Rosemary Sallee

Through a variety of lenses, contemporary crafting is examined as a complex and contradictory gender and class performance that serves as a form of communication among women that both enables and contains oppositional and gender role explorations. Crafting is created through myriad texts which transform into an individual form of expression, a societal spectacle, a fashion trend, a subculture, an addiction, a coping mechanism, an oppositional act, and a means of healing both physically and emotionally. This study investigates how the objects women make and collect reflect and define crafters’ negotiations between personal desires and public personas, help them voice their own identities, tell their own stories, and connect with – or distance themselves from – other generations of “crafty women.” The role of objects and their multiple meanings in individuals’ lives is examined. Specifically, how objects narrate gender identity and debates, are evidence of resistance to dominant gende...

Why do humans hold onto traditions? Many pundits predicted that modernization and the rise of a mass culture would displace traditions, especially in America, but cultural practices still bear out the importance of rituals and customs in the development of identity, heritage, and community. In "Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture," Simon J. Bronner discusses the underlying reasons for the continuing significance of traditions, delving into their social and psychological roles in everyday life, from old-time crafts to folk creativity on the Internet. Challenging prevailing notions of tradition as a relic of the past, "Explaining Traditions" provides deep insight into the nuances and purposes of living traditions in relation to modernity. Bronner's work forces readers to examine their own traditions and imparts a better understanding of raging controversies over the sustainability of traditions in the modern world.