Not Just Any Dress

The Editors: Sandra Weber is Professor of Education and a Fellow at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, Montreal. Claudia Mitchell is a Professor and Chair in the School of Education at the University of Natal, South Africa. Her most recent book, Researching Children’s Popular Culture: The Cultural Spaces of Childhood (with Jacqueline Reid-Walsh) was published in 2002. Together, Weber and Mitchell have co-authored That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Teacher: Interrogating Images of Identity in Popular Culture (1995) and Reinventing Ourselves as Teachers: Beyond Nostalgia (1999). Co-founders of the Image and Identity Research Collective, they have also co-produced two documentaries on prom dressing, girlhood, and youth culture: Canadian Pie (2002), and Dress Fitting (2000).

• Contents: Sandra Weber/Claudia Mitchell: «Dress Stories» – Lorri Neilson Glenn: That Saturday night all her clothes fell apart and broke into song – Carol Mavor: Collecting Loss: Photographs, Dresses, «Paperies» – Kathleen O’Reilly Scanlon: Communion Dress Violations – Catherine Derry: «I’ll Never Find a Dress»: Shopping for the Prom – Sandra Weber: No Red Shoes – Sandra Weber: Boxed-in by My School Uniform – Lyse Lemieux: Tunique Desires – Candis Steenbergen: In Front of the Closet: (Ad)dressing the Academic – Claudia Mitchell: Was It Something I Wore? – Madeleine R. Grumet: My Green Robe: Scholae Personae – Sandra Weber: Curse You Descartes! My Academic Gown – Lorri Neilson Glenn: Basic Black: A Wardrobe Primer for Seasoned Academic Women – Annette Kuhn: A Credit to Her Mother – Jennifer Musial: Fashioning Pregnancy: The Maternity Dress in Clothing Catalogues – Ardra L. Cole: The Christmas Doll – Gary Knowles: Constraining Mother: Corsetry, Control, and Comfort – Celeste Snowber: (Wo)man Time and M(other) Sins – Claudia Mitchell: Bridesmaid dress: Thick Description – Kathryn Church: Try This One On for Size: Poetic Notes from Wedding Dress Research – Jo Visser: Nailing It: My Wedding Dress – Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen: Made in China – Roksana Bahramitash: Revealing Veiling and Unveiling – Joan Reider: Scarf Signatures – Liz Ralfe: Love Affair with My Isishweshwe – Charlotte Hussey: Fashion Statement – Lorri Neilson Glenn: At the Ugly Ducklings Anonymous Meeting – Celeste Snowber: Writing Bare-breasted – Ilana Abramovitch: Not Just Any Little Black Dress – Claudia Mitchell: Dressing Death: Elsie Never Wore a Prom Dress – Kathy Sands: Fashion for the Soul – Sandra Weber/Claudia Mitchell: Theorizing Dress Stories.