Keywords

archives, craft activism, textiles, digital humanities, data visualization, reproductive justice

Abstract

This dissertation examines the use of embroidery as a feminist archival-activist technology. Through Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, principles of data feminism, and critical-making methodologies, I argue that craft practices like embroidery function as ideal vehicles for documenting and preserving history. I employ a three-part framework that focuses on technology, text, and textile to consider the affordances of embroidered archives across digital and material formats. Approaching archives as technologies of knowledge, I maintain that we need ongoing critical reflection about what constitutes archival work and who counts as an archivist, particularly against the backdrop of precarity. This background serves as a foundation for appreciating a wide range of archival practices and formats while recognizing how archival work functions simultaneously as activist work. I analyze Diana Weymar’s Tiny Pricks Project on Instagram as a textual example of a contemporary online embroidered archival-activist endeavor. Because Weymar’s archive is active and extensive, I focused on a reproductive-justice centered subset of her project in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health Organization U.S. Supreme Court decision. My data set included public posts from May 2022 through December 2023. I examined and identified trends within the images, language, and community responses. This analysis informed my exercise in research-creation, where I engaged in the making of a material embroidered archive in the style of Weymar’s project. The archival-making exercise revealed other affordances of the textiled archive that are not visible in electronic formats, including documentary evidence of the maker’s hand or history of the material itself. The data I collected across the digital and material formats speaks to the affordances of using embroidery as an archival-activist technology. I found that, across and within formats, embroidered archives operate as important technologies that serve memory-keeping and activist-oriented projects, particularly in times of precarity.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Salter, Anastasia

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

Texts & Technology

Format

PDF

Document Type

Dissertation

Identifier

DP0053222

Release Date

5-15-2028

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Available for download on Monday, May 15, 2028

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