Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines cosplay from a set of groundbreaking disciplinary approaches, highlighting the latest and emerging discourses around this popular cultural practice.
Planet Cosplay is authored by widely published scholars in this field, examining the central aspects of cosplay ranging from sources and sites to performance and play, from sex and gender to production and consumption. Topics discussed include the rise of cosplay as a cultural phenomenon and its role in personal, cultural and global identities.
Planet Cosplay provides a unique, multifaceted examination of the practice from theoretical bases including popular cultural studies, performance studies, gender studies and transmedia studies. As the title suggests, the book’s purview is global, encompassing some of the main centres of cosplay throughout the United States, Asia, Europe and Australasia. Each of the chapters offers not only a set of entry points into its subject matter, but also a narrative of the development of cosplay and scholarly approaches to it.
Trade Review'While the academic study of cosplay has blossomed in the last decade, this book is the first scholarly monograph on the subject. [...] Planet Cosplay: Costume Play, Identity and Global Fandom is an excellent monograph. Its use of several different approaches to understand cosplay makes it a fine resource for the study of this intriguing practice.'
-- Arienne McCracken, Fashion, Style and Popular Culture
'An effective primer for anyone looking to better understand the topic. [...] Where the book is particularly effective is in providing broader histories and working definitions for an under-researched area. While many accounts of cosplay begin with Takahashi’s 1983 article, the first part of Planet Cosplay charts how costuming as characters from popular culture dates back over a hundred years. [...] This rounded approach enables the authors to position this under-analysed fan practice as an important site of cultural exchange, fluid identity and communal participation. Collectively, these perspectives make a persuasive argument that cosplay is worthy of sustained scholarly interest and that Planet Cosplay should provide a useful entry point for those hoping to take up that research.'
-- Liam Burke, Journal of European Popular Culture
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Critical Practice
Chapter 1: Cosplay as Citation
Chapter 2: Cosphotography and Fan Capital
Chapter 3: Cosplay at Armageddon
Part II: Ethnographies
Chapter 4: Cos/play
Chapter 5: Cosplay Sites
Chapter 6: Cos/creation
Part III: Provocations
Chapter 7: Proto-Cosplay
Chapter 8: Cosgender/Cosqueer
Chapter 9: Cosporn
Conclusion: Cosplay Futures
Index
