A Honeysuckle Basket by Joan Shoemaker (Cherokee)
Pictured here (Figure 1) is a seed pot-style (i.e. globe shaped with a small opening) basket by Joan Shoemaker (b. 1937) (Cherokee Nation) (then) of Locust Grove, Oklahoma.…
Tag: craft
Workshop: Textile Arts and Heritage Practices in Southwest China
I am happy to be hosting a group of colleagues in Bloomington this week for a long-delayed (COVID…) writing workshop on “Textile Arts and Heritage Practices in Southwest…
Article: “A Survey of Contemporary Bai Craft Practices in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China” in Museum Anthropology Review 16(1-2)
I am very happy to note a new co-authored article titled “A Survey of Contemporary Bai Craft Practices in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China.” It was…
Article: “Basketry among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China” in Asian Ethnology 81(1-2)
I am very happy to note the publication of “Basketry among Two Peoples of Northern Guangxi, China” in the latest double issue of Asian Ethnology. This article is…
Writing LifeNo. 14: An Interview with Hélène Mialet by Catelijne Coopmans
Image 1: Hélène’s home office. The pandemic has revealed the fragility of our lives and the vulnerability of our bodies. It has also revealed the importance of fleshy…
Writing Life No. 13: An interview with Matthew Wolf-Meyer by Matthew Wolf-Meyer
From the bottom left, clockwise: my writing board (which currently has a note from my kids and a note about a future paper to be written), a stack…
Writing Life No. 12: An interview with Sienna Craig by Yana Stainova
Image 1. Photo of Rauner Special Collections library at Dartmouth College, taken from the perspective of Sienna’s favorite table. Photo by Eli Burakian, 2014. Sienna Craig is a writer…
Writing Life No. 11: An interview with Susan Frohlick by Amy Speier
Figure 1. Sue’s writing space in the beautiful Syilx (Okanagan) Nation territory. With Scooter, the family’s unruly cat. The development of our writing dyad has unfolded organically over…
Writing Life No. 10: An interview with Sebastjan Vörös by Mareike Smolka
Figure 1: Sebastjan’s philosophy notebook and writing space in Ljubljana, Slovenia “Curiously, our letters turned out to be not a mere sum of (theoretically discrete) elements but a…
Writing Life No. 9: An interview with Danya Fast by Robert Lorway
It is 11 am in Vancouver. Danya sits at a desk beside a large window that looks out onto tree tops and electrical wires. Rain pools in the…
Writing Life No. 5: An interview with Robert Desjarlais by Michelle Charette
Photo by Robert Desjarlais “British poet W.H Auden suggested that true poets are those who like ‘hanging around words listening to what they say.” Desjarlais, 2011, Counterplay: An…
Writing Life No. 3: An interview with Janelle Taylor by Anna Harris
Figure 1: Janelle’s chair, with writing and knitting projects underway The conversation began on a summer day in a 13th Century chateau, with a moat, on the outskirts…
Writing Life No. 2: An interview with Adia Benton by Patrick Mbullo
Figure 1: Adia’s writing space “A special thanks to all the elders who ever told me to learn to be still. Research need not be running around in…
Writing Life No. 1: An interview with Rachel Prentice by Andrea Wojcik
Figure 1: Rachel’s writing space with friend Jasper (2007-2019) (Photograph by Rachel Prentice) Rachel E. Prentice is a no muss, no fuss anthropologist of medicine, technology, and the…
Amy Binning takes the Page 99 test
Just clinging to the end of page 99 in my dissertation is a tentative question: “but should it really be that the presence of a model, even a…
Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth takes the p. 99 test
Opening to page 99 of Finding the Singing Spruce: Craft Labor, Global Forests, and Musical Instrument Makers in Appalachia, you’ll find my reflections on choosing apprenticeship as the ethnographic…
Two Collections of Florida Seminole Dolls
Since beginning the social distancing era, I have taken on a small, personal project to photograph and share two collections of Florida Seminole dolls from my life. Building…
Remembered Visits to Seminole and Miccosukee Country
Some readers of Shreds and Patches know that I just lost my father KBJ (1935-2020). Others know that I am presently returning to my studies of craft from…
A Cooperative Craft Survey in Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, Part 1
A note on photographs. Here just a few photographs from the first day of our May 2019 travel in Yunnan are presented. It will take time to work…
CFP: Studying Traditional Crafts: Goals and Methods in Higher Education
Here is a call for papers for an exciting conference in Estonia. The hosts are wonderful colleagues whom I met while visiting Viljandi last fall. Their call is…
Material Culture Journalism, 7
The Material Culture students do not know about Material Culture Journalism yet. Maybe this week I’ll mention it to them. Day one was surely an overload as it…
Material Culture Journalism, 3
Thanks to all the friends sharing the material culture journalism. Here is a new batch. The passing of Shan Goshorn is particularly sad to note. “The making of…
Google Celebrates Native Artist in November 9th Doodle
A guest post by Emily Buhrow Rogers. A carved bear by Amanda Crowe (Eastern Band Cherokee) from the collections of the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, Indiana University.…
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences by Marshall Kramer
Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Sciences Projit Bihari Mukharji University of Chicago Press, 2016. 376 pages. In a sequel to his 2009 Nationalizing the Body,…