Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén

Fulbright Scholar and Sweden-America Foundation Research Fellow, University of Southern California
Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén is a Fulbright Scholar and an Anders Zorn Sweden-America Foundation Research Fellow at the School of Cinematic Arts of the University of Southern California. She holds a doctoral degree in Fashion Studies from Stockholm University, a master of arts in cinema studies from the same institution, and a bachelor of science in public relations from U.A.D.E.

She is the receipent of the Rettig Prize 2024, granted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities for her research on the fashion industry and the working functions of the film medium, social analysis in relation to fashion, film and television. According to the institution's press release, "Elizabeth Castaldo Lundén's research, in its wealth of perspective and power, is fundamental to the subject's identity and has given perspective on the possibilities of fashion studies." (Vitterhetsakademin 2024)

Her research explores the media dimensions of the historical liaisons between Hollywood and the fashion industry. She is particularly interested in studying how Hollywood's intermedial reach helped propel the international fashion system through the global circulation of cultural and economic capital.

Castaldo Lundén departs from the study of discourses originating in public relations, advertising, marketing, and other institutional practices to understand how ideas travel into popular culture and manifest in social and cultural phenomena. Her work contributes to the pool of knowledge about the United States's rise to power in the global arena by circulating popular culture to propel consumer culture during the 20th Century. Her research is heavily driven by archival sources and integrates fashion, cinema, and media history.
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Her latest book, Fashion on the Red Carpet: A History of the Oscars, Fashion, and Globalisation, historicizes the Academy Awards' red-carpet phenomenon, tracing the liaison between Hollywood and fashion institutions to explain how public relations campaigns and the media articulated fashion discourses around the Oscars leading to the institutionalization of the red-carpet as a global fashion media event. She is currently writing a book about the history of fashion in newsreels.