Associate Professor, French
Director of French Studies
Office: GLNA-274
905 668 5550 x5688
nlezama@brocku.ca
Ph.D. University of Toronto (Études françaises)
M.A. University of Western Ontario (Études françaises)
B.A. University of Western Ontario (Études françaises)
My interest in fashion and luxury started by studying mid-19th century French literature. I discovered that poor and marginalized Parisian artists, courtesans and other bohemians and demimondaines used fashion to challenge social norms and created their own luxury through art, poetry and lifestyle. These ideas help me to analyse other cultures’ and subcultures’ luxuries, like disco and hip hop, to build a theory of luxury that has nothing to do with wealth or power. I write about how marginalized groups from the 19th century to the contemporary moment challenge dominant culture though personal expression and cultural production.
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies. Decentring Luxury. Jess P. Clark and Nigel Lezama (eds,) London, UK, Intellect Books, 2022.
“Cardi B’s Nails: The Excess of Gender, Race, and the Commodity,” Dangerous Bodies: Fashioned Bodies on the Boundaries, London, UK, Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body, 2022.
“Puff Daddy’s Mogul Style: Penis in Furs or Surface Tensions?,” Fashionable Masculinities. Queers, Pimp Daddies and Lumbersexuals, London, UK, Palgrave MacMillan, 2022.
“Intensified: Alessandro Michele’s hyperaesthetic at Gucci,” Fashion, Dress and Post-postmodernism, José Blanco F. and Andrew Reilly (eds), London, UK, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021, pp. 75-98.
“Le Flambeau’s fashion discourse during the First World War : Towards a retrograde femininity?,” Fashion, Society and the First World War, Maude Bass-Krueger, Hayley Edwards-Dujardin and Sophie Kurkdjian (eds), London, UK, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021, pp. 272-287.
“Re-Thinking Luxury in the Museum Fashion Exhibition,” Jonathan Faiers (ed.) Luxury. History, Culture, Consumption 6.1, May 2020, pp. 83-104.
FREN2F00 Grammar and Composition
FREN 3P42 Nineteenth-Century French Literature
FREN4P40 Nineteenth-Century French Society
SCLA5P95 Fashion and Luxury: Repressive Desublimation or Sublimated Revolt?
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies, co-founder
Fashion Studies, editorial board member
In Pursuit of Luxury, editorial board member
Association Canadienne des Études en Français du 19e siècle, member