Quilting Guilt: An Analysis of Quilt Artifacts, Literacies, Literacy Practices, and Application to Social Justice Reform
Abstract
This research study, titled “Quilting Guilt: An Analysis of Quilt Artifacts, Literacies, Literacy Practices, and Application to Social Justice Reform,” was written by me, Yvonne Kao, as a graduate course seminar project. In this project, my goal was to analyze five quilts as artifacts. These quilts came from SAQA’s Guns: Loaded Conversations quilt exhibition, where they were featured as a call for social justice reform regarding gun violence in the United States. I analyzed the quilts to see what quilting literacies/literacy practices they demonstrated, as well as what multiliteracies they demonstrated, for pedagogical purposes. I then analyzed what these literacies/literacy practices might be saying about quilting literacies and their work toward social justice reform. I found that quilts have a number of literacies/literacy practices specific to the art of quilting and that these artists intentionally crafted their quilts to make shared meaning for SAQA’S big themed collection advocating for social justice reform. I also concluded that while the art of making quilts for social change or pedagogy is not new, quilting is transitioning to increasingly more technological heights, and this is promising for quilting, pedagogy, literacy, and society.
Keywords
quilt-making/quilting artifact analysis SAQA literacies literacy practices multiliteracies quilting literacies/literacy practices social justice reform