Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts Commons^™

Shadow Garments: Costume Creation For Integrating Alienated Parts Of The Self, Mega M. Galvin

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

This study explores costume creation as a narrative-based intervention for integrating "shadow" parts, or aspects of the self that are repressed or alienated due to shame, trauma, or social pressure. Grounded in Jungian analytic psychology, narrative therapy, and expressive arts theory, the research addresses the limitations of traditional talk therapy in accessing somatic memory and proposes costume making as a pathway for externalization and re-authorship. Using a qualitative, participatory study inspired by Pat B. Allen’s Open Studio Process, four adult participants engaged in a three-session workshop to design, construct, and wear costumes representing their identified shadow aspects. Data was collected …

Water Scarcity On Arizona’S Navajo Nation, As An Environmental Justice Issue, Chenoa Marks

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

For the Navajo–or Diné, meaning ‘the people’ in Diné Bizaad (Navajo language)–water is not only a resource. It is life, story, and relationship. It is tied to origin, movement, and balance within the natural and spiritual world. Water exists not only in rivers and rainfall, but in teachings, ceremonies, and the way knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next. In this sense, water is both physical and cultural, shaping how people live, understand the land, and connect to one another.

At the same time, water on the Navajo Nation–known by the Diné as Diné Bikéyah, also translated …

Ethos: A Computational Framework For Material Culture Research, Chelsea L. Grafe

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Museum catalog records make large collections searchable, but they do not always preserve the reasoning behind the claims they contain. A record may present a quilt's identity as settled while leaving the reasoning behind that claim invisible, making it difficult for later researchers to check, question, or reuse. This project asks whether museum catalog data can be analyzed in a way that keeps each analytical claim connected to the evidence that supports it. To test this question, the project applies a material-first computational framework named Ethos. Ethos formalizes an object-centered inquiry sequence in which material dependencies establish where analysis begins …

Soft Korsi: An Embodied Spatial Interior System For Communal Warmth, Faezeh Panahandeh

Graduate Final Projects

ABSTRACT

Soft Korsi: An Embodied Spatial Interior System for Communal Warmth reconceptualizes the historic Iranian Korsi as an innovative textile-based interior system. Traditionally, the Korsi functioned not only as a heating device but also as a spatial, material, cultural, and embodied system, which brought people together around a shared warm focal point. The integration of a heat source, textile coverings, floor seating arrangements, closeness of bodies, and domestic traditions related to warmth made possible a collective experience, rather than an individual or environmental one.

This design project seeks to address the disappearance of the Korsi from contemporary domestic environments as …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Numb., Anna Rapson

Masters Theses

Social media platforms, from their conception, posed a break in the lived experience of the average human being’s day to day routines. Although access to information has always been shaped by portals into other lived realities—through photojournalism, print legacy media, news broadcasts both on radio and television—social media has posited a novel phenomenological architecture where borders between embodied reality and perception of lived experience are simultaneously blurred and reinforced. This morphed duality of consciousness positions the body and mind in tension, deconstructing pre-social media conceptions of the ontology of lived experience. In a digital world shaped by limitless input by …

Care Ecologies Between Knots, Eliza R. Marris

Masters Theses

Discarded fibers like raw wool behave the way harm reduction does. Harm reduction resists stigma and works to move beyond assumptions and oversimplifications of substance use and addiction. Wool is irregular, complicated, and emotionally charged. It resists compression and maintains its own being even when pulled apart. Working with raw wool is in relationship with complexity, as is harm reduction.

At its core, harm reduction is grounded in thoughtfulness and empathy towards people, their lived experience, and its nuances. It is a witness to lives, memories, and imprints, acknowledging the entangled realities of addiction. Our detachment from fiber remainders, materials …

Menstrual Muses: Art, Storytelling, And The Care-Based Communication Of Menstrual Justice, Burcu Koleli

Masters Theses

Menstrual Muses is an artistic research project comprising a written thesis and a body of work developed across soft sculpture, ceramics, illustration, graphic memoir, digital media, and participatory workshops. The written component operates alongside the studio practice, outlining the project’s theoretical framework, methodology, and context while engaging questions of communication, accessibility, embodiment, and stigma. It situates menstruation within feminist discourse, examining how it has been culturally silenced, regulated, and shaped through systems of power.

The artistic work functions as research materialized through practice, responding to the central question of how my art can facilitate conversations around menstrual justice. It explores …

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …

Maa': An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

Research of a maa’ textile within the May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection (MWESC) from Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Report discusses different knowledge systems including technical and physical as well as cosmological and spiritual from the Toraja people. Also analyses affects of colonialism, trade, spirituality, tourism, and funerary practices.

Maa’: An Analysis From The May Weber Ethnographic Study Collection, Claire T. Chilla

Department of Anthropology

An analysis of Maa’ textiles from Sulawesi Indonesia. Discusses both the artistic symbolism, possible physical creation, and the spiritual connection of the textile for the Torajans. Informs through the lens of globalization, colonization, and funerary practices from the country of origin.

Antecedents And Consequences Of Consumer Behavior In Circular Fashion: Cognitive, Normative, And Behavioral Pathways Shaping Purchase And Participation Intentions, Mahmudul Hasan Sabuj

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The increasing environmental impact of the fashion industry has intensified the need for a systemic transition from linear to circular production and consumption models. Despite growing interest in circular fashion, there remains a limited understanding of the underlying behavioral dimensions that drive consumer engagement in sustainable practices. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Norm Activation Theory (NAT), this study examines consumer behavior through an integrated framework capturing cognitive, social, and normative influences.

Using data collected from a structured online survey (N = 575), the study employs Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), reliability analysis, and multiple regression techniques to …

Bemerge Pop Ups: Social Media Meets Sustainable Fashion, Owen Mehring, Kyla Echols, Avery Edelbrock

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Our research into the online clothing shopping industry has revealed an opportunity to mobilize the strengths of online shopping to build an in-person community. One company we researched, Poshmark, a social, peer-to-peer resale app, uses the strengths of social media to create an online community-based secondhand clothing market. However, one of the largest problems facing society today is the ease of replacing human connection with screen time in today’s world. Online shopping provides convenience, variety, and a larger reach than traditional stores do. However, the human element is often lost. Our company seeks to take the goal of Poshmark to …

Bio-Based Textiles: From Waste To Runway, Leah L. Mella Mrs., Laziza S. Shamansurova, Kory Lynn Abramowitz Ms

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Have you ever wondered what it’s like wearing fabric made from orange peels? What about mushrooms? Sustainable bio textiles are defined as “a broad category of fabrics made from renewable, natural biomass—including plants, animals, algae, or bacteria.” The purpose of this study is to explore various bio based textiles such as orange peel fabric, algae fabric, and bacterial cellulose fabric. Given that the world is currently experiencing a severe climate crisis driven by pollution and carbon emissions, we need sustainable solutions now more than ever. To prevent further damage to our planet, we need to adopt more sustainable practices, and …

Circular Textiles: How You Can Bamboo It, Corley Ballard, Sophie Ellyson, Hannah Berg, Brennan Werner

SPARK Symposium Presentations

“Circular Fashion” and “sustainability” are loosely thrown around in today’s culture, both online and in-person, but circular fashion goes far beyond common sustainability practices. It is a completely waste-free, closed-loop system of textile production and manufacturing. This presentation will focus on circular fashion, a system of reusing and recycling textiles to eliminate waste. We will take a look at its place in the fashion industry and how it interacts within the world of textile production, and give clarity on what we can do about it. We are exploring sustainability, manufacturing, and the processes by which fibers are recycled or blended. …

Craft, Love, And Loathing: Anthropology Of Hair Art In The Twenty-First Century, Eugene Kauffman

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

When hair is cut off and used in art, many people find it disgusting, but when attached, hair is seen as beautiful. Over time, these ideas have changed; in the Victorian Era, people had more tolerance and appreciation for different types of hair art, such as sculptures and accessories. In order to analyze these changes and why hair is seen as repulsive, we must look at theories of disgust and abjection. In addition, we must look at the history of bodily art and the connections it had to death and mourning. The understanding and recognition of abject mediums such as …

Below The Rows, Beyond The Roots: An Art Exhibition Depicting Agriculture Across The Globe, Maggie Enoch

Honors Theses and Capstones

In Below the Rows, Beyond the Roots, artist Maggie Enoch creates multimedia works inspired by her exposure to diverse agricultural systems and perspectives while studying geography and sustainable agriculture/food systems around the world. By integrating complex histories with the contemporary realities of farming, Maggie paints vivid pictures of the power of food in this five-piece exhibition.

Chapter 1: A Brief Introduction: Rhombus Motifs In Textiles, Billie J. A. Follensbee, Lois Martin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Presents a brief introduction to rhombus motifs in textiles.

Chapter 4: The Grid Patterns In The Vestments And Headdresses Of Female Statuary From The Classic Period Cultures Of Central Veracruz, Chantal D. Huckert

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

This chapter focuses on grid designs appearing on female clothing in Late Postclassic Nahua sources, in Maya sources, and on the Late Classic figurines of Central Veracruz. This study examines cross-hatched lattice patterns based on repetitions of rhombus and quincunx motifs associated with the sentient Mesoamerican Earth complex. The attached catalog presents a clear reference to these motifs and their variants, while the rest of the chapter is divided into two sections and addresses the general cross-hatched lattice pattern and the associated motifs. The first section discusses the all-over grid design, dotted or not, on the clothing of Mexican highland …

Chapter 5: The “Dotted-Grid” And “Dotted-Diamond” Motifs On Skirts: Fertility And Power During The Epiclassic And Early Postclassic Periods In Central And Western Mesoamerica (600 To 1200 Ce), Juliette Testard

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses gender, apparel, and attributes with respect to the Epiclassic shift in politics and ideology, the grid, hatched, and rhomboidal patterns in central Mexican imagery during the Epiclassic, and the dotted-grid and dotted-diamond motifs on female figurines during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic Periods.

Chapter 7: Symmetries Of Cloth And Corn In The Ancient Americas: Pattern Generation, Botany, And The Maize Matrix In Mexico And Peru, Lois Martin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses pattern generation, botany, and the maize matrix in Mexico and Peru.

Chapter 2: Rhombus Textile Motifs And Patterns And Their Significance In Mesoamerica, Billie J. A. Follensbee, Lois Martin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Presents the rhombus textile motifs and patterns in Mesoamerica and their significance.

Chapter 6: Snakeskin And Corn Markings: The Dotted-Diamond-Grid Pattern In The U.S. Southwest, Laurie D. Webster, Kelley A. Hays-Gilpin

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses Southwestern tie-dye and its Mesoamerican and Andean connections.

Chapter 3: Diamonds In The Rough: The Development And Occurrences Of The Rhombus Motif, Its Components, And Its Variations In Olmec And Olmec-Related Textiles, Billie J. A. Follensbee

Precious Pattern: The Dotted-Diamond Motif in Indigenous American Textiles, Explorations in Mesoamerica, the American Southwest, and the Andes

Discusses the development of textiles in the Mesoamerican Preclassic/Formative period from the Gulf Coast, the rhombus textile patterns and motifs in Olmec and Olmec-related imagery, and includes further reflections on the dotted-diamond motif, its components, and their correlations.

Algorhythm: Commodification Of Hobbies On Social Media Platforms, Fariha Ahmed

Theses and Dissertations

Forcing the world online, the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to turn social-media-based hobbies into income-generating cash cows. Digital creative spaces became sites of capitalist logic where hobbyists came to operate as both laborers and commodities. Profit-focused algorithms operate imperceptibly, shaping creative behavior and decision-making in ways that are difficult to recognize, and even harder to resist. This thesis asks how algorithmic participation on platforms such as Instagram conditions a hobbyist, and how that conditioning can be made legible to audiences who inhabit such platforms without always seeing them. Using autoethnography, I position myself as both researcher and subject to document the …

Trading Posts And "Old Pawn": Diné Navajo Trade And The Native Art Industry, Dustin Roberto

Native American Studies Student Publications

"Old pawn" is widely used to describe antique Native American jewelry and goods once pawned for credit at trading posts in the Four Corners region. This article traces how the trading post pawn system influenced Diné Navajo economic life from 1868 through the 1970s, when federal regulators documented exploitative practices such as inflated interest, withheld mail, and items sold without notice. Weavers and individuals pawning jewelry typically received store credit or overvalued commodities instead of cash, a result of the power dynamics of the setting. Today, "old pawn" functions as a marketing label for vintage goods, often without documentation. The …

Brands & Virtual Personas: How Virtual Influencer Types Impact Brand Awareness, Carol Calderon Ambelis

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As social media continues to shape how consumers interact with brands, virtual influencers (VIs) have emerged as a new type of digital celebrity. While previous research has explored how VIs contribute to brand image and awareness, there has been limited attention on how different types of VIs, both anime-like and human-like, affect consumer perceptions across different markets. This study examines how these two types of VIs impact relatability, aspiration, and brand awareness, with a focus on the differences between luxury and mass market. Using a within-subjects experimental design, this study recruited 574 participants with social media experience using MTurk. The …

Quilting As Reproductive Justice Information Activism, Liz Chenevey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Dialectic Of Airless Space, Ophelia Arc

Masters Theses

The Dialectic of Airless Space is a cumulative, cross-disciplinary research project that explores ‘airless space’ as a somatic and psychological condition shaped by institutional environments. Unfolding over time through five interrelated books, the project weaves together writing, ephemera, textile sculpture, and drawing to archive the invisible architectures of bodily and mental experience.

Recollections Of A Tejana Life, Carolina Yáñez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This thesis encompasses the life of a young woman navigating life in Texas through various political and social barriers. My interdisciplinary practice analyzes the historical context of Mexicans in Texas from its Revolutionary period into current injustices. Through fiber, printmaking, and photography I create a visual diary to illustrate what the political has made personal. These works display the beauty of Tejano culture, but also the power struggles that threaten communities I care for, as well as my own existence that persists against far-right wing agendas.

Current politics and government leadership in Texas have inspired me to make artwork calling …