The Cowl - v.81 - n.11 - Dec 1, 2016

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Volume 81, Number 11 - December 1, 2016. 24 pages

Sell (It) Yourself: Marketing Pleasure in Digital DIY

DIY (do-it-yourself) craft is in the midst of a North American renaissance, and the reasons attributed to the phenomenon\u27s meteoric rise are manifold. Thrift, conspicuous consumption, politics, environmental activism, nostalgia, individuality, community: each in turn has been cited as the driving force behind handicraft\u27s recent blossoming. In this dissertation I examine the work of professional and semi-professional crafters through an alternative explanatory lens, one that is noticeably absent from academic investigations of DIY and underutilized in the scholarship on creative work at large: the rhetoric of pleasure. Through an examination of in-depth interviews with Etsy sellers and DIY bloggers, textual analysis of promotional materials from individual crafters and from Etsy.com, and participant observation at indie craft fairs and local knitting groups, I trace pleasure\u27s effect on the chronology of commercial handicraft. First, drawing on Roland Barthes\u27s distinction between jouissance and plaisir, as well as Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi\u27s concept of flow, I argue that the pleasure crafters derive from the act of making DIY is itself bifurcated, at once concretizing and destabilizing their sense of self. I then direct my attention to the handcrafted object\u27s sale, maintaining that both jouissance and plaisir are folded into the professional crafters\u27 marketing narratives to build their personal brands and signal their creative authenticity. Finally I consider interactions between individuals in the craft community and the nature of the Etsy exchange, suggesting that commercial handicraft functions simultaneously as gift and commodity. However the primacy of pleasure throughout the sale of DIY obscures the challenges that creative entrepreneurship engenders. But in considering these oft unrecognized hardships--the loneliness and isolation; the endless administrative burdens; the pressures of a saturated marketplace--it becomes clear that there is a deep-seated irony at work: the more successful a maker becomes and the bigger her business grows, the farther away she moves from personally experiencing jouissance. I conclude by arguing that this paradox is emblematic of neoliberal creative work at large and points to the limits of the creative class thesis. I suggest that the surest path to the pleasures of creative production might in fact lie outside its professionalization

CRAFTING RESISTANCE: HANDMADE CULTURE AS A THIRD-WAVE FEMINIST RESPONSE TO CONSUMERISM

This thesis explores a resurgence of the handmade movement as a specifically third-wave feminist response to corporate consumer culture. Websites such as Etsy.com and Craftster. org have recently emerged and provide a means for crafters and purveyors of handmade goods to engage in trade, community building, and commerce with one another and consumers. I am fundamentally concerned with how the resurgence of the handmade movement relates to the greater discourse of third-wave feminism in the context of production and consumption, the rejection of corporate profiteering, and the reclaiming of one’s own labor through the handicrafts. Etsy.com and other craft websites have multiple ties to the third-wave feminist magazine, BUST, and this relationship is rigorously examined. My argument is built on a framework of feminist theory, consumption theory, and craft theory. Semiotic analyses of crafting texts and in-depth interviews with twenty-seven active crafters and Etsy members are employed in this research

CRAFTING RESISTANCE: HANDMADE CULTURE AS A THIRD-WAVE FEMINIST RESPONSE TO CONSUMERISM

This thesis explores a resurgence of the handmade movement as a specifically third-wave feminist response to corporate consumer culture. Websites such as Etsy.com and Craftster.org have recently emerged and provide a means for crafters and purveyors of handmade goods to engage in trade, community building, and commerce with one another and consumers. I am fundamentally concerned with how the resurgence of the handmade movement relates to the greater discourse of third-wave feminism in the context of production and consumption, the rejection of corporate profiteering, and the reclaiming of one’s own labor through the handicrafts. Etsy.com and other craft websites have multiple ties to the third-wave feminist magazine, BUST, and this relationship is rigorously examined. My argument is built on a framework of feminist theory, consumption theory, and craft theory. Semiotic analyses of crafting texts and in-depth interviews with twenty-seven active crafters and Etsy members are employed in this research

“Kitchen crafters”: Canning, feminism, and the value of ‘women’s work’

This thesis examines the enthusiasm and motivations for home canning in the twenty-first century within the context of the DIY movement of the 1990s and the current urban homesteading movement. Using interdisciplinary methodological approaches, including feminist history, feminist auto/biography, and autoethnography, the author provides historical background on home canning and homesteading in Canada and the United States; she also uses her own lived experiences of canning and gardening while pursing an MA in Gender Studies to analyze choice feminism. This thesis examines criticisms of the current interest in home canning by journalists, and the reactions of canning/urban homesteading bloggers to those articles. Ultimately this thesis argues that canning is a valuable skill and that feminism and foodwork are not incompatible; furthermore, blogging about canning and urban homesteading is breaking down the divide between the public and private spheres by providing an income for some bloggers through advertising and book deals

The Montclarion, February 27, 2020

Student Newspaper of Montclair State Universityhttps://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/montclarion/2357/thumbnail.jp

Before Me, After Me, Through Me: Stories Of Food And Community In Eastern Kentucky

This text contextualizes and presents twenty-three oral history interviews conducted in eastern Kentucky during the summer of 2016 as a part of a Master of Arts thesis in southern studies. The interviews were conducted with people specifically connected to food, farming, and community activism in and near Letcher County, Kentucky. The interviews explore such topics as: past and present food traditions, seed saving, gardening, farming, food preservation, herbalism, local food systems, food access, youth, theater arts, lgbtq+ advocacy, and appalachian identity. This document complements an online collection of oral history excerpts created as an audio documentary portion of the overall project