Reader in Cultural and Historical Studies

Research Interests

• Film and Fashion
• History and Heritage
• Gender and Spectacle
• Cities and Consumption

Current Research 

I set up the only MA programme in Fashion and Film four years ago, I was subsequently asked to edit a peer-reviewed journal covering this area, and the first issue of Film, Fashion & Consumption appeared in March 2011. I am the Principal Editor, and three issues of this journal will now be published in the course of each calendar year.  I have also been asked to help inaugurate The European Popular Culture Association, backed by the PCA in America; the first conference is to be held at London College of Fashion in July 2012.

Since the successful conclusion of Shopping Routes, the interdisciplinary ESRC–funded joint project within the Cultures of Consumption programme that involved London College of Fashion, Royal Holloway and finally the V&A, I have continued my own interdisciplinary research. My new book, Fashion & Celebrity Culture (Berg 2011) explores the complex new relationships within contemporary visual culture. I argue that the developments  of the last decade around celebrity culture and  luxury brands have altered not only the workings of fashion, but have created more radical changes. The conventional ‘star system‘ of film studies has disappeared, while outside the traditional remit of 'popular culture', the operation of the art world has been reconfigured. I have since published two essays on the ‘celebrification’ of the art world, one in Germany (2011) and the second in Italy (2011).

I will pursue my interdisciplinary work through new collaborations with partner institutions; discussions with partners in China and the US, as well as the UK, are now in progress.                     

Recent Research

Projects

• 2003-07 - ESRC funded project, Shopping Routes for Cultures of Consumption, named London College of Fashion project leader, other award holders at Royal Holloway and V&A – interdisciplinary project

Selected Conference Presentations

• 2011 - Going Cheap? Celebrity Culture Conference – University of East Anglia.
• 2010 - International Symposium, Fashionable Queens – Vienna ‘Let Them Go Shopping: Marie Antoinette on screen'
• 2010 - Keynote address – international conference – Out Of Order, Bremen Art Institute
• 2007 - Feminism and Popular Culture, University of Newcastle, July - Delivered keynote address
• 2007 - Dressing Rooms Conference, University of Oslo, June - Delivered keynote address
• 2007 - Oslo Cinemateket, June, Curated season of films entitled Fashion On Film
• 2007 - Plenary Speaker, Daphne du Maurier Centenary Conference, May – On Cinematic Adaptations of Her Novels
• 2004 - 'What the Butler Could Not Foresee: The Uses and Abuses of High Theory', Keynote Address given at the Angelienstak Conference

Journal Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

• 2009 - In Adaptations vol 2 no 2 (Oxford Journals) Overlapping Dialogues, Different Takes: Jane Austen on Screen, p180-190
• 2008/9 - In Russian Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, Culture Winter 
• 2008/9 - Millenial Masculinity: Conflict and Denial in Contemporary Visual Culture, Issue no 10
• 2007 - In Journal of British Popular Culture (Germany) vol 14 no 2 - The Deification of the Dolly Bird: Selling Swinging London, Fuelling Feminism

Edited Anthologies

• 2004 - More Dirty Looks: Gender, Power, Pornography ed. Pamela Church Gibson, British Film Institute Publishing
• 2000 - Fashion Cultures: Theories, explorations, analyses (with Stella Bruzzi), Routledge

Essays in Edited Collections

• 2009 - Concerning Blondeness; Gender, Ethnicity, Spectacle and Footballers’ Waves in 'Hair: Styling, Culture, Fashion' edited by Geraldine Biddle-Perry and Sarah Cheung Oxford, Berg
• 2008 - ‘Is that what they think a Real Man Looks Like?’ Gender, consumption and classic Hollywood cinema in Media Studies as American Studies - American Studies Vol 167 ed Frank Kelleter and Daniel Stein Universitaststeitag, Heidelberg, German
• 2005 - 'The Rough with the Smooth': Male Costuming in Contemporary Hollywood', in Rachel Mosely, Fashioning Film Stars: Dress, Culture, Identity, London: BFI Publishing
• 2004 - 'Fashion', in Jean-Francois Lack, The Art and Design Source Book, London: BFI Publishing
• 2004 - Fashion Fetish and Spectacle: The Matrix dresses up – and down in Stacey Gillis (ed) The Matrix Trilogy, Wallflower Press
• 2004 - Otherness, Transgression and the Postcolonial Perspective, Patricia Rosczema’s Mansfield Park in Janespotting and Beyond: The British Heritage Film ed Ekhart Voights-Verchow, Tubingen Verlag: Germany
• 2004 - Queer Looks, Male Gazes, Taut Torsos and Designer Labels: Consumption, Cinema and Masculinity in The Trouble With Men Ed Bruce Babington, Anne Davies and Phil Powrie London, Wallflower Press.
• 2004 - Fashion - The Art and Design Source Book (Ed Jean-Francois Lack) London, BFI2005, The rough and the Smooth: Male Costuming In Contemporary Hollywood in Rachel Moseley (ed ) fashioning film stars: dress, culture , identity London BFI Publishing
• 2004 - Pamela Church Gibson and Stella Bruzzi, 'Fashion is the Fifth Character; Fashion, Costume and Character in 'Sex and the City', in Kim Akass and Janet MacCabe, Reading 'Sex and the City', London: IB Tauris
• 2004 - 'Popular Culture', in Stacey Gillis, Gill Howie and Rebecca Munford (eds), Third Wave Feminism, London: Palgrave
• 2004 - 'Otherness, Transgression and the Postcolonial Perspective: Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park', in Eckart Voigts-Verchow (ed), Janespotting and Beyond: The British Heritage Film Since the Mid-Nineties, Tubingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Verlag
• 2003 - Imaginary Landscapes, Jumbled Topographies: London on Screen, In London from Punk to Blair – edited by Joe Kerr and Andrew Gibson London: Reaktion 

Supervision Expertise

I am happy to provide supervision in any of the areas outlined above.

Current Research Students

• Liza Betts - 'Translating the complicated construction of the ordinary and the complexity of the 'everyday' into a costume design for screen'
• Neil Kirkham - 'Simple Pornographers? Sade, Libertinage and the Evolution of the hard-core Pornographic Film Narrative'
• Suzanne Neita - 'Underground tactics: invisible traces of Ethnicity in classic Hollywood 1930s - 1950s'

Awarded Research Students

• Dr Ann Bailey - 'Fashion and the Professional Football Player: The Practice and Representation of Masculine Consumption 1950-1990'

Email

p.church-gibson@fashion.arts.ac.uk

Member of the Historical and Cultural Hub.