About Me: “arrange whatever pieces come your way” ~Woolf

I’m a writer and assistant professor of English at Macalester College. I teach courses on modern and contemporary British and Irish literature, visual & material culture, and modernism. I’m currently hard at work on my first book project, which looks at how women authors have taken up art-making as a way to creatively—and materially—oppose inequality…

About

I’m a writer and assistant professor of English at Macalester College. I teach courses on modern and contemporary British and Irish literature, women’s literature, visual & material culture, and modernism. I’m currently hard at work on my first book project, which looks at how women authors have taken up art-making as a way to creatively—and…

Teaching

Often when I’m planning a class, a line by Borges comes to mind: “A Book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.” Intensive study of literary texts forms the core of my pedagogical approach, and I challenge students to undertake close readings that are both rigorous and creative.…

Research

You can find my curriculum vitae here. At the end of her poem, “Patchwork,” Irish poet Eavan Boland writes, “ But is it craft or art?” Although Boland is talking about quilting, the same question could be asked about most made things, be they books or burlap bags. The line between craft and art is…

Look Again! A Conversation with Irish Artist-Novelist Sara Baume

By: Amy E. Elkins October 13, 2018

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LA Review of Books recently published my Q&A with Irish novelist Sara Baume, which includes lots of beautiful images of Baume’s work, along with the photographic variants between editions of A Line Made by Walking. Check it out!

“A Stitch in Time: H.D.’s Craft Modernism as Transhistoric Repair” by Amy E. Elkins

By: Amy E. Elkins February 6, 2018February 6, 2018

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My publication about H.D.’s needleworks in The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945. Abstract: H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) maintained a longstanding interest in the material and artistic history of needlework, a practice that helped her conceptualize, theorize, and overcome traumatic wartime experiences. This essay presents, for the first time, an archive of H.D.’s needlework and demonstrates…

American Craft Council

By: Amy E. Elkins March 11, 2017February 6, 2018

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Dr. Amy Elkins: The Craft of Survival talk at the American Craft Council Library Salon Series March 8, 2017, 7pm Minneapolis, MN < Information about the talk > < Five Questions Salon Edition with Dr. Amy Elkins > < Interview: The Craft of Survival >

Digital Scholarship: The Potter’s Wheel

By: Amy E. Elkins June 11, 2015February 6, 2018

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“’Making Splendid Things’: The Potter’s Wheel Online Archive” is a digital archive collection focused on the lives and works of the Potters, a women’s art collective that created a handmade, multimedia magazine. This group of early-20th century women writers, artists, and designers lived and worked in St. Louis, Missouri. This site aims to do three…