This course explores the evolution of textile arts from 1975 to the present, examining its rise in academic and popular contexts. Students will investigate the influences of feminism, regionalism, the culture wars, and the LGBT liberation movement on fiber arts. The primary focus will be on how recent exhibitions and scholarship have reshaped discourse around textile arts, elevating its status in contemporary art.Through gallery and studio visits, students will engage with artists and curators actively shaping the field. By the end of the course, students will develop a critical understanding of the socio-political contexts influencing textile practices and how they contribute to discussions about the medium’s enduring significance today.At the center of the textiles curriculum is a comprehensive series of courses on the history of textiles. The study of diverse textile traditions offers cross-cultural insights on topics such as cultural continuity, gender, domesticity, race, industrialization, and colonization. A historical and theoretical knowledge of the field provides students with an informed perspective from which conceptually strong and thoughtful work can emerge. Textile history courses are offered in the spring semester only and have a four-year rotation of topics including Constructing Identity: Textiles of Africa and the Americas; Textile Biographies: The Middle East, Asia, and Oceania; Women's Work: European and Contemporary Textiles; and Fashioning the Body: A Conceptual Investigation of Body Adornment. This series is the most comprehensive offered at an arts institution in the United States.

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