Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness, and Isolation

(Hardback)

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This anthology offers a framework for understanding why people urgently turn to textile handwork as a site of repair in a world on the brink and examines how craft expression aligns with political activism in a sometimes quirky and always colorful way. In a world at a constant crossroads of despair and disruption, chapter contributors provide a clear-eyed assessment of specific craft-activism campaigns since the Pussyhats, focusing on the most pressing political issues of our time, as people seek to stitch a world aligned with their belief systems that is built on a DIY-ethos of hands-on community building.

The chapters explore the impact of craftivism in the late digital age, where hands-on production and creativity can serve as an antidote to the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence and a pervasive mistrust of political processes. Does craftivism serve any meaningful purpose at a time when its been increasingly corporatized in a capitalistic system devoted to profits and divisive sloganism Can craftivism do more than amplify political divisions and reinforce suspicions of perceived ideological enemies, or can it model a more expressive and inclusive activist platform around the globe With contributions from among the most prominent thinkers on DIY civic engagement, Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation, gives politically expressive crafting its due as a powerful social force.

Author Bio

Dr. Hinda Mandell is a professor in the School of Communication at RIT in New York, where she was the director of the universitys journalism program from 2020-2024. Mandell is editor of this volume, Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation; editor Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); co-curator and co-editor of Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism (RIT Press, 2019); a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018); the author of Sex Scandals, Gender and Power in Contemporary American Politics (Praeger, 2017); and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). As a journalist, her work has been published in Politico, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, among other publications. An avid DIYer who loves to unleash creativity in others, Mandell is the founder of her universitys annual Zine Fest. Her scholarly inquiries into collaborative handcraft as change-agents have been published in Craft Research, the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and forthcoming in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship. She is on the international advisory board of the Journal of Craft & Communities and on the editorial board the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, and her research has been funded by the Center for Craft and Fiber Art Now. In 2020 she was a guest artist with Visual Studies Workshop, whose residency funded the production of her artist book, The Yarn Must Live: A Polemic on a Pandemic and Public Art, which was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2017, she has organized maker interventions on issues of social reform tied to geographic place reaching 2,000 craft participants. She is also under contract for an upcoming book with Rowman & Littlefield, Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. Shes been interviewed by The New York Times and The Associated Press, among other global outlets, on the importance of making objects by hand. She is on Instagram: @crochetactivism.