2024 Humanities Aronui Medal: Revealing identities through clothing
Professor Vicki Karaminas, of Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa Massey University, has been awarded the Humanities Aronui Medal by the Royal Society Te Apārangi for advancing the discipline of fashion studies and for significant contributions to global understanding of masculinities, gender, and sexualities.
Vicki is an internationally recognised expert in media and cultural studies, who has worked tirelessly to establish the study of fashion and dress as a serious area of intellectual inquiry in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond.
She codeveloped a new philosophical framework, Critical Fashion Practice, with artist Adam Geczy, to describe how the design of clothing can act as a discourse on society and identity.
Vicki is the founding editor of three book series published in the United Kingdom and United States of America (with Adam Geczy): ‘Fashion Auteurs,’‘Anthem Studies in Fashion and Visual Culture’, and ‘Style Discourses. Art, Fashion and Culture.
In 2007, Vicki established the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand to support and promote the study of popular culture.
In 2013, Vicki and Adam Geczy published Queer Style in the UK, which was the first book to address the impact of dress and style on the LGBTQIA+ community, by examining the interconnected relationships between aesthetics, meaning, subversion of gender roles, and social identity. The book was shortlisted for the Best Tertiary Academic Title in the Australasian Book Publishers Award. Ten years later, they a revised it for an anniversary edition, adding a chapter on trans and gender-diverse identities.
“Researching and writing ‘Queer Style,’” Vicki said “was so exciting and rewarding as a queer person, to see how much the language used to describe our sexualities and gender over the last ten years has radically changed, and how important dress has been in forming our identities and our communities.
“Clothing is no longer simply male or female, but a lot more complex as new gender identities emerge.
“Gender has become a lot more fluid as Gen Z and millennials (Gen Y) are experimenting more with gender, sexuality, and fashion and are rethinking their identities through clothing.”
In 2020, Vicki co-authored ‘Libertine Fashion. Sexual Rebellion, Freedom and Style’ with Adam Geczy. It was shortlisted for The Book of the Year by the Association of Dress Historians. “Libertine Fashion is a prequel to Queer Style,” Vicki said. “Moving from the courts of Charles II and Louis XV to the catwalks of the 21st century, Libertine Fashion gives evidence that people have always been experimental with their sexualities.”
Altogether, Vicki has co-authored more than 20 books, and her work has been translated into Cantonese, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, and Swedish.
Vicki is Editor of the Journal of Asia Pacific Pop Culture, which she established along with the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. She is the Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Fashion, Style and Popular Culture (Intellect UK) and has been invited to sit on many journal editorial and advisory boards. She holds several governance roles in scholarly associations including Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Association of Dress Historians (UK) and sits on the advisory board of the Dress and Body Association (USA).
Her expertise has been recognised with honorary professorships, fellowships, and residencies and she attracts many international doctoral students who travel to Aotearoa to live and study under her supervision.
In the presentation of this award, the selection committee said that Vicki “had not only made seminal contributions to the discipline through her own research, but has worked hard to establish Fashion Studies as a serious area of intellectual inquiry. Few researchers combine her intellectual rigour and professional integrity with such generosity to others in this discipline and others within the academic community.”
On receiving this medal, Vicki said: “I am so thrilled to be receiving this award and would like to thank the Royal Society Te Apārangi for acknowledging Fashion Studies as a serious academic study and awarding me this great honour.
“I would also like to thank Massey University and my colleagues at the College of Creative Arts for providing me support and a collegial environment so that my research can prosper.”
In 2021 Vicki was awarded the Individual Award for Distinction in Research from Massey University and appointed an Honorary Fellow of The University of Melbourne, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of Humanities and the Arts. In 2023 she was appointed an Honorary Adjunct Professor, of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at The University of Sydney.
Humanities Aronui Medal:
For research or innovative work of outstanding merit in the Humanities.
Citation:
To Vicki Karaminas for international advancement of the discipline of fashion studies and its impact on understanding masculinities, gender, and sexualities.