This fall, we welcome our newest Area Chairs in our “Area Chair Spotlight” series!
Meet Emily, a lecturer in the College of Information Science at the University of Arizona, who joins us as Area Chair for Fashion, Style, Appearance, and Identity.
📍 How did you first become involved with SWPACA, and what drew you to take on a leadership role as an Area Chair?
I first became involved with SWPACA in 2013, when I presented at my first SWPACA conference on the John Huston film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Night of the Iguana. I had a blast at this first conference, and I’ve been going almost every year since 2013. I decided to take on the role as Area Chair because I love this conference, I love pop culture, and, in more recent years, my research and teaching interests have often intersected with my love of fashion.
📍 What excites you most about Fashion, Style, Appearance, and Identity and its place within the broader field of popular/American culture studies right now? How does your own research or teaching intersect with the themes of your area?
Beyond being an educator, I also have a vintage clothing business for which I source all the clothes at my local thrift stores, and I’ve been consuming and studying sustainable fashion content on social media for years. I also wrote about fashion in my dissertation, which explored the relationship between the works of Tennessee Williams and D. H. Lawrence. I was particularly interested in how these two men wrote their female characters and explored feminine identity in ways that transcended misogynistic stereotypes about the feminine experience, and analyzing fashion naturally became a part of the process. I also teach in the College of Information Science at the University of Arizona, where my courses focus on the history, ethics, cultural implications, and evolution of the media/technology. Many of my students are also interested in fashion, as they often desire to work in social media and influencer marketing after college–many of them even double major in eSociety and Consumer Sciences. Thus, fashion plays a big part in my teaching, my research, and my other, non-academic pursuits. At the current moment, fashion, style, appearance, and identity are integral to popular/American culture studies, as the rise of TikTok and short form content are flooding our digital spaces with all forms of fashion content (and sometimes, unfortunately, dangerous propaganda like the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad–of course, there’s also the Gap ad that surpassed the AE ad’s virality and spread a much more inclusive message). To boot, TikTok’s rapid cycling trends are changing the fashion landscape as well as our relationship to fashion in complicated ways. Now more than ever it is important for us to think critically about the ways in which fashion, style, appearance, and identity intersect, especially in relation to cultural production.
📍 What are your goals or hopes for your Area?
I’ve given papers for the past two years in this area, and I had a fantastic experience both times. The papers were diverse, the scholarship was exciting, and the conversations that took place during the Q&A were invigorating. As the new Area Chair, I hope to continue in Lauren’s footsteps and foster a warm, inclusive environment in which we can have complex conversations about how fashion shapes pop culture and the worlds we find ourselves navigating every day.
📍 If you could organize a dream SWPACA panel, what would the topic be?
I’ve honestly always wanted to see a panel or entire area that focuses on the television series Roswell (both the old series from the 90s/early 2000s and the reboot). I don’t think I’ve ever seen any papers about Roswell at SWPACA. If there were papers on this topic in the past, I missed the boat! Anyway, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are great, and specific to ABQ, but I feel like Roswell is an important New Mexico show that is rife with material to unpack, critique, and gush about. And if you expected me to propose something related to my area, I’m sure we could fit fashion, style, appearance, and identity in there, too. 🙂
📢 Join Emily and the Fashion, Style, Appearance, and Identity at SWPACA 2026! Submit your proposal today at swpaca.org!
