Content area
Abstract
Applying performance theory to contemporary craft in the United States, my dissertation examines how processes of making, learning, and displaying craft created and defined an idea of craft. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at three folk schools in the United States, sites of non-competitive adult education that offered courses to all levels of craftspeople in a variety of mediums – John C. Campbell Folk School (North Carolina), North House Folk School (Minnesota) and Arbutus Folk School (Washington). Investigating process-focused education, I frame craft as performance, a framework that conceptualizes craft as emergent, dynamic, and situated in the social relations of people, rather than the physical limitations of materials. My research documents the experiences of individuals to understand how craft was made, as both object and concept.
In my introductory chapter, I situate my study within a historical approach to craft in the United States with attention to performance and expressive, multi-vocal patterns of communication. In Chapter 2, I outline the schools’ histories and philosophies to consider how each location developed over time to form their own craft identities. In Chapter 3, I examine one course at Campbell, exploring questions of individual and collective approaches to teaching, self-presentation, and materials. I focus on North House in Chapter 4 to challenge static understandings of tradition. In looking at the complexities and contradictions of time and place, I analyze how ideas of tradition and heritage were used as tools to construct communal and cultural identities. Chapter 5 situates the reader in all three schools, considering the roles of the individual makers to examine intertextual communication through processes of making.
Understanding craft in the context of the folk schools, I argue that the idea of craft emerges in the multiple interpretations of its makers; craft is creative expression shaped by our histories, communities, institutions, and individual selves.
