Jennifer Harris has spent thirty-five years as a maternal nurse and lactation consultant in a hospital setting. Now retired, she writes to share her professional and personal experiences with her readers. Over her career, she realized that many of her parents had experienced the loss of one of their children. She realized this grief was often unspoken of and that this pain was largely ignored and downplayed. She wrote this book to give a voice to the parents. Her aim is to write books that matter.

A lively and innovative collection of new and recent writings on the cultural contexts of textiles
The study of textile culture is a dynamic field of scholarship which spans disciplines and crosses traditional academic boundaries. A Companion to Textile Culture is an expertly curated compendium of new scholarship on both the historical and contemporary cultural dimensions of textiles, bringing together the work of an interdisciplinary team of recognized experts in the field. The Companion provides an expansive examination of textiles within the broader area of visual and material culture, and addresses key issues central to the contemporary study of the subject.
A wide range of methodological and theoretical approaches to the subject are explored--technological, anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytical, amongst others--and developments that have influenced academic writing about textiles over the past decade are discussed in detail. Uniquely, the text embraces archaeological textiles from the first millennium AD as well as contemporary art and performance work that is still ongoing. This authoritative volume:
* Offers a balanced presentation of writings from academics, artists, and curators
* Presents writings from disciplines including histories of art and design, world history, anthropology, archaeology, and literary studies
* Covers an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range
* Provides diverse global, transnational, and narrative perspectives
* Included numerous images throughout the text to illustrate key concepts
A Companion to Textile Culture is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, instructors, and researchers of textile history, contemporary textiles, art and design, visual and material culture, textile crafts, and museology.

Acknowledgments xi
List of Figures xiii
Series Editor's Preface xvii
Notes on Contributors xix
General Introduction 1
Part I Histories and Frameworks 7
1 Unraveling the Fabric of the Past: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Textiles 11
Margarita Gleba
2 Textile Cultures in the Early Modern World 27
Robert S. DuPlessis
3 Rewriting Textile Culture with Woven Words: "Oro es tu hilar" by Chilean Poet Cecilia Vicuña 45
Meredith G. Clark
4 Branding Tradition: The Commercialization of Hand Embroidery in Gujarat 61
Eiluned Edwards
5 "The Real Thing": How Object Analysis Unlocks Meaning and Enriches Documentary Evidence 83
Adrienne D. Hood
Part II Textiles, Trade, and Global Culture 105
6 Reading Textiles: Transmission and Technology of Silk Road Textiles in the First Millennium 109
Angela Sheng
7 West Africa: Technology, Tradition, and Lurex Revisited 127
John Picton
8 Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa 145
Chris Spring
9 Remaking Tradition in Art and Design in Pakistan 165
Naazish Ata-Ullah, Zeb Bilal and Shehnaz Ismail
Part III The Social Fabric: The Politics and Poetics of Cloth 181
10 Fabricating Identity: Textiles in the Pacific 187
Paul Sharrad
11 Stitching (in) Trauma: Constructing Identity in Thread Behind Prison Bars 201
Maureen Daly Goggin
12 Creative Tensions: Making (It), Unmaking, and Making Do in Textiles Informed by Feminism 219
Alexandra Kokoli
13 Spinning a Yarn of One's Own 235
Christine Checinska
14 Pictures and Polemics: Muslim Veiling Practices in Contemporary Art 257
Valerie Behiery
15 The Subversive Stitch Revisited 275
Lisa Vinebaum
Part IV Conceptual Boundaries 299
16 Modernism's Roots in the Domestic, Decorative, and Vernacular Through Textiles 303
Virginia Gardner Troy
17 Material Strategies: Cloth and Textile Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Art 317
Jennifer Harris
18 Pragmatics of Attachment and Detachment: A Constellatory Reinscription of Textile 333
Maxine Bristow
19 Japanese Textile Culture: The Example of Junichi Arai and Five Other Creators 353
Akiko Moriyama
20 Stories of Innovation: Fabrication in Africa and Beyond 371
Atta Kwami
Part V Reception and Representation 391
21 Around the World in 80 Biennials: Curating Lausanne, Hangzhou, Kaunas 395
Janis Jefferies and Lee Weinberg
22 Indigenous Textiles of North America: A Century of Exhibitions 417
Elizabeth Kalbfleisch and Janet Catherine Berlo
23 Valorizing Gee's Bend Quilts: Affinity, Adjacency, and the Modern Eye 435
Karin E. Peterson and Leisa Rundquist
24 Performing the Political in Oceanian Textile Cultures: Collectivity, Syncretism, and Globalization 459
Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll
Index 475