Description
Book SynopsisA work on the history of black dandyism. It examines the pivotal role that style has played in the politics and aesthetics of African diasporic identity formation.
Trade Review“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“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“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“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
“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“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“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 *
“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 *
“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 *
“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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
