All articles filed in Amy E. Elkins

My forthcoming book begins with thinking about Eve Sedgwick’s idea of the “weaver’s handshake” as “a tactile interrogation,” an inherited gesture for testing our surroundings, a subtle movement that measures the “rub of reality.” In my final section, I return to this idea, adding to it the “threader’s kiss”–a term I use to describe the…

The Museum of Art and Design currently features an exhibit on “garmenting,” described as artists “making or altering clothing for expressive purposes” to “create garments, sculpture, installation, and performance art that transform dress into a critical tool. Adopted globally as an artistic strategy, garmenting uses the language of fashion to challenge traditional divisions of form…

Recent publication: “Typestruck: On Women and Writing Machines” co-authored with Glenn Adamson over on the Modernism/Modernity Print Plus platform, part of the “Visualities” series annd edited by Alix Beeston: https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/elkins-adamson-typestruck We argue for the gendered significance of typewriting and look closely at Stevie Smith’s Novel on Yellow Paper as a technographic text. The collaborative, dynamic…

Irish writer-artist Sara Baume makes things–both on the page and with her hands–that inspire my thinking and challenge me to revisit the idea of craft across various environmental, literary, and historical contexts. Her new work of narrative nonfiction, handiwork, is a book that does all of those things. I recently wrote a review essay for Decorating…

Kissing Quilt Amy E. Elkins 2020 Mixed media quilt (cyanotype, embroidery, indigo dyed fabrics) 39 ½ in. x 70 ½ in. This year, I’ve been writing about how women writers use craft in their writing as a way to survive crises, work through trauma, express queer feelings, and resist oppressive systems of time, politics, racism,…

Check out my recent piece in PMLA: From the Gutter to the Gallery: Berenice Abbott Photographs Mina Loy’s Assemblages I’m a big fan of the Little Known Documents feature in this journal. In my archival piece, I detail the significance of newly discovered photographs that American photographer Berenice Abbott took in Mina Loy’s Bowery apartment.…

Ali Smith is my hero.  I love her books, and it has been a source of great joy to study her work as I draft my chapter for Crafting Modernity.  I keep returning to her words in my new Q&A up at LA Review of Books as a source of inspiration, wonder, and creative bravery.  I feel especially…

  Creative Pedagogy Workshop at Cardiff U. I recently spoke to community members at Cardiff University about creative approaches to pedagogy and how we might understand our role as teachers in the 21st c. classroom.  After an introductory lecture, I invited participants to engage in close reading of Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel To the Lighthouse…