Teaching Textiles: The History of Craft Instruction

Teaching Textiles: The History of Craft Instruction is a symposium at the School of Human Ecology, in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection.

The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection is part of the Center for Design and Material Culture, which promotes learning, exploration, outreach, and community engagement related to design and material culture through interdisciplinary and human-centered scholarship and through stewardship of its collections and galleries.

The symposium will explore this nexus of skill, education, communication, enterprise, and collecting. Because textiles are used so broadly— from the necessities of shelter, such as clothing, fabric structures, and bedding; to luxuries, such as ornamental embroidery for embellishing the home or body; to cultural symbols, such as religious vestments—the dissemination of their making also ranges broadly, across place and time. We welcome proposals for case studies, comparisons, or thematic approaches from across history and around the globe.

For more information or to view the symposium’s call for papers, visit www.teachingtextiles.net. You may also contact Prof. Marina Moskowitz at mmoskowitz@wisc.edu or 608.262.2015.