Description:
Goth Culture explores Goths' expressive practices of dress, fashion, style and the body, in relation to issues of identity and representation.
The book shares vivid accounts of the author's experiences exploring gender and sexuality and doing fieldwork in the Gothic subculture. Through the voices of Goths from the UK, US and Germany, it draws the reader into the gender-bending and heavily gendered world of Goth. It reassesses the significance of the dress of both male and female Goths, examining these striking and often highly creative subcultural fashion displays. Using a wide range of methods and sources, from ethnography to critical examination of music, literature, social theory and different types of popular media, Goth Culture offers an original and accessible analysis of the fashion, media and counterculture of the Gothic world.Brief description: Joanne B. Eicher was Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. Joanne was Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia of Dress and Fashion (Bloomsbury and OUP); Series Editor, Dress, Body, Culture (Bloomsbury) and Dress and Fashion Research (Bloomsbury); Editor, Global Trade and Cultural Authentication: The Kalabari of the Niger Delta; and Co-Author, The Visible Self (Fairchild); Dress and Gender (Berg); Dress and Ethnicity (Berg); Beads and Beadmakers (Berg); Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride (National Geographic); and a wide variety of published articles in professional journals and chapters in books.
Review Quotes:
"The book is strikingly illustrated with black-and-white photographs and is highly readable: Brill has elicited some fascinating material from her interviewees, and her analysis is perceptive and witty. It should provide thought-provoking reading, not only for subcultural scholars, but also for those within the scene itself." --THE
"A riveting account of gender and sexual politics in the Goth scene which challenges prevailing assumptions from within and outside the subculture." --Paul Hodkinson, University of Surrey "The focus and accessibility of Brill's text, supported with literature, compelling quotes, photographs, and in-depth descriptions of nightclub scenes, make it a particularly strong course text." --R. C. Raby, CHOICE Magazine