ABOUT US

THREADBARED is an evolving collaboration between two clotheshorse academics to discuss the politics, aesthetics, histories, theories, cultures and subcultures that go by the names “fashion” and “beauty.” With commentary on how clothes matter, as well as book and exhibit reviews and interviews with scholars and artists, THREADBARED considers the critical importance of taking clothes –and the bodies that design, manufacture, disseminate, and wear them– seriously as an entry point into dialogue about the world around us.

We welcome queries relating to public comments, invited talks, commissioned essays, and books, films, and videos for review on THREADBARED! Check out our press, and book us for your event.

Please email us at threadbared dot matters at gmail dot com. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Mimi Thi Nguyen is an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her first book, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, focuses on the promise of “giving” freedom concurrent and contingent on waging war and its afterlife. (Duke University Press, Fall 2012). With her second project on the obligations of beauty, she continues to pursue her scholarship through the frame of transnational feminist cultural studies, and in particular as an untangling of the liberal way of war that pledges “aid,” freedom, movement, and other social goods. She is co-editor with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu of Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America (Duke University Press, 2007), and co-editor with Fiona I.B. Ngo and Mariam Lam of a special issue of positions: east asia cultures critique on Southeast Asian diasporas (2012). A former zinester, Punk Planet columnist, and Maximumrocknroll shitworker, she is widely published on punk and queer subcultures and also blogs at Thread & Circuits, where you can find all her old columns and some zine writings archived. For more about Nguyen, see here.

Minh-Ha T. Pham is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Media Studies Program at Pratt Institute. Before coming to Pratt, she was an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies and Asian American Studies at Cornell University. Her first book, Asians Who Wear Clothes on the Internet: Race, Gender, and the Work of Personal Style Blogging, is forthcoming from Duke University Press in Fall/Winter 2015. Her writings on the politics of fashion, fashion technology, and consumption have been published in a wide range of academic journals and popular magazines. She also blogs at the Huffington Post and Of Another Fashion. And now, you can follow her on Twitter (@minh81)! For more information, click here.

Here is a rundown of our favorite posts thus far:

+ PICTURING POLITICS: On “Pride In His Work”
+ Blackface, and the Violence of Revulsion
+ ART: Sneakers and Borders
+ TEACHING: Brief Notes on the Unreliable Stories Clothes Tell
+ Tramp Chic and the Photograph
+ My Madras Brings All the Boys to the Yard
+ Bloggers and the Politics of “Free” Labor
+ STYLE ICON: Billie Jean (From the Archives)
+ You Say You Want a Revolution (In a Loose Headscarf)
+ History and the Harem Pant
+ Background Color
+ Black is the New Black
+ More Native Appropriations, Heritage Capitalism, and Fashion on Antiques Road Show
+ Shopping with Threadbared: A Conversation
+ Why I feel guilty when I don’t blog
+ Boutiques.com: The Scientization of Style and the Promise of Happiness
+ The Digital Decade in Fashion (and then some)

THREADBARED welcomes readers to comment on our content and engage in substantive, mutually respectful exchanges over featured topics. Reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of its editors. We reserve the right to review, moderate, or otherwise screen comments. Nonconstructive, offensive or disrespectful comments will be deleted. We view any form of trollery as beyond tedious and will ban such users immediately.

By submitting a reader comment, the reader agrees to be bound by, and accepts the terms of THREADBARED.

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