Doctoral Dissertation Origins
After Master's research on QuiltCon and the Modern Quilt Movement, I decided to continue investigating data surrounding fabric changes and women entrepreneurs in the Quilt World. These topics arose from the MQM survey and my time walking the stalls of QuiltCon. Through several iterations and an extensive literature review, I settled on centering the women entrepreneurs themselves, what media influenced their early years, how they run their businesses, what barriers they overcome, and the impacts of their tangible and intangible products.
Her + Products: American Generation X
Women Entrepreneurs as Innovators, Change Makers, and Cultural Producers in the 21st Century Quilt World
Abstract
The Quilt World, within the spaces of art and craft, can be used as a textile litmus test to measure the opportunities for and contributions of women, the original other, in the 21st century. This doctoral research is a feminist ethnography that explores the anthro-socio-economic impact of contemporary women-led entrepreneurialism through a complex inquiry into American Generation X women entrepreneurs and their tangible and intangible cultural products in the Quilt World today. Each participant was asked research questions investigating what influenced her, how she runs her business, what her barriers are, and how her creative commerce impacts her life, the Quilt World, and society. Utilizing anthropology, feminism, quilt studies, and fan studies, this research investigates cultural influences surrounding these women in their formative years, such as women’s representation in pop culture, prevalent consumerism previously established in the quilt industry, and the advent and proliferation of digital technology, to consider how these factors may or may not influence their businesses.
Using original interview and survey data from 24 distinctive women and the products and services they provide through mostly home-based businesses, patterns emerge of prevailing character traits that reveal deliberate, digital community-builders as key change makers in their homes and society. These women negotiate up to eight roles in competing urgency systems to invent monetarily successful businesses focused on altruism, legacy, and profit. This thesis argues that because of their career choices, these women’s craftswomanship contributes to a rich textile matrilineage. Their quilt businesses update definitions of women’s work to define a new domesticity where enabling others’ leisure activities fulfills their own needs for creativity and self-efficacy. Results of this investigation contribute directly to quilt studies while also expanding conceptions of women in the workforce, art’s effect on families, feminism in media, and institutional voids in the digital world.
Key words: ethnography, fandom, quiltmaking, feminism, Generation X, innovation, quilts, women entrepreneurs
