Crafting Womanhood: Needlework, Gender, and Politics in the United States, 1810-1920
Coming to you November 10, 2026!
University of Delaware Press Material Culture Perspectives series
Crafting Womanhood addresses histories of women's education, property ownership, antislavery organizing, and involvement in the suffrage movement, all through the lens of decorative needlework from the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.
Paying particular attention to the intersecting dynamics of race, gender, and labor, Mariah Kupfner argues that textiles provide a key vantage point on the texture of women’s lives and political engagements and asserts that gender itself is a crafted form.
Recipient of the Decorative Arts Trust’s 2025 First-Time Authors Publishing Grant, Crafting Womanhood is a rich exploration of both exceptional and everyday textiles and a robust call for attention to the ways in which social meanings are crafted.
"This book forever alters the way we encounter works of the needle in the museum, in the archive, and in the world —and by extension in the larger, full world of women's material expression."
—Marla Miller, author of The Needle's Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution
“Crafting Womanhood is the essential text for understanding the ways that women defined femininity and engaged in everyday politics through needlework. By examining this often overlooked but ubiquitous practice, Kupfner brilliantly illuminates the women who protected and challenged popular constructions of femininity, race, and class with each stitch. The beautifully reproduced and numerous illustrations underscore Kupfner’s insights at the turn of every page.”
—Allison K. Lange, author of Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement
