How Does a Knitted Vagina Work? The Craftivist Response to Current Political Issues through the Utilization of Historically Feminine Crafts
This thesis explores how historically women’s crafts such as needlework and fiber arts have informed acts of political protest with a focus on the craftivist response to contemporary women’s reproductive rights surrounding the Supreme Court Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision (2014). Individuals and organized groups, including Government Free VJJ: Project Snatchel, Knit a Brick, and Wombs on Washington responded to the attempts and legalization of restricting women’s reproductive freedom. I am interested in how contemporary craftivism utilizes the historically feminine mediums of fiber-based craft to further social awareness of political feminine issues. INDEX WORDS: Craftivism, Activism, Knitting, Gender, Women’s Rights, Pro-Choice HOW DOES A KNITTED VAGINA WORK? THE CRAFTIVIST RESPONSE TO CURRENT POLITCAL ISSUES THROUGH THE UTILIZATION OF HISTORICALLY FEMININE CRAFTS
Thinking Through Craft
"This book is a timely and engaging introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Workmanship is key to today's visual arts, where high "production values" are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet craft's centrality to contemporary art has received little serious attention from critics and historians. 
Dispensing with cliched arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion. The interesting thing about craft, he argues, is that it is perceived to be "inferior" to art. The book consists of an overview of various aspects of this second-class identity - supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. It also provides historical case studies analyzing craft's role in a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, contemporary art and the crafts themselves." -- Back cover
Negotiating the cultural and economic outcomes of sport heritage attractions: the case of the National Baseball Hall of Fame
ABSTRACT Contemporary museums must balance their roles as commercial entities and repositories of various, and often dissonant, heritages and histories. Sports museums in particular often have clear commercial and nostalgic aims, particularly through tourist visitation, though the extent to which they represent more challenging narratives remains unclear. This paper examines how one of the most famous sports museums in the world, the National Baseball Hall of Fame (NBHF) in Cooperstown, New York, balances its dual role as tourist attraction and repository of baseball's sometimes checkered past. It was found that different sections of the museum provide greater or lesser degrees of engagement with more controversial issues, although the commercial outputs and appeal of the museum remains clear throughout. Utlimately, the NBHF demonstrates that balancing veneration and critique in collections can be commercially prosperous, and can provide a template for other sport and popular culture museums who may be wary of incorporating more challenging narratives in their exhibits. Furthermore, the symbiotic relationship between the Hall of Fame and the village of Cooperstown, particularly in creating and maintaining cultural and economic outputs, requires further exploration.