Date of Graduation

8-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Anthropology

Advisor/Mentor

D'Alisera, JoAnn

Committee Member

Kirstin Erickson

Second Committee Member

Lucas Delezene

Keywords

Anthropology; Cosplay; Dress; Media Studies; Performance

Abstract

Cosplay performances in convention spaces, and the increasing commercialization and commodification of both, remain largely unexplored domains that are rapidly expanding into global phenomena. The influx of capital internationally and the growing popularity of cosplay and conventions offers the opportunity to document and describe processes of performance, identity construction, and negotiation of the global phenomena within local contexts (“glocalization”) in non-Western spaces. I conducted ethnographic research at more than half a dozen research sites throughout Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and South and Central America, photographing convention spaces and cosplayers and conducting interviews with cosplayers. By focusing on the performances through which people negotiate individual identity utilizing embodied visualization to resist, reify, or parody the American hegemonic cultural exports, I explore the dichotomies of individual and collective, self and character, and global and local. Each of these constitute the emergent spatiotemporal self in separate ways, including along national, racial, and gender lines, and explores the impact of mass media and global culture on cultural expressions outside America. My analysis offers insight into the process by which latent ideologies encoded into narratives and symbols are enacted into material reality through embodied visualization, and the “glocalizing” activities through which mass-produced Western properties are modified to resonate with local cultural contexts.

Download

Share

COinS