A COMPANION TO TEXTILE CULTURE

Jennifer Harris

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, USA

Year 2020

Pages 660

This is 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. The book 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. It 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.