Craftivism: A special issue of Utopian Studies 22, no. 2 (2011)
Edited by Maria Elena Buszek and Kirsty Robertson
Coined by artists and collectives in the wake of the September 11th, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, the term “craftivism” relates to creative, traditional handcraft (often, assisted by high-tech means of community-building, skill-sharing, and action) directed toward political and social causes. For this special issue of Utopian Studies, we invited practitioners, scholars, and curators to submit work related to the history, criticism, and myriad practices of craftivism. Subjects and strategies include: historical and present examples of activist practice that use craft; issues of production, manufacture and use that intersect with craftivism; discussions of the successes and limits of craftivist practice; considerations of feminist craft practice that traverse (or are collapsed into) wider social issues and movements.
Copies of this special issue may be purchased through Penn State University Press, in a Kindle edition through Amazon, and read online through the Project MUSE database.
Utopian Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Society for Utopian Studies, publishing scholarly articles on a wide range of subjects related to utopias, utopianism, utopian literature, utopian theory, and intentional communities. Contributing authors come from a diverse range of fields, including American studies, architecture, the arts, classics, cultural studies, economics, engineering, environmental studies, gender studies, history, languages and literatures, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology and urban planning.