＂This four-volume English-language series extracts more than forty of the best essays included in the ongoing editions Abito e Identitáa: Ricerche di storia letteraria e culturale, edited by
Cristina Giorcelli and published since 1995 by Edizioni Associate (volumes 1/3) and Ila Palma Press (volumes 4/12) of Rome, Italy. Habits of Being augments these Italian-published essays with
newly commissioned ones and with examples of work by contemporary artists who explore the interface between text and textile. The result of almost two decades of research by international teams
of scholars from Algeria, France, Hungary, Italy, and the United States, the series focuses on the multiple forms and meanings attached to various articles of clothing in literature, film,
performance, art, and other cultural arenas as well as on the social, economic, and semiotic connotations of clothing. Bringing together the work of literary and film critics, art and fashion
historians, semioticians, sociologists, historians, and ethnographers, as well as psychoanalysts, artists, and fashion designers, these books offer an English-speaking audience a rare glimpse
of the important studies being published in Italy, that most modish of nations.＂--
