Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress

Everywhere in the world there is a close connection between the clothes we wear and our political expression. To date, few scholars have explored what clothing means in 20th-century Africa and the diaspora. In Fashioning Africa, an international group of anthropologists, historians, and art historians bring rich and diverse perspectives to this fascinating topic. From clothing as an expression of freedom in early colonial Zanzibar to Somali women's headcovering in inner-city Minneapolis, these essays explore the power of dress in African and pan-African settings. Nationalist and diasporic identities, as well as their histories and politics, are examined at the level of what is put on the body every day. Readers interested in fashion history, material and expressive cultures, understandings of nation-state styles, and expressions of a distinctive African modernity will be engaged by this interdisciplinary and broadly appealing volume.

Contributors are Heather Marie Akou, Jean Allman, A. Boatema Boateng, Judith Byfield, Laura Fair, Karen Tranberg Hansen, Margaret Jean Hay, Andrew M. Ivaska, Phyllis M. Martin, Marissa Moorman, Elisha P. Renne, and Victoria L. Rovine.

Author: Jean Allman
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 09/09/2004
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.16w x 0.66d
ISBN: 9780253216892

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2005 pg. 1647

About the Author

Jean Allman is Professor of African History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is co-editor (with Susan Geiger and Nakanyike Musisi) of Women in African Colonial Histories (IUP, 2002).