of Victoria
BA (UofA), MA (YorkU), PhD (YorkU, TMU)
communication studies; fashion studies; media studies; performance studies; digital media and mediatization; social media; influencers; AI; fashion and streetwear; affect theory; material culture; immaterial labour; popular culture; corporate communication; crisis communication
Rebecca Halliday joined the English Department in 2022. Her interdisciplinary research examines the impact of digital and social media in/on consumer culture across the arenas of fashion, urban life, performance and politics, with a particular interest in users’ material and immaterial access to and interactions with fashion content. She has published on the mediatization of fashion shows and on topics such as street style, fashion and cities, and fashion and gender. Her most recent research project uses affect theories to explore how fashion and streetwear companies are implicated in politicized social media discourses, and to unpack how companies are using networked communities to perform activism and resistance.
Rebecca taught for six years in the School of Professional Communication and the School of Fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University and held a Limited-Term Assistant Professor position in Professional Communication in 2020-21 and 2021-22. In this role, she was Course Coordinator for the multi-section hybrid service course, Introduction to Professional Communication. Rebecca has also led courses and tutored students in academic and professional writing and in intercultural communication at other Toronto universities.
In the 2000s, Rebecca lived in Edmonton, where she worked in writing centre administration at the University of Alberta and worked for two Provincial Arts Service Organizations in member communications, public relations and event coordination roles. Rebecca has freelance backgrounds in retail communication - including contract work for the Creative Division at the Hudson’s Bay Company in Toronto - and in arts and culture writing and promotion.
“‘Cyber Warfare’ in Style: Cambridge Analytica and a Mediatized Ethics of Fashion.” International Journal of Fashion Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2022, pp. 131-49.
“‘Escape Within the Spiral’: Chromat’s Diverse Bodies as Utopian Performative.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, vol. 35, no. 2, 2021, pp. 103-6.
“The Alt-Right and the Mobilization of Brand Affect: New Balance and Neo-Nazis’ Athleisure Affiliations.” ZoneModa Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1-14.
“Tom Ford and the Live Fashion Show as a Mediatized Spectacle.” Comunicazioni Sociali: Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 119-28.
“Homogenizing the City/Re-Classifying the Street: Tommy Ton’s Street Style Fashion Show Photographs.” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, pp. 86-105.
“Conflicts of Interest, Culture Jamming and Subversive (S)ignifications: The High Fashion Logo as Locational Hip-hop Articulation.” TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2014, 70-83.
“From Newsreel to ‘See Now Buy Now’: A Genealogy of the Fashion Show Live Stream.” Documenting Fashion, edited by Elena Caoduro and Boel Ulfsdotter, Edinburgh University Press. (in press)
“Runway off the Mink Mile: Toronto Fashion Week and the Glamour and Luxury of Yorkville” [with Kathryn Franklin]. Canadian Critical Luxury Studies: Decentring Luxury, edited by Jessica P. Clark and Nigel Lezama, Intellect, pp. 109-32.
“New York Fashion Week as Mediatized Environment.” Staging Fashion: The Fashion Show and Its Spaces, edited by Tiziana Ferrero-Regis and Marissa Lindquist, Bloomsbury, 2020, pp, 192-204.
“The Politics of the Neutral: Rad Hourani's Unisex Vision.” Crossing Gender Boundaries: Fashion to Create, Disrupt and Transcend, edited by Andrew Reilly and Ben Barry, Intellect, 2020, pp. 152-65.
“Front Row Aspirations in the Online Era: Bodies, Accessories and Fashioning Celebrity.”
Building Bridges in Celebrity Studies, edited by Basuli Deb, Jackie Raphael, and Nidhi Shrivastava, WaterHill Publishing, 2016, pp. 20-30.
Review of The Power of Style: How Fashion and Beauty are Being Used to Reclaim Cultures, by Christian Allaire. Canadian Children’s Book News, Summer 2021, pp. 37-8
Review of Knock it Off: A History of Design Piracy in the US Women’s Ready-to-Wear Apparel Industry, by Sara B. Marcketti and Jean Louise Parsons. History: Reviews of New Books, vol. 45, no. 5, 2017, pp. 115-16.
Review of All Dolled Up: Fashioning Cultural Expectations, at the Bata Shoe Museum. Dress, vol. 48, no. 1, 2022, pp. 97-100.
“Dior at ROM.” Review of Christian Dior at the Royal Ontario Museum. The Fashion Studies Journal, 26 March 2018.
“Four exhibitions in Toronto: Fashion Blows, Fashion Follows Form, Fashion Victims, Politics of Fashion | Fashion of Politics.” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture, vol. 19, no. 4, 2015, pp. 519-39.