Theorizing LGBTQIA+ Style, Fashion, and Dress | Conversations on Dress | Costume Society of America

The LGBTQIA+ community historically and today has engaged with unique styles and fashions drawing upon multiple and mixed aesthetics. These styles and visual signifiers change and shift in different contexts, interactions, and embodied practices. Our panel unpacks ambivalence and ambiguity in style, fashion, and dress in relation to the LGBTQIA+ community. They discuss their highly critical and thought-provoking scholarship centering on the LGBTQIA+ community in addition to how their work intersects with disabilities, Black feminist thought, BDSM, fat bodies, feminist queer crip, and other critical ideologies. Did you enjoy this video? Please consider supporting our mission and our free webinar series by clicking here to make a contribution: https://csoa.memberclicks.net/contributions#/. Dr. Ben Barry is Chair in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University, and in July will join Parsons School of Design as the Dean of Fashion and Associate Professor of Equity and Inclusion. His research examines the relationships between gender and fashion, focusing on the everyday and the entanglements of gender with queer, fat and disabled embodiments. Dr. Donnesha Blake holds degrees in Women’s Studies and Communication, earning her PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park. She currently serves as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Alma College. Her research brings together Black feminist thought, fashion studies, digital humanities, and performance studies. Professo