A New Deal for Quilts (Virtual)

Janneken Smucker will share research from her new book A New Deal for Quilts (International Quilt Museum with University of Nebraska Press, and winner of the 2023 New Deal Book Award), exploring the ways Depression-era federal programs drew on quilts and quiltmaking as part of government relief and public relations efforts. Her visually rich presentation will feature images of quilts Americans made in support of New Deal programs, to send as gifts to the Roosevelts in appreciation, and to express their hopes and fears amid the economic downturn. Her discussion will also include governmental photography of women at work on quilts in WPA Sewing Rooms, quilts in use in precarious living conditions, and women learning quiltmaking from expert home economists in the many federally planned communities and migratory labor camps established across the country. The quilts themselves are powerful forms of communication, serving as political statements of Americans’ hopes and dreams for recovery.

About the Speaker: Janneken Smucker is a professor and historian specializing in digital history, public history, and material culture at West Chester University. Publications include Amish Quilts: Crafting and American Icon (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and A New Deal for Quilts (International Quilt Museum, 2023), exploring the federal government’s practical and symbolic uses of quilts during the Great Depression. A former co-editor of the Oral History Association’s journal, Oral History Review, she hosts and co-produces Running Stitch: A QSOS Podcast, drawing on oral histories with contemporary quiltmakers. She was a consultant for Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women, on view through August at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and author of the book of the same name. She lives in Philadelphia with her 13-year-old daughter, where she is an avid cyclist, yogi, and participant in civic life. Learn more at www.janneken.org

Admission is Pay as You Wish! Your donation is greatly appreciated. All proceeds benefit the development of future programming and the preservation of the History Center and its collections. The History Center is home to over 750,000 manuscripts, 100,000 photographs, and 70,000 artifacts. Your donation helps us to preserve and share those resources.

Register here for this pay-as-you-wish event

Presentation is via Zoom, and will be recorded and available for 7 days for all registered participants. We will email out a Zoom link the day of the presentation, and email a link to the recording within 24 hours. Note: the Zoom link emailed out the day of the presentation only takes you to the live presentation; the link emailed out the day after will contain the recorded version.

This program is made possible with support from The Haverford Trust Company.