A collection of poetry exploring eighteenth-century material culture connected to empire and enslavement on display in museums.

Esta pesquisa trata da divulgação e uso de peças comumente relacionadas ao vestuário masculino por mulheres no Brasil entre 1851 a 1911. A partir de pesquisa em jornais, que divulgavam tal moda, e de retratos fotográficos, que permitiram reconhecer o uso desta moda no país, foram feitas reflexões sobre que mulheres poderiam usar tal moda e em que contextos. Paletós, coletes, gravatas e calças foram os artefatos privilegiados nas análises para compreender os sentidos construídos em torno deles e os impactos provocados nas dinâmicas corporais e sociais que tais peças produziram. / This research focuses on both the advertisement and actual wearing of pieces commonly related to mens clothing by women in Brazil ranging from 1851 to 1911. Starting from publications of the period focused on new fashion trends and photographs the research was able to find evidence of such fashion trends in the country. Reflections were made on limiting which women were able to wear such fashion trends and in which contexts they were allowed to. Coat, vests, ties and trousers constitute privileged artifacts for a deeper comprehension on the significances surrounding them and the impacts they have caused on bodily and social dynamics that resulted from them.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

My work centers around the fact that I am a glassblower working with glass objects within a glasstradition. My BFA project from 2009 entitled ”the bastards have landed” was my first attempt atmapping out what that ultimately meant to me as a practitioner in a contemporary craft context. Theresult of that project was a discovery of my making as a way of using tradition to tell stories aboutitself. My conclusion was that by using the traditional objects as symbols I had a channel throughwhich I could communicate. Glass is a material who´s domains are closely connected to a domesticand consumeristic environment. It is put in a position where we react to its appearance with ourbody memory while also carries different social and material values depending on its appearance.When entering the master program at Konstfack University of Art Craft and Design, my idea wasthat over the next coming two years my focus would lie in the exploration and research of thesemechanisms as well as my own position as a maker and practitioner within these mechanisms.Craft, design and making are subjects that are constantly being talked about and analyzed from anumber of perspectives. There are philosophers, sociologists, historians and art historians constantlynegotiating what the field of craft is dealing with. This is something that I over the years have foundas something quite disturbing in some cases. This leaves me in a situation where I am no longerdefining my own practice. And when I am to define my practice I always do it through the ideas ofpeople from ”outside” my own position. There are many good writers from variousdisciplines writing about craft and making that I have had great use of and input from but I feel thatthere is a big lack of craft practitioners who are defining their discipline from their own standpoint.This situation is to me a bit outdated.So as mentioned above I have entered the master program with an idea to find out how to deal withveiled subjects such as tacit knowledge and material culture in order to try to transform them into acommunicative body of knowledge. My work during the past three semesters have been spread outover a number of different projects dealing with these subjects both based on objects as well asforming a discussion together with my master group.The main cause in this thesis is as always in my case to shed light on and to formulate questionsand hopefully answers around my own practice and its related subjects.The main reason for this is that craft and making as a tool for knowledge production is a cloudedsubject but according to me it holds a lot of potential. Not only for understanding questions outsidethe field but also to unveil and strengthen the practice itself.

Univ., Diss.--Kiel, 2004.

Thesis (M.A.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Bibliography: leaves 210-214. Also available online.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-141).

I am researching the experience of foster care drift. This term refers to children who are considered homeless because it is not clear where they are going next. Research shows that the majority of children who have experienced foster care drift lead unstable lives after reaching the age of eighteen. They have high levels of poverty, homelessness, and incarceration, lack the most basic literacy and life skills, do not sustain employment, and lack health care and mental health care. The research is centered in a residential treatment center for girls. I conducted ethnographic research while working with about two dozen girls, aged seven to seventeen, on service-learning projects. The girls designed projects in which they developed a sense of helping someone else. Frequently these projects involved the making and exchange of material objects. Unfortunately, the institutional structure isn’t set up to provide such activities on a regular basis. My analysis focuses on how the girls use objects to gain social status and form bonds with others. I seek to understand the nature of their sense of ownership and belonging in a group, which differ markedly from those valued outside the system. The skills the girls are practicing in the residential treatment center will serve them well in total institutions such as prisons and mental hospitals, but they will have a hard time succeeding in a job or educational setting. / text

Coast Salish coiled basketry has been a much-neglected area of research. Previous investigations into this topic have been primarily concerned with geo-cultural distributions, and discussions pertaining to stylistic attributes. In recent years several scholars have turned their attention to the topic of Salish weavings, but they have focused their efforts quite narrowly on textiles made from wool and other similar fibres to the exclusion of weaving techniques such as basketry which utilise local roots and barks. This thesis will focus exclusively on one type of Salish basketry - coiled basketry. In this thesis I explore different ways of identifying, or "knowing", Coast Salish coiled cedar root basketry. I specifically focus on Sto:lo basketry and identify three ways in which Sto:lo basket makers "know" these objects. First I discuss the Halkomelem terminology and what insights it provides to indigenous classification systems. Secondly, I situate coiled basketry in a broader Coast Salish weaving complex in order to discuss how basketry is influenced by other textile arts. This also enables me to explore how Sto:lo weavers identify a well-made object. In the final section I discuss ownership of designs by individuals and their families. This research draws primarily from interviews conducted with Sto:lo basket makers between May and September 2000 in their communities and at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC. It is supplemented by interviews with basket makers from other Salish communities and by the ethnographic literature on this topic.

The Jew’s harp is unique among instruments, and in its apparent simplicity it is deceptive. It has been adapted to a wide array of cultural contexts worldwide and a diverse range of playing techniques, which, upon closer examination, reveal much about the cultures that generate them. Drawing on perspectives from organology, ethnomusicology, comparative musicology, ethnography, material culture, and the anthropology of the body, I situate my approach to the study of musical instruments as one that examines the object on three levels: physically (the interaction between the human body and the body of the instrument), culturally (the contexts in which it is used), and musically (the way it is played and conceptualized as a musical instrument). Integrating written, ethnographic, and musical evidence, this study begins broadly and theoretically, then gradually sharpens focus to a general examination of the Jew’s harp, finally looking at a single Jew’s harp tradition in detail. Using a case study of the Balinese Jew’s harp genggong, I demonstrate how the study of musical instruments is a untapped reservoir of information that can enhance our understanding of the human relationship with sound.