Common Threads

by | Sep 9, 2025

Introduction Many influential figures in the Appalachian Craft Revival (1896-1937) lauded handwoven overshot coverlets as one of the finest expressions of the region’s handicraft traditions (e.g., Hall 1912). As a wave of university-educated women arrived from the...

Unwritten Presence

by | Sep 9, 2025

There is knowledge that refuses the page. Knowledge that arrives on the breath, in the bend of fingers, in the hush before a voice takes hold of the air. There is wisdom that cannot be footnoted, pedagogies older than the school—more fluid than text, more precise than...

Documentary Arts

by | Sep 8, 2025

For more than four decades, Documentary Arts has introduced and employed innovative interdisciplinary methodologies to broaden public knowledge and appreciation of the arts of different cultures in all media, from photographs, films, and videos to studio and field...

The Dzaleka Art Project

by | Aug 30, 2024

The Dzaleka Art Project is a collaboration between youth living in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, undergraduate and graduate students at George Mason University (GMU), and me, a GMU Professor of Folklore and English. Six youth who live in the camp documented arts...

Manzanar, Diverted

by | Aug 30, 2024

At the foot of the majestic snow-capped Sierras, the site of Manzanar, the World War II concentration camp, is the confluence for memories of Payahuunadü, the now-parched “land of flowing water.” Intergenerational women from Native American, Japanese American, and...