Honorable Mention: Canadian Association for American Studies (CAAS) 2021 Robert K. Martin Book Prize
— CAAS Robert K. Martin Book Prize
"Fashion Nation makes a timely and significant contribution to understanding the history of ethnicity and national identity in the American context. Most importantly, this book challenges us to think about national style in flexible and multidimensional ways. Tomc shows that discourses of ethnicity can simultaneously operate as a means of constructing and signaling shared identity and as a way of foiling identification."
— Yvette R. South, Early American Literature
“Vividly written and brilliantly argued, Fashion Nation brings the 19th century to life by showing how the idea of a superficial, surface-loving America evolves over the course of the long 19th century. Though focused on surface displays ranging from sartorial excess to glittering amusement parks, Fashion Nation is a deeply searching and absorbing look into how such display served to consolidate and signal American ethnic national identity. This study will open new ways of interpreting visuality across the American literary canon, American culture, and beyond.”
—Jason Richards, Rhodes College
— Jason Richards
“Through brilliant readings across a panoply of cultural texts ranging from novels to fashion illustration to amusement parks, Tomc whisks the curtain back on the dressing room of the American national consciousness, showing what the nineteenth-century cultural preoccupation with ethnic clothing and ‘folk’ costume reveals about what would become the hegemonic American ‘style’: a ‘contentless visual extravaganza’ that offers flash, color, and glitter as a way of refusing ethnic definition.”
—Jean Lee Cole, Loyola University
— Lauren Cardon