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 Textile 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. The content of each thematic section is separately introduced and concludes with a bibliography for further reading. The Textile Reader is an invaluable resource for students of textile design, textile art, applied arts and crafts and material culture. Selected authors include Anni Albers; Gilles Deleuze; Félix Guattari; Sarat Maharaj; Rozsika Parker; Sadie Plant; Peter Stallybrass; Alice Walker; and Catherine de Zegher.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Touch 1. Mitchell, Victoria (Norwich University College of the Arts, UK). "Textiles, Text and Techne" in Obscure Objects of Desire: Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century, Tanya Harrod (ed.) 2. Hamlyn, Anne (owner of Dress Me, a wardrobe consultancy business, London, UK). "Freud, Fabric, Fetish" in Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture 3. Harper, Catherine (University of Brighton, UK). "Meditation on Translation and Seduction" in 2121: the Textile Vision of Reiko Sudo and Nuno. 4. Dinesen, Isak (pen name of Danish author Karen Blixen). "The Blank Page" 5. Hill, June (formerly Museums Manager for Bankfield Museum, West Yorkshire, UK). "Sense and Sensibility" 6. Bristow, Maxine (University of Chester, UK). "Continuity of Touch: Textiles as Silent Witness" Memory 7. Sorkin, Jenni (University of Houston, USA). "Stain: On Cloth, Stigma, and Shame", Third Text Journal 8. Wildgoose, Jane (Wildgoose Memorial Library, London, UK). "Considering the Evidence" 9. Stallybrass, Peter (University of Pennsylvania, USA). "Worn Worlds: Clothes, Mourning and the Life of Things," The Yale Review 81, no. 2 10. Prichard, Sue (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK). "Collecting the Contemporary: Love Will Decide What is Kept and Science Will Decide How it is Kept". Textile: Journal of Cloth & Culture 11. Healy, Robyn (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia). "The Parody of the Motley Cadaver" 12. Fenimore Cooper, James. Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief Structure 13. Calvino, Italo. "Thin Cities" & "Trading Cities". Invisible Cities 14. Beesley, Philip (University of Waterloo, Canada). "Reflexive Textile" 15. Zegher, Catherine M. (Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA). "Ouvrage: Knot a Not, Notes as Knots". The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña 16. Showalter, Elaine (Professor Emerita, Princeton University, USA). "Piecing and Writing". The Poetics of Gender. ed. Nancy K. Miller 17. Whittaker, Paul (Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK) & Padovani, Clio (Birmingham City University, UK). "Testing Orthodoxy: Collecting, the Gaze and Knitting the Impossible" 18. Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix. "Smooth & Striated Space" A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism & Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi 19. Barnett, Pennina (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK). "Folds, Fragments, Surfaces: Towards a Poetics of Cloth" 20. Clark, Judith (London College of Fashion, UK). "Statement VI" Politics 21. Danto, Arthur C. (Columbia University, New York, USA). "Weaving as Metaphor and Model for Political Thought" in Sheila Hicks 22. Auther, Elissa (University of Colorado, USA). "Fiber Art and the Hierarchy of Art and Craft, 1960-80" Journal of Modern Craft 23. Conroy, Diana Wood (University of Wollongong, Australia). "Textiles From the Edge: Tapestry Identity in Australia" 24. Bean, Susan S. (Peabody Essex Museum, USA) "Gandhi and Khadi, the Fabric of Indian Independence" in Cloth and Human Experience, edited by Annette B. Weiner and Jane Schneider 25. Maharaj, Sarat (Lund University and Malmo Art Academies, Sweden). "Arachne's Genre: Towards Intercultural Studies in Textiles" Journal of Design History 26. Shonibare, Yinka (Artist, London, UK). "Setting the Stage: Yinka Shonibare MBE in Conversation with Anthony Downey" in Yinka Shonibare MBE 27. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (Columbia University, New York, USA). "Culture" in a Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the Vanishing Present 28. Johnson, Pamela (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK). "100% Cotton" 29. Bryan-Wilson, Julia (University of California, Irvine, USA). "Lisa Anne Auerbach's Canny Domesticity" 30. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine: introduction to new edition 31. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" Production 32. Barber, Elizabeth Wayland (Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA). "A Tradition with Reason" Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years, Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times 33. Plant, Sadie (Independent writer, UK). Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. 34. Carpenter, Ele (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK). "Open Source Embroidery: Curatorial Facilitations of Material Networks" 35. Robertson, Kirsty (University of Western Ontario, Canada). "Embroidery Pirates and Fashion Victims: Textiles, Craft and Copyright, Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture 36. Miller, Melanie (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK). "Mechanical Drawing: the Schiffli Project" 37. Von Mertens, Anna (Artist, USA). Artist's Statement 38. Earley, Becky (Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, UK). Conference Transcript 39. Albers, Anni. "Constructing Textiles" in Anni Albers: Selected Writings on Design 40. Lee, Suzanne (Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK). Blog Use 41. McQuaid, Matilda (Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, USA). "Stronger, Faster, Lighter, Safer and Smarter" from Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance 42. Gschwadtner, Sabrina (Artist and Writer, New York, USA). "Knitting Is..." The Journal of Modern Craft 43. Taylor, Lou (University of Brighton, UK). "De-coding the Hierarchy of Fashion Textiles" in Disentangling Textiles 44. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter 45. Walker, Alice. "Everyday Use" In Her Own Image: Women Working in the Arts, eds. Elaine Hedges & Ingrid Wendt Index