Fabulous Femininities: Extravagant Costume and Transformative Thresholds

Start date: 1 September 2020
End date: 31 August 2023
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council
Primary investigator: Dr Jacki Willson
Co-investigators: Professor Alice O'Grady, Dr Elspeth Mitchell
External co-investigators: Claire Nally (Northumbria University)

Value

£503,381

Description

Fabulous Femininities will seek to understand the way that resistant feminine identities are performed by burlesque club-goers via specific DIY approaches to costume. The immersive and ethnographic study will focus on a range of club events and participants (performers, club-goers, costumers etc) in order to document, understand and theorize the transformative threshold between the everyday self and the extravagant spectacle. The project will explore transformative elements of costume in order to understand the way costume performs, imagines and politicizes alternative forms of 'femininity'.