Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Cosplay Experience

1. Cosplay: A Social History of Mass Culture and Identity

2. The Lure of the Mask: Identity, Expression, and Embodiment

3. Overcoming Abjection: From Ambiguity to Becoming

4. In the Theater of the Cosplayer: Improvisations, Innovations, and Masquerade

5. Fandom and the Fictional Mode of Existence

Notes

Index

About the Author

Frenchy Lunning is professor emeritus of design and cultural studies at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is founder and director of the Asian and U.S. Mechademia Conferences on Asian Popular Cultures; editor-in-chief of the Mechademia book series published by the University of Minnesota Press; and coeditor-in-chief of the journal series Mechademia: Second Arc. Lunning is author of Fetish Style.

Reviews

"Showcasing provocative theoretical work and data collected at conventions in the United States and Japan since the 1990s, Frenchy Lunning makes a powerful argument for understanding the potential of cosplay and its engagements with fictional modes of existence. With deep implications for the politics of imagination and open and ongoing entanglements in a more-than-human world, Cosplay is as passionate as it is timely."-Patrick W. Galbraith, author of Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan

 "Readers looking for a comprehensive history of cosplay now have one"-Gamers with Glasses