Join us for this talk by Christian Ayne Crouch, the dean of graduate studies and associate professor of Historical Studies and American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College, and the director of the Center for Indigenous Studies.

In dialogue with the current library exhibit Social Fabric, Crouch adds Indigenous perspectives to the exhibit’s presentation of relationships of stolen labor, racial constructions, and the interwoven Black and white experiences of New England’s industrial production. Using examples of material culture, past and present, she discusses three themes: the transformation of Indigenous experience as a result of the textile industry, the use of mass-market textiles by Indigenous peoples as a tool of survival, and the engagement of contemporary Native artists on global aesthetic sourcing and practice.

Crouch emphasizes how textiles and garments constitute essential modes of material diplomacy, encounter, and remembrance on the North American continent, and how—from the fifteenth century onwards—textiles and their ornaments animated the desires and actions of Indigenous agents, settler colonists, and enslaved individuals alike. She explains how floss, hide, thread, sinew, and fabric created avenues by which Indigenous influence, power, and aesthetics exerted themselves.

Crouch is the author of the award-winning Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France and has published on a wide range of topics in early modern Atlantic history. Her current book project, Queen Victoria's Captives: A Story of Ambition, Empire, and a Stolen Ethiopian Prince looks at the human and material culture consequences of the 1868 British Maqdala Expedition in Ethiopia/Eritrea. She has also curated exhibits for the Brooklyn Museum and the Hessel Museum.

Join us at a reception held after the talk in the Hirshland Gallery, Level 2B, Carl A. Kroch Library.

Image: Plateau bag/pouch, 1940–1950, Woven corn husk and yarn, Ida Blackeagle, Nez Perce, 1897–1976. Gift of Bette Franklin, Class of 1961, and Brad Franklin, Class of 1960, 2012.04.01. Collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Image courtesy of the Johnson Museum