American Material Culture Commons^™

Festones En Pequeñas Vestimentas De Enterratorios De Altura (Capacocha), Verónica Cereceda Bianchi

IX Jornadas Internacionales de Textiles Precolombinos y Amerindianos / 9th International Conference on PreColumbian and Amerindian Textiles, Museo delle Culture, Milan, 2022

Los festones son bordados exteriores que se incorporan en prendas ya terminadas en un telar. En el presente texto intentamos un análisis de este tipo de terminaciones que circundaba las vestimentas de pequeñas estatuitas en esos importantes rituales de sacrificios infantiles que son las capacocha. Por la cantidad de reglas que implicaba su elaboración, tanto en lo que se refiere a su ubicación como en la sintaxis de su organización cromática, es posible considerarlos como verdaderos códigos que cumplían sus mensajes de comunicación y sus posibles poderes rituales, a partir de angostas listas de diferentes colores, sin necesidad de utilizar …

The Power Of Polish: Exploring The Impact Of Nail Adornments On Perceptions Of Attraction, Sara Demichele

Honors Theses

Understanding the significance of nail adornments in shaping perceptions of attractiveness and mate value provides insights into human behavior and preferences. In the current investigation, participants rated human nail length and color on physical attractiveness and partner desirability measures. Results revealed significant effects of nail length and color across different demographic groups. Medium-length nails consistently received higher ratings for physical attractiveness, cuteness, and partner desirability compared to short and long nails. White-colored nails were generally rated most attractive, while blue and black nails received the lowest ratings. Additionally, participants reported a moderate association between having manicured nails and feelings of …

Lavenz, Valenz, Levenxë, Lavexha, Lavenzka: Woven Felted Blankets From The Korçë Region In Southeastern Albania, Alexis Zoto

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This paper will look at and document colors and patterns and motifs of woven and felted blankets from the Korçë region of southeastern Albania. Very little is published on these textiles. This paper will document the disappearing and under appreciated textile, and why are they no longer understood or valued. In Albania and in Albanian diaspora communities this textile has had different names in prewar, prewar Korçare dialect and now.

I will be drawing from information gathered interviewing parishioners who volunteered to share their heirlooms and information gathered from examining the textile(s). These heirlooms belong to members of multiple generations …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group - Volume 45 (2024), Joanna E. Evans, Sarah L. Schameloh, Michelle M. Marciniak, Kristin Barrus, Cathy Erickson, Mary Fons, Sharon Fulton Pinka, Kathleen L. Moore, Terry Tickhill Terrell, Nancy Curry Bavor

Uncoverings Journal

Contents

Preface

Lapis Prints: A Forgotten Beauty, Sara L. Schamerloh and Michelle M. Marciniak

Ways of Seeing the Rotary Cutter: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Technology’s Impact on Quiltmaking, Kristin Barrus

Southeast Pennsylvania Papercut Quilts: Mary Worrall Parry’s Quilt and Related Appliqué Quilts, 1844 to 1852, Cathy Erickson

Who’s That Girl? The Shifting Identity of Use-Quilts in the Fine Art System, 1900–2024, Mary Fons

William Pinch and the Rainbow Quilt Block Company (An Update), Sharon Fulton Pinka

The Mystery of the Harlequin Star Quilts: Finding and Naming a Previously Unidentified Regional Design (An Update), Kathleen L. Moore

Peacock among the Ruins …

Programa De La Conferencia Segundo Congreso Internacional De Iconografía Precolombina

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Barcelona, 2023.

Victòria Solanilla, organizador

17 al 20 de octubre de 2023.

En el Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona. Calle Montcada, nº12-14, 08003, Barcelona.

Y en el Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Calle del Carme, nº 47, 08001, Barcelona.

Organizado por el GRUP d'ESTUDIS PRECOLOMBINS· con el apoyo del MUSEU ETNOLÒGIC I DE CULTURES DEL MÓN· INSTITUT D'ESTUDIS CATALANS· SOCIETAT CATALANA D'ESTUDIS HISTÒRICS

Situating The Child’S Voice Within Children’S Fashion: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of The Child’S Engagement With The Clothing They Wear, Melinda Byam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the child’s relationship with children’s fashion, the clothing they wear, and their fashion consumption practices. Using a wardrobe approach to fashion, and an understanding of the child as the expert in their own lives, the author questions how the child engages, interacts, and experiences children’s fashion considering that how they use, think, and speak about their clothing is minimally consulted. Situating this research within a theoretical foundation set by Goffman and Simmel (social behavior), Featherstone (consumer culture), and Merleau-Ponty and Entwistle (embodiment), this text examines fashion from the point of view of the child, hypothesizing how future …

Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm, Mark Alan Mattes

Criticism

Settler accounts of the Cayuga Native American Soyeghtowa (Logan), such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, interpret his famous mourning speech, “Logan’s Lament,” as the words of a melancholic, noble savage and vanishing Indian. This essay decolonizes settler accounts of Logan’s words and deeds such as Jefferson’s book by considering Indigenous relationships to a once-living memorial on Shawnee land in central Ohio, the Logan Elm, which nineteenth-century settlers apocryphally identified as the site of Logan’s speech. Drawing on scholarly work on Indigenous writing and historical media by Native American and settler intellectuals, as well as local …

On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon

Criticism

What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy’s found-object installation Library of Congress, one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy’s …

Margins (I Nvr Needed Acceptance From All U Outsiders), Jahi Lendor

Masters Theses

A comedian said, “American pie isn’t made out of apples, it’s made out of whatever you can get your fucking hands on.”1 With that, my work seeks to provide an honest representation of the infinite value of the everydayness and behavior of blackness ranging from trauma to beauty. Various mediums explore culture, class, collective memory, identity, and erasure. While resisting institutional and systemic boundaries between disciplines my practice actively seeks fluidity between media. The work often translates to (social) poetic-bricolage visualizations that combine gestures of assemblage, sculpture, installation, and painting. The work focuses on reflecting on how I see life …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

Tejiendo Imágenes. Homenaje A Victòria Solanilla Demestre, Catalina Simmonds Caldas , Editora, Marina Valls I García , Editora

Zea E-Books Collection

A collection of 35 essays in honor of the retirement of Prof. Victòria Solanilla Demestre, a renowned and respected scholar of the pre-Columbian culture and iconography of the Americas.

SUMARIO — Miquel-Àngel Sànchez i Fèrriz: El porqué de este homenaje a la Dra. Victòria Solanilla Demestre • Catalina Simmonds Caldas: Un pensamiento sin fronteras • Luz Adriana Alzate Gallego: «A lomo de piedra»: rescatando una gran colección lítica • Denise Y. Arnold: Los textiles andinos teñidos por amarras, el motivo del punto en el rombo y su patrón de difusión: Felinos, serpientes y el cultivo del maíz en un mundo …

Music Lessons, Cecilia-Rose Louise Bender

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

music lessons is a digital chapbook that explores the relationships between James Baldwin’s writing and Beauford Delaney’s paintings through music. From Delaney’s “Composition 16” (1954-56) to Baldwin’s “The Uses of the Blues” (1964), their collaboration with the core elements of jazz music gives their work rhythm and melodic contour that any/body can vibe with. Absorbing the influences of artists Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and putting them to paint and text, music lessons demonstrates how music not only transforms the ways we experience and move our bodies but also the ways that we perceive space, relationships, and time. What’s …

Póster De La Conferencia Segundo Congreso Internacional De Iconografía Precolombina

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Victòria Solanilla, organizadora

17 al 20 de octubre de 2023.

En el Museu de Cultures del Món de Barcelona. Calle Montcada, nº12-14, 08003, Barcelona.

Y en el Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Calle del Carme, nº 47, 08001, Barcelona.

Proyectar El Diseño Precolombino: Experiencias Didácticas, Luz Helena Ballestas Rincón

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Se presenta el resultado de un Modelo Pedagógico basado en el Diseño Precolombino, el cual ha sido aplicado en diversos escenarios y ambientes de aprendizaje. Mediante la sistematización de la teoría con la práctica del diseño se muestran ejemplos de los métodos de diseño que han resultado eficaces, ya sea en el ámbito universitario o en grupos interesados en el conocimiento de estos bienes patrimoniales, entre los que se encuentran estudiantes y profesores del área artística así como personas convocadas por algunos museos que poseen colecciones precolombinas.

Al experimentar y proponer activando los mecanismos que liberan la creatividad y, a …

Los Bordados Mayas Que Protegen De Enfermedades En El Estado De Yucatán, México, Roberto Campos-Navarro, Leydi Dorantes, Danielle Dupiech Cavaleri

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Conocemos el rol de los textiles en los rituales y el significado de numerosos símbolos que bordan las artesanas mayas de la Península de Yucatán, no obstante, existen varios motivos de plantas medicinales bordados en los textiles que no fueron analizados. En el mes de septiembre de 2022 dio comienzo una investigación en cooperación con la joven curandera x-meno’ob de Yaxcabá, Leydi Dorantes, que cultiva más de doscientas plantas medicinales mayas en el jardín botánico que creó su abuelo, mismas que usa en rituales y también para curar. Ella nos da a conocer la relación existente entre los elementos de …

Identificación De La División Del Trabajo Entre Los Géneros A Través Del Análisis Iconográfico, Sarah Kauffmann

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

El presente trabajo se enfoca en la metodología para identificar los roles y actividades realizadas por determinado género en la sociedad maya prehispánica. Códigos especiales en la iconografía son utilizados para representar y diferenciar los dos géneros. Varios medios se explorarán como las estelas, dinteles, cerámicas y figurillas. A través de la iconografía se identificará las actividades, vestimenta y postura para interpretar la división del trabajo.

This present study focuses on the methodology for identifying the roles and activities realized by both genders in the pre-Hispanic Mayan society. Special iconographical codes are used to represent and differentiate men and women. …

El Refugio De La Imagen Chamánica En El Mundo Malagana, Sonia Blanco, Catalina Simmonds Caldas

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

La voluntad de elaborar una pieza antropomorfa, es incidir sobre el objeto, haciéndolo actuante. Tratándose del mundo Malagana – sociedad prehispánica colombiana –, que consideró el papel primordial de la mujer, esta imagen femenina y robusta, en cerámica, de pie, portadora de una máscara, como pieza – soporte simbólica contendría en su epidermis y gesto, una narrativa ritual. Desarrollada en un espacio funerario, como ajuar, personificaría los atributos del mono aullador y convocante de los “espíritus (auxiliares) alter-ego”, de los monos ardilla, intervendría de forma ritualista sobre los humedales del pueblo Malagana, aportándoles el equilibrio para la inflorescencia de la …

Las Urnas Zapotecas (Estado De Oaxaca, México): Una Iconografía Del Espacio Y Del Tiempo, Pascal Mongne

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

La cultura zapoteca (Estado de Oaxaca, México) es famosa por sus célebres “urnas funerarias”, de las que existen unas 4.000 en el mundo. Conocidas desde principios del siglo XIX, estas piezas han sido objetos de estudios iconográficos que, sin embargo, han incluido numerosas falsificaciones realizadas a raíz de su éxito. Las “urnas” zapotecas fueron el tema de una investigación doctoral realizada por el autor entre 1980 y 1985. Esta, basada en los informes de excavaciones publicados o conservados en los archivos, permitió reunir datos hasta entonces poco tratados, tanto sobre la evolución estilística como sobre su entorno (condiciones de descubrimiento, …

El Sobredimensionamiento Y Otros Recursos Plásticos Como Representación De La Capacidad Extática–Visionaria En El Arte Chamánico Americano, Ana María Llamazares

Segundo congreso internacional de iconografía precolombina. Barcelona, 2023. Actas.

Este artículo explora uno de los principales rasgos del arte chamánico visionario: el sobredimensionamiento de las figuras o de algunas de sus partes significativas. A través de diversos registros arqueológicos y contemporáneos, se brindan elementos valiosos para interpretar como representaciones explícitas de la capacidad extática o visionaria, ciertas imágenes de arte prehispánico o etnográfico ligadas a tradiciones de prácticas chamánicas americanas, en las que se ha expresado la percepción de la magnificación energética a través de rayos, aureolas o apéndices diversos que expanden el tamaño de las cabezas, manos, pies u otras partes del cuerpo en forma desproporcionada respecto del …

Bibliography, Print Culture, And What To Do With Comics In A Rare Books Library, Michael C. Weisenburg

Faculty and Staff Publications

Comic books are among the rare books of the future. In fact, some comic books are scarcer and more valuable than many of the “old books” that fill special collections stacks. This essay proposes to answer the questions of “What do we do with comics in an academic library?” by analyzing comics as a popular phenomenon that is deeply rooted in book history and the developing print culture of the past 100 years. Using the traditional methods of bibliographic analysis, we might better situate comics within the mission of academic libraries as we work to foster learning, discovery, and inclusivity …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group - Volume 44 (2023), Joanna E. Evans, Lenna Demarco, Kathy Metelica Cray, Susan Price Miller, Katy Williams-O'Donnell, Marsha Macdowell, Berkley Sorrells, Marsha Music, Terry Tickhill Terrell

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Joanna E. Evans

Cherry Tree and Birds Quilt Tracing the Roots of a Pattern by Lenna DeMarco

"Playthings by the Yard" Cut and Sew Doll and Toy Panels of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries by Kathleen Metelica Cray

Amana Calico and Amana Quilts by Susan Price Miller

The 1697 Coverlet Tracing the Origin of an Early Patchwork Coverlet by Katy Williams-O'Donnell

The History and Meaning of an Inscribed Quilt from an African American Community in Detroit, Michigan by Marsha MacDowell, Berkley Sorrells, and Marsha Music

Peacock among the Ruins: The Evolution of a Textile Design by …

A Part From You, Kenneth Rick Briggenhorst Jr.

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

I invite empathy through art that is technologically assisted to find alternative interpretations for nontheologically informed faith. The sudden passing of my dearest friend, Jimmy, encouraged me to dig through my archives of data, to cherish all the bytes that remain of him. In this endeavor, I find that death is not the end, but a post-physical state of being. I express this sentiment in a part from you, where the work utilizes inanimate constructs to place your faith in, to make sense of the complexities of grief in a digitally tethered way of life. This life that allows many …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

The Precarity Of Images: Sci-Fi Worldbuilding And Its Uses In Agitprop, Noah Jodice

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

“The Precarity of Images” examines how theories of worldbuilding common to the science fiction genre are applied to the making of agitational propaganda for liberation movements. In doing so, it questions how both explicit and implicit political images—posters, games, comics, illustrations, social media posts—either light a pathway for making a more just world or limit our ability to imagine alternate futures.

Following the ethos of Steven Jackson’s essay “Rethinking Repair,” the paper takes the “breakdown, erosion, and decay” of images as a starting point. Images change meaning over time as our cultural connections to them shift. Strategies of decoding and …

Because Potato, Candice Evers

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

This thesis project explores the phenomenological qualities of the internet; asking, since the internet is difficult to grasp, what other modes of investigation might we have available? Using an investigative framework set forth by Jack Halberstam, this thesis declines to come to knowledge solely through understanding the formal, the structural, the highly visible and mainstream. The literature that I have gathered provides a range of modes for interrogating the simultaneously central and inconsequential subject of my thesis itself: the potato. Juxtaposing the physical, political and material conditions of the potato the internet’s least academic mode of knowing: the meme. Analyzing …

Achakali Chickasha Holbachi Italatalit Ithana: Continuation Of Chickasaw Design Practices, Lily Shore

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

The project aims to create an accessible tool to document, preserve, and honor Chickasaw design techniques by creating interactive 3D models replicating ancestral structures available through an online gallery. A virtual exhibition focuses on structures commonly found in a traditional Chickasaw village. The constructions represented include a traditional council house, summer house, winter house, and corn crib. Each is accompanied by contextual information, including a collection of historical photographs, information concerning use, and conventional architectural drawings such as plans, sections, and isometric views. In fruition, the project aims to function as a resource to commemorate the history of traditional Chickasaw …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 43 (2022), Joanna E. Evans, Kristin Barrus, Xenia E. Cord, Mary Bywater Cross, Mary Jane Eichacker-Kaufman, Alice M. Hines, Laurel Horton, Colleen Gelhaus Pokorny

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Joanna E. Evans

The Landscape of the Modern Quilt Movement, 1995–2020 by Kristin Barrus

Jelly Rolls and Layer Cakes: The Rise of Pre-cut Fabrics by Colleen Gelhaus Pokorny

Influence and Inspiration: The Indianapolis Star Quilt Contests by Xenia E. Cord and Mary Jane Eichacker-Kaufman

Women Stitching Identity: Two White Counterpanes by Laurel Horton

Beyond Borrowing: Japanese Infl uence on Northern California’s Bay Area Quilt World During the Late Twentieth Century by Alice M. Hines

Exploring Regionalism: The Quilts of Grant Wood’s Family and Paintings (An Update) by Mary Bywater Cross

Contributors

Index

Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery (Sewing) Society: Handcraft As A Metaphorical Tool For The Abolitionist Cause, Hinda Mandell

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

In 1851, in Rochester, New York, a group of six women banded together as the founding members of an anti-slavery group in order to support the work of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. They called themselves the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery (Sewing) Society, although they dropped “Sewing” from the group’s name in 1855. Yet the fact that “Sewing” was included in the original name of this reformist group indicates the foundational role of craft not only as a guiding activity but also central as an activist mechanism to abolish the institution of slavery. They were the benefactors of Frederick Douglass, himself regarded …

Material Encounters: Making Memory Beyond The Mind, Ariel Wills

Masters Theses

Can acts of making carry the memories of our embeddedness within the world? This thesis explores how making things can nurture a sense of kinship that cuts across the organic and inorganic, erasing the distinction between living and dead, material and spiritual. Through handwork such as art-making, sewing, knitting, cooking, woodworking, and beyond, the burden of remembering and of archiving is shared across human and non-human bodies, cultivated through practices of making, and through the materials themselves. By recounting the stories of my family’s experience as Jewish immigrants in the United States, I aim to reveal how their domestic practices …