Dr R. (Roberto) Filippello
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Biography
Roberto Filippello is an Assistant Professor of Media and Culture affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis as well as the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to joining the University of Amsterdam, he was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Filippello's interdisciplinary research looks at how fashion has been used in various historical contexts to shape spaces of political expression and community formation. He is especially interested in how fashion practices (such as design, photography, and film) can function as forms of critique that destabilize colonial, hetero-patriarchal, and capitalist systems, and ultimately carve out alternative aesthetic imaginaries. He is currently completing his first monograph, Dressed for Dissent: Decolonial Fashion and the Queer Struggle for Palestine (solicited by University of California Press). His next research project is Crossdressed: Fashion and Beauty at the Edge of Politics (working title), which examines transvestite practices within and at the margins of political movements in the Middle East, Latin America, and Europe.
Dr. Filippello's research has been published or is forthcoming in a variety of journals, including Third Text, Criticism, Cultural Studies, Film Quarterly, Journal of Visual Culture, Feminist Media Histories, Australian Feminist Studies, and Fashion Theory. He is the co-editor of Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress (2023) and of two special journal issues: one on transgender representation, for Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty (2024), and one on fashion in global media cultures, for Feminist Media Histories (2025). He is a regular reviewer for top-tier journals in gender and sexuality studies and media studies, and is an active member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS, Middle East caucus) as well as the College Art Association (CAA).
In the Media Studies department, his courses cover a range of topics, including: global media cultures; fashion and gender; popular culture in the Middle East; and queer visual culture.
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Publications
2024
- Filippello, R. (2024). "Starved for Pleasure": The Fashion Magazine as a Desirous Queer Archive. Cultural Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2024.2318560
- Filippello, R., & Zhang, E. (2024). Who’s In and Who’s Out of (Queer) Fashion (Studies)? Critical Studies in Fashion & Beauty, 15(1), 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1386/csfb_00068_2 [details]
- Filippello, R., & Zhang, E. (Eds.) (2024). Transgender Embodiment in Fashion and Beauty. Intellect.
2023
- Filippello, R. (2023). Baroque Travesty: Queer Anachronism in Gwen van den Eijnde’s Fashion Performances. Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities, 4(1), 30-52. https://doi.org/10.3167/jbsm.2023.040104
- Filippello, R. (2023). Fashion Statements in a Site of Conflict. Fashion Theory, 27(2), 205-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2021.2000811
Filippello, R. (2023). [Book review of: L. Melamed (2023) Sovereign Intimacy: Private Media and the Traces of Colonial Violence]. Film Quarterly, 77(1), 111-113. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2023.77.1.111 [details]- Filippello, R., & Parkins, I. (2023). Introduction. In R. Filippello (Ed.), Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress (pp. 1-24). (Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19100-8_1
- Filippello, R., & Parkins, I. (Eds.) (2023). Fashion and Feeling: The Affective Politics of Dress. (Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19100-8
2021
- Filippello, R. (2021). On Sequins and Shit: The Epistemology of Radical Dress in Mario Mieli's Transsexual Utopia. Third Text, 35(1), 130-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2020.1857552
- Filippello, R. (2021). Tarrying with the Elephant: Queer Villainy in Steven Klein’s Fashion Photography. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, 5(3), 205-220. https://doi.org/10.1386/qsmpc_00036_1
- Filippello, R. (2021). ‘White Trash’: Gestures and Profanations in the Visual Economy of Fashion. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 13, Article 1886444. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.2021.1886444
2020
- Filippello, R. (2020). Eccentric Feelings: Little Girls’ Pleasures on the Feminist Fashion Set. Australian Feminist Studies, 35(105), 217-238. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2020.1843998
- Filippello, R. (2020). Work! A Queer History of Modeling by Elspeth H. Brown. Fashion Theory, 24(5), 799-804 . https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2019.1656857
2019
- Filippello, R. (2019). On Queer Neutrality: Disaffection in the Fashion Photo Story ‘Paradise Lost'. Criticism, 61(3), 335-358. https://doi.org/0.13110/criticism.61.3.0335
2018
- Filippello, R. (2018). Aesthetics and Politics of the Fashion Image: A Queer Perspective. Aisthesis, 11(2), 75-85. https://doi.org/10.13128/Aisthesis-23331
- Filippello, R. (2018). Less Than Zero: Impersonal Affect in Hedi Slimane’s Auteurial Style. Revista dObra[s]: Associação Brasileira de Estudos e Pesquisas em Moda , 11(24), 80-100.
- Filippello, R. (2018). Thinking Fashion Photographs through Queer Affect Theory. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 5(1), 129–145. https://doi.org/10.1386/infs.5.1.129_1
2017
- Filippello, R. (2017). Reigning Men: Fashion in Menswear 1715-2015, Sharon Sadako Takeda, Kaye Durland Spilker, Clarissa Esguerra, Peter Mcneil and Tim Blanks. Critical Studies in Men's Fashion, 4(2), 208-211.
2023
- Filippello, R. (Author). (2023). Queer Fashion Against Pinkwashing. Web publication or website https://fashionstudiesjournal.com/Queer-Fashion-Against-Pinkwashing
2019
- Filippello, R. (2019). Affect, Race and Performance: Fashion Through the Lens of Queer of Color Critique. FOAM Magazine (Internationale fotografie publicatie), 53(Adorned, The Fashionable Issue).
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Ancillary activities
No ancillary activities
Filippello, R. (2023). [Book review of: L. Melamed (2023) Sovereign Intimacy: Private Media and the Traces of Colonial Violence]. Film Quarterly, 77(1), 111-113.