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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Chloe Wigston Smith, "Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Yale UP, 2024)
Description: In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recorded in material ways, through the ink they applied to paper or the artefacts 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 colonialism.In Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2024) Dr. Chloe Wigston Smith follows the...