"The Textile Reader is the first anthology to address textiles as a distinctive area of cultural practice and a developing field of scholarly research. Revealing the full diversity of approaches to the study of textiles, the Reader introduces students to the theoretical frameworks essential to the exploration of the textile from both a critical and a creative perspective. Content is drawn from a wide range of genres - blogs, artists' statements and fiction, as well as critical writings - and organized in themed sections covering touch, memory, structure, politics, production and use. Each thematic section is separately introduced and concludes with a bibliography for further reading. The Textile Reader will be an invaluable resource for students of textile design, textile art, applied arts and crafts and material culture. Selected authors include Glenn Adamson, Anni Albers, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Sarat Maharaj, Rozsika Parker, Sadie Plant, Peter Stallybrass, Alice Walker and Catherine de Zegher"-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Touch -- Textiles, text and techne / Victoria Mitchell -- Freud, fabric, fetish / Anne Hamlyn -- Meditation on translations and seduction / Catherine Harper -- The blank page / Isak Dinesen -- Sense and sensibility / June Hill -- Continuity of touch--textile as silent witness / Maxine Bristow -- 2. Memory -- Stain: on cloth, stigma, and shame / Jenni Sorkin -- Considering the evidence / Jane Wildgoose -- Worn worlds: clothes, mourning and the life of things / Peter Stallybrass -- Collecting the contemporary: 'Love will decide what is kept and science will decide how it is kept / Sue Pritchard -- The parody of the motley cadaver: displaying the funeral of fashion / Robyn Healy -- Autobiography of a pocket handkerchief / James Fennimore Cooper -- 3. Structure -- Invisible cities / Italo Calvino -- Reflexive textile / Philip Beesley -- Ouvrage: knot a not, notes as knots / Catherine de Zegher -- Piecing and writing / Elaine Showalter -- Testing orthodoxy: collecting, the gaze, knitting the impossible / Paul Whittaker and Clio Padovani -- 1440: the smooth and the striated / Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari -- Folds, fragments, surfaces: towards a poetics of cloth / Pennina Barnett -- Statement VI / Judith Clark -- 4. Politics -- Weaving as metaphor and model for political thought / Arthur C. Danto -- Fiber art and the hierarchy of art and craft, 1960-80 / Elissa Auther -- Tapestry and identity in Australia / Diana Wood Conroy -- Gandhi and Khadi, the fabric of Indian independence / Susan S. Bean -- Arachne's genre: towards inter-cultural studies in textiles / Sarat Maharaj -- Setting the stage: Yinka Shonibare MBE in conversation with Anthony Downey / Anthony Downey -- Culture / Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak -- 100% cotton / Pamela Johnson -- Lisa Anne Auerbach's canny domesticity / Julia Bryan-Wilson -- The subversive stitch: embroidery and the making of the feminine / Rozsika Parker -- The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman -- 5. Production -- A tradition with a reason / Elizabeth Wayland Barber -- Zeroes + one: digital women & the new technoculture / Sadie Plant -- Open source embroidery: curatorial facilitation of material networks / Ele Carpenter -- Embroidery pirates and fashion victims: textiles, craft and copyright / Kirsty Robertson -- The romance of modern manufacture--a brief history of embroidered embellishment / Melanie Miller -- Artist's statement / Anne Von Mertens -- Upcycling textiles: adding value through design / Rebecca Earley -- Constructing textiles / Anni Albers -- Biocouture or how to grow a frock ... / Suzanne Lee -- 6. Use -- Stronger, faster, lighter, safer, and smarter / Matilda McQuaid -- Knitting is ... / Sabrina Gschwandtner -- De-coding the hierarchy of fashion textiles / Lou Taylor -- The Scarlet Letter / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Everyday use / Alice Walker.

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