The Material Culture of Gender: The Gender of Material Culture (Winterthur Book)

Twenty-one essays explore how the physical things that we surround ourselves with both reflect and condition the process by which we construct and express ourselves as gendered beings. The papers discuss the topic from four perspectives: the genderedness of everyday things such as the maleness of the New Jersey Turnpike and the different cars used by men and women in the early days of the automobile industry; the valuation process of men's and women's spheres of materiality, including discussions of craft fairs, the recent rediscovery of quilting, and the process of collecting; the way artifacts such as landscape painting produce gendered culture; and finally, the way culture produces gendered beings, with looks at toddlers clothing and the banality of men's clothing. Distributed by the U. Press of New England. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.