As indigenous communities contend with the continuing social and economic consequences of nineteenth-century colonization and navigate current global production schemes, textile traditions have changed from forms of physical survival, artistic expression, and spiritual intervention to vehicles for constructing identity and preserving culture. This course examines historical and contemporary textile practices of adaptation and resistance, such as African printed cloth, the basketry tradition of native California, and Gandhi’s use of hand-spun cloth in the fight for Indian independence. Readings and lectures highlight the perseverance of traditional artists and cultural continuity, appropriation and shifting definitions of "authenticity," and the social and political role of textiles in indigenous culture reclamation movements.

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