Research & writing
How literature writes the fashion system
I read literature through clothing. Fashion, with its logic of imitation, distinction and change, offers a way into how novels portray society, identity and the body. My current project starts with Balzac.
Current project
Dress in Balzac, between social sign and lived body
In La Comédie humaine, clothes are evidence: Balzac’s narrators read a waistcoat or a frayed collar the way a detective reads a clue. But his characters also live in their clothes, cold, constrained or disguised in them. My project holds both sides together, drawing on fashion theory, especially Gilles Lipovetsky and Georg Simmel, and on my training in phenomenology.
It returns to the subject of my first paper (2015) and article (2017), on fashion in Le Colonel Chabert.
Research direction
The fashion system in literature
Beyond Balzac, I’m interested in how modern literature registers the fashion system itself: the rhythm of novelty, the fascination with modernity, the pull between imitation and distinction, and the way clothes make and unmake social identities.
This is the direction I’m developing in my graduate research in literary studies.
Earlier research
My master’s at the University of São Paulo studied fashion and aesthetics through the work of the designer Kunihiko Morinaga (ANREALAGE), under the supervision of Prof. Michiko Okano. Earlier papers and courses, on Japonisme, sumptuary laws and fashion subcultures, are listed below.
Conference talks
2021
Japonism and Attire in the Construction of an Imagined Japan
International Meeting on Image Studies, State University of Londrina, Brazil
2021
The Aesthetics of Techno-Coexistence in the Fashion Design of Kunihiko Morinaga from ANREALAGE
XVII International ALADAA Conference, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador
2021
Kunihiko Morinaga’s “Biodegradation” and the Human–Nature–Technology Relation in Modern Japan
XIII International Conference of Japanese Studies in Brazil, University of Brasília
2019
ANREALAGE’s Design and the Japanese Experience of Modernity
Japanese Studies in Postgraduate Studies colloquium, University of São Paulo
2018
Gender and Sexuality in Quicksand, by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō
XII International Conference of Japanese Studies in Brazil, University of Brasília
2015
Fashion and Literature in Le Colonel Chabert, by Honoré de Balzac
III Meeting of Literary Studies, Federal University of Pelotas
Publications
2023
“Japanese Fashion Subcultures as an Act of Resistance.” In A. Avancini, M. Hashimoto Cordaro and M. Okano (eds.), Ecos de Catástrofes, GEAA, pp. 361–385. Chapter
2023
Techno-animism and the Aesthetics of Coexistence in the Fashion of Japanese Brand ANREALAGE. University of São Paulo. Monograph
2021
Yoshimasu Gōzō, “A New Way of Grasping Ma (Aida),” translated into Portuguese. In Conceitos estéticos, Federal University of São Paulo. Translation
2018
“The Indissociability Between Literature and Society in ‘Patriotism’ (1961) by Mishima Yukio,” with A. Sparemberger. Estudos Japoneses, no. 39, pp. 93–107. Article
2018
“Minotaur vs. Godzilla: Greco-Japanese Syncretism in João Paulo Cuenca’s The Only Happy Ending for a Love Story is an Accident,” with J. L. P. Ourique. Revista Olho d’água, 10, pp. 79–91. Article
2017
“The Interface Between Fashion and Literature in Balzac’s Novel Le Colonel Chabert,” with M. G. S. Machado. Lettres Françaises (UNESP Araraquara), 18, pp. 247–261. Article
2017
“Sumptuary Laws in Japan: The Role of Fashion in Maintaining the Tokugawa Regime and Edo Period Society,” with A. Sparemberger. XXVI Scientific Initiation Congress, Federal University of Pelotas. Proceedings