We cordially invite you to join us this Friday, Jan 10, at 4:45-6:45pm CT, CWAC 152 for the first VMPEA workshop this winter. The workshop features:
Yuanxie Shi
PhD Candidate, East Asian Languages and Civilizations | CSGS Residential Fellow, UChicago
Who will be presenting the paper titled:
“Beyond Rural and Urban Material Cultures: Tributes and Gifts in Socialist China”
Discussant: Erica Warren
Assistant Instructional Professor, Master of Arts Program in the Humanities, UChicago
This workshop will take place in-person only. Please see the abstract and bios for this workshop below.
We hope to see many of you there!
The production team with the embroidered panel commemorating the 10th anniversary, 1959. Private Collection.
Abstract:
Social and economic historians of the People’s Republic of China have long debated the nature of Socialist China’s economy: Was it predominantly socialist, leaning towards capitalist, or a hybrid of both? One strand of this debate has focused on socialist material cultures, with scholars identifying at least two distinct material cultures within the rural-urban divide. This research, however, seeks to illuminate a third realm encompassing socialist tributes, diplomatic gifts, and certain customized luxuries. By examining a specific tribute—an embroidered panel made during the Great Leap Forward by a large group of female lacemakers and embroiderers from Chaozhou—this study explores the extent to which this relatively small realm of material culture represents a continuation of the imperial/state workshop tradition.
Bio:
Yuanxie Shi is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and a CSGS Residential Fellow, specializing in the intersections of labor and women’s history, political economy, technology, and material culture. Her dissertation, “Mao’s Clever Hands: Export Lacemaking and Socialist Flexibility in the Cold War, 1949-1980s,” explores an uncharted history of socialist industrialization since 1949 and during the Cold War. Rather than focusing on mechanical manufacturing and factory settings, her research examines mass production through labor-intensive needlework by millions of Chinese women, primarily in rural areas. This project reveals the subaltern status of rural women and bridges an overlooked social category in both the socialist hierarchy of values and the international division of labor.
Erica Warren is a curator and scholar with over ten years’ experience working with collections, in museums, and teaching. She is currently an assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and the co-founder of The Craft Chronicle, an interactive digital humanities project that further elucidates and visualizes the interconnectedness of craft practice across the United States throughout the twentieth century and beyond. In 2025, Erica will be a Lenore G. Tawney Foundation Fellow. Erica’s area of specialization within decorative arts and design histories centers on the nineteenth century through the present day with a focus on alternative modernisms. Within this broad expanse, her research pursuits include the human and ecological costs that attended industrial innovations in modern textile production; color theory, synthetic dyes and modernists with intermedial art practices; the American designer, entrepreneur, and weaver Dorothy Liebes; the historiographies of modern craft and design; and the unbounded, yet materially specific, practices of contemporary artists.
From 2016-2022, Erica was a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, where her exhibitions included Bisa Butler: Portraits, Weaving beyond the Bauhaus, Super/Natural: Textiles of the Andes, Music and Movement: Rhythm in Textile Design, Making Memories: Quilts as Souvenirs, and Modern Velvet: A Sense of Luxury in the Age of Industry. Prior to her tenure at the Art Institute, Erica was a curatorial fellow in the Department of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture and a research assistant in the Department of American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where she curated the exhibition The Main Dish. Erica has taught courses at the University of Chicago, Drexel University, and the Tyler School of Art, Temple University. She earned her PhD in Art History from the University of Minnesota and has participated in the Attingham Summer School.