and frequently misunderstood institution of veiling.

“A revelation. Reclaiming fashion from its European history.” – Shane White With a focus on sub-Saharan Africa, Fashioning the Afropolis provides a range of innovative perspectives on global fashion, design, dress, photography, and the body in some of the major cities, with a focus on Lagos, Johannesburg, Dakar, and Douala. It contributes to the ongoing debates around the globalization of fashion and fashion theory by exploring fashion as a genuine urban phenomenon on the continent and among its diasporas. To date, “fashion” and “city” have not been systematically related to each other in the African context and, for too long, a western-centric gaze has dominated scholarship, resulting in the perception of Africa as provincial and its visual arts and textile cultures as static and folkloristic. This perspective is all the more distorted, given Africa's rich sartorial past. With a huge number of tailors ready to adapt and renew clothing, reshaping garments into contemporary styles, and many cities in Africa becoming hot-spots for a steadily growing and well-connected scene of fashion designers in the past 20 years, the time is ripe for a reevaluation and reconsideration of the fashionscapes of Africa. Leading scholars offer an updated empirical and theoretical foundation on which to base new and exciting research on sub-Saharan fashion, challenging perceptions and offering new insights.

Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion is the first comparative study of this highly topical issue and brings together cutting-edge contributions from leading scholars.

Fashion in Altermodern China examines key features of women's fashion within the cultural and political context of contemporary China. While global brands and styles heavily influence Chinese consumer trends, the Chinese fashion 'system' is formed of its own internal logics and emergent trends, too. Adopting the theoretical term 'altermodern', Feng Jie encourages us to view China in terms of its rapid modernization which presents its own rhythms and meanings, and argues persuasively that Chinese fashion can't be wholly understood in terms of a Western discourse of modernity, postmodernity and the global. Expanding our understanding of the fashion 'system', Fashion in Altermodern China takes on board new trends in global trade, new technologies, and the hybridity of designs and consumption of fashion. Through critical readings of Barthes, on the 'neutral', and Jullien, on 'blandness', both directly influenced by Asian philosophies, the author offers a new perspective on Chinese fashion, arguing that, while global-local contexts lead to identifiably postmodern and hybrid aesthetics, for women in contemporary China the flux and mix of available fashions is experienced in a more open neutral manner than scholars have previously described. Crucially, then, rather than position trends in China only in terms of 'hybridity' (which betrays a Western bias and a binary logic of host-recipient), there are more fluid ways in which we need to understand how women engage in fashion in China today.

In the first comprehensive study of the interactions between fashion, performance and performativity, a group of international experts explore fashion as the ideal 'complex space' – or, in other words, the ideal space where performance and performativity come together, according to the works of seminal theorists Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Andrew Parker. Bringing together western and non-western, historical and contemporary case studies and theories, the book explores the magazines, photography, exhibitions, global colonial divides, digital media, and more, which have become key markers of the fashion industry as we know it today. Using existing literature as a springboard and incorporating perspectives from fashion studies, art history, media studies and gender studies, as well as from artists and practitioners, Fashion, Performance, and Performativity is an innovative and essential work for students, scholars and practitioners across multiple disciplines.