Join us for an virtual talk with Professor Chloe Wigston Smith about her new book ‘Novels, Needlework and Empire’.
Celebrating the launch of Professor Chloe Wigston Smith’s first book, ‘Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World’.
Novels, Needleworks, and Empire traces women's material contributions to colonialism, through the ink they applied to paper or the artifacts they created with muslin, silk threads, feathers, and shells. Handiwork, such as sewing, knitting, embroidery, and other crafts, formed a familiar presence in the lives and learning of girls and women across social classes, and it was deeply connected to empire. Chloe's book follows the material and visual images of the Atlantic world that found their way into the hands of women and girls in Britain and early America—in the objects they made, the books they held, the stories they read. A range of artifacts made by women, including makers of color, brought the global into conversation with domestic crafts and consequently placed images of empire and colonialism within arm’s reach.
Chloe is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of York, where she teaches in the Department of English and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. She is the author of Women, Work, and Clothes in the Eighteenth-Century Novel. She is co-editor of two recent collections: Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers (with Serena Dyer) and Small Things in the Eighteenth Century: The Personal and Political Value of the Miniature (with Beth Fowkes Tobin).
This talk will be on Tuesday 25th June 2024 at 7pm – 8pm London time. It will be online on Zoom, and is a members only talk.
Members will be emailed their private booking link via EventBrite.
