Crafting Intersectionality

The critical framework of “intersectional feminism” was first theorized Black scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s to highlight the ways in which social identities, such as race, class, and gender, and systems of inequality and discrimination, can “intersect” to create complex dynamics and impacts. It has its roots in longer histories of women-of-color feminisms and continues to be a productive research—and activist— framework to the present. Grounded in the thinking of Black, Indigenous, queer, disability, and other theorists, in this class we will practice using such theorizations as critical frameworks to complicate our consideration of craft histories, presents, and futures. bell hooks wrote of theory as “liberatory practice”; this class asks, “Can craft, too, be a liberatory practice?”

This class interrogates the discourse of craft, considering how the term “craft” has been deployed historically to create racialized, gendered, ethnic, regional, colonial, nationalist, and other hierarchies which marginalize some artistic practices. This course will also look at how craft practices have historically sustained marginalized communities and at contemporary artists reclaiming craft—a term unbounded by media which presses against the historically constructed limits of “art”—in powerful ways. We will read theory from the 1970s to the present and practice using theory as critical frameworks to discuss diverse craft artists and traditions, concentrating primarily on the United States. Students will be encouraged to bring their own practices and research interests into classroom discussions, presentations, and research. 3 credits. May satisfy the digital literacy requirement, depending on final project.

Amanda Thompson ([email protected]), PhD, is a design historian specializing in the social history of sewn arts, such as dress, quilts and dolls. Her research focuses on the dynamics of craft and gender within a settler colonial context and, more broadly, American craft within an intersectional framework. Her research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the American Philosophical Society, Center for Craft, Decorative Arts Trust, Hagley Museum and Library, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, among others. She has written for anthologies and journals including Collections and the Journal of Modern Craft. Amanda also has over fifteen years’ experience managing collections and exhibitions for museums including the New-York Historical Society, the Museum for African Art, and The Jewish Museum. She currently serves on the Board of the Tomaquag Museum, an Indigenous-led institution committed to expanding knowledge of the Native cultures and peoples of Southern New England. Amanda received her PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture from the Bard Graduate Center.