A Companion to Textile Culture

A lively and innovative collection of new and recent writings on the cultural contexts of textiles

The study of textile culture is a dynamic field of scholarship which spans disciplines and crosses traditional academic boundaries. A Companion to Textile Culture is an expertly curated compendium of new scholarship on both the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles, bringing together the work of an interdisciplinary team of recognized experts in the field. The Companion provides an expansive examination of textiles within the broader area of visual and material culture, and addresses key issues central to the contemporary study of the subject.

A wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the subject are explored--technological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst others--and developments that have influenced academic writing about textiles over the past decade are discussed in detail. Uniquely, the text embraces archaeological textiles from the first millennium AD as well as contemporary art and performance work that is still ongoing. This authoritative volume:

• Offers a balanced presentation of writings from academics, artists, and curators
• Presents writings from disciplines including histories of art and design, world history, anthropology, archaeology, and literary studies
• Covers an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range
• Provides diverse global, transnational, and narrative perspectives
• Included numerous images throughout the text to illustrate key concepts

A Companion to Textile Culture is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, instructors, and researchers of textile history, contemporary textiles, art and design, visual and material culture, textile crafts, and museology.

Autorentext
Jennifer Harris is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK. Now retired, she was Deputy Director at the Whitworth Art Gallery, holding one of the finest collections of historical and contemporary textiles in the UK. Harris has researched and published in the fields of fashion, textiles, and avant-garde craft for more than thirty years. Her book 5000 Years of Textiles, first published in 1993 and reprinted several times, continues to be a standard text in the field.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments xi List of Figures xiii Series Editor's Preface xvii Notes on Contributors xix General Introduction 1 Part I Histories and Frameworks 7 1 Unraveling the Fabric of the Past: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Textiles 11 Margarita Gleba 2 Textile Cultures in the Early Modern World 27 Robert S. DuPlessis 3 Rewriting Textile Culture with Woven Words: "Oro es tu hilar" by Chilean Poet Cecilia Vicuña 45 Meredith G. Clark 4 Branding Tradition: The Commercialization of Hand Embroidery in Gujarat 61 Eiluned Edwards 5 "The Real Thing": How Object Analysis Unlocks Meaning and Enriches Documentary Evidence 83 Adrienne D. Hood Part II Textiles, Trade, and Global Culture 105 6 Reading Textiles: Transmission and Technology of Silk Road Textiles in the First Millennium 109 Angela Sheng 7 West Africa: Technology, Tradition, and Lurex Revisited 127 John Picton 8 Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa 145 Chris Spring 9 Remaking Tradition in Art and Design in Pakistan 165 Naazish Ata-Ullah, Zeb Bilal and Shehnaz Ismail Part III The Social Fabric: The Politics and Poetics of Cloth 181 10 Fabricating Identity: Textiles in the Pacific 187 Paul Sharrad 11 Stitching (in) Trauma: Constructing Identity in Thread Behind Prison Bars 201 Maureen Daly Goggin 12 Creative Tensions: Making (It), Unmaking, and Making Do in Textiles Informed by Feminism 219 Alexandra Kokoli 13 Spinning a Yarn of One's Own 235 Christine Checinska 14 Pictures and Polemics: Muslim Veiling Practices in Contemporary Art 257 Valerie Behiery 15 The Subversive Stitch Revisited 275 Lisa Vinebaum Part IV Conceptual Boundaries 299 16 Modernism's Roots in the Domestic, Decorative, and Vernacular Through Textiles 303 Virginia Gardner Troy 17 Material Strategies: Cloth and Textile Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Art 317 Jennifer Harris 18 Pragmatics of Attachment and Detachment: A Constellatory Reinscription of Textile 333 Maxine Bristow 19 Japanese Textile Culture: The Example of Junichi Arai and Five Other Creators 353 Akiko Moriyama 20 Stories of Innovation: Fabrication in Africa and Beyond 371 Atta Kwami Part V Reception and Representation 391 21 Around the World in 80 Biennials: Curating Lausanne, Hangzhou, Kaunas 395 Janis Jefferies and Lee Weinberg 22 Indigenous Textiles of North America: A Century of Exhibitions 417 Elizabeth Kalbfleisch and Janet Catherine Berlo 23 Valorizing Gee's Bend Quilts: Affinity, Adjacency, and the Modern Eye 435 Karin E. Peterson and Leisa Rundquist 24 Performing the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures: Collectivity, Syncretism, and Globalization 459 Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll Index 475