CSWAC Corner: Michelle Liu Carriger

Get to know our CSW Advisory Committee (CSWAC) members through CSWAC Corner! We are proud to have an advisory committee made up of feminist scholars working in various fields from gender studies to public health to film and television.

Michelle Liu Carriger specializes in the historiography of theater, performance and everyday life. Formerly a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, her current research concentrates on clothing and performance of self in everyday 19th-century life in Britain and Japan, as well as how clothing and fashion can themselves serve as historiographical methods for maintaining bodily links to the past.

What does your current work consist of?

Currently, I’m completing the copy edits, proofs, and cover designs of my first book to appear in print in September 2023, Theatricality of the Closet, from Northwestern University Press, which uses cases of fashion controversy in 19th-century Britain and Japan to look at how the seemingly superficial (clothes) have deep effects on the creation and maintenance of identities, including gender, sexuality, and race. I’m already also at work on my second book which will look at the traditional practice of Japanese “tea ceremony” in conjunction with performance theories of ethnicity, a project on editing in Theater and Performance Studies journals, and a few other articles. I’m also always busy with grad and undergrad teaching and mentorship and the work of keeping an arts and humanities department alive in the 21st century!

What are you recently proud of/excited about in your career?

I’m SO excited for my first book to finally, finally appear after years of work and pandemic-related delays in the publishing process. I have great images so I am hoping for a cool cover soon.

Where can we find you on social media?

@kitvishnu on Twitter

What are some of your current reads or a podcast that you’ve been listening to lately?

I have a little side line in Los Angeles-specific books and media; one of those that really got to me was Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, which at first I found too dark but then, although it’s fantastical, started to feel like a spot-on supernatural translation of Golden Age Hollywood (with an Asian American twist). I also have been devouring the podcasts Lost Hills (two seasons), Chameleon (~4 seasons), and Maintenance Phase.

Other than your current research interests, what other fields would you be interested in exploring with time given?

Whenever I’m exhausted with academia, I dream of either being a bespoke book binder (I even took classes in letterpress printing and book binding in grad school!) where instead of writing books myself, I’d make other people’s works into gorgeous leather and cloth bound books or running a zero waste center like in Kamikatsu, Japan.

I made a specialty of using off cuts and scrapes in my book binding experiments years ago, so maybe I could do both at once in some other life.

What have you been listening to lately?

The Beths, The Linda Lindas, Female of the Species, Boy Genius (and the solo artists therein: Julian Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus), Pillow Queens, Julia Jacklin, Sharon Van Etten, Lula Wiles, Arooj Aftab, Norma Tanega, Yma Sumac…

What is a piece of advice that you’d recommend to others starting out in your field of interest?

Stay true to the subjects or ideas that consume you—you have to love the thing you’re working on a lot because there will be a lot of days you hate it or are sick of it, and you need something deep to keep you going. An obverse way of saying that is don’t chase trends or try to choose a subject because it’s trendy. Part of the work of trying to research and write what you care about is proving how you demonstrate that it should be important and interesting to others too.

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