Abigail Mcgowan
Biographic Data
| ID | 3767828 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abigail Mcgowan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abigail |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcgowan |
| SIGNATURE | MCGOWAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Vermont |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Mothers and Godmothers of Crafts: Female Leadership and the Imagination of India as a Crafts Nation, 1947–67
Among the many nation-building projects launched soon after India’s Independence, crafts had a prominent role as a key way to support Indian culture, encourage diverse Indian production and build rural employment. These new efforts in crafts reveal the leadership of a group of powerful women, including most prominently Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar. Together, Chattopadhyay, Jayakar and others helped forge the idea of India as a craft…
Selling Home: Marketing Home Furnishings in Late Colonial Bombay
This essay explores the emergence of new forms of retail in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bombay, an era which saw the development of new shopping districts, department stores, showrooms, and retail culture in the city. In a city known for its market density and commercial vibrancy, elite retailers tried to reach out to consumers in new ways, enticing them in from the street with window displays, standardized product lines, and nove…
The Materials of Home: Studying Domesticity in Late Colonial India
In this essay I argue for opening up South Asian historiography on the home to explore not just ideals of middle-class domesticity, but also the material goods and spaces of home lives. This helps to rethink class, as ideals of middle-class respectability were often worked out in buildings and through goods shared with lower classes, deploying caste hierarchies to articulate definitions of proper home life. At the same time, taking materials and …
Khadi Curtains and Swadeshi Bed Covers: Textiles and the changing possibilities of home in western India, 1900–1960
In examining the remarkable expansion of India's textile production in the late colonial period, many scholars have identified consumption trends as shaping the relative success of mills as opposed to handlooms. That scholarship, however, has focused on only one component of consumption: clothing. This article explores another important area of cloth consumption in western India: non-clothing textiles. Across classes, urban dwellers used curtains…
Ahmedabad's Home Remedies: Housing in the Re-Making of an Industrial City, 1920–1960
Long known as innovative in modernist architecture, mid century Ahmedabad was also pioneering in another area of built form: housing. Starting in the 1920s when Indians seized control of urban politics, Ahmedabadis launched a number of bold new initiatives to improve housing in the city, involving a striking range of actors—labour activists, middle-class reformers, mill owners, and municipal leaders. Largely ignored under earlier British leadersh…
Convict Carpets: Jails and the Revival of Historic Carpet Design in Colonial India
One promising traditional industry slated for revival in late colonial India was carpet weaving. Characterized by low technology, high product value, and strong demand, carpets appealed for obvious economic reasons, while simultaneously evoking India's luxurious artisanal past. In western India, carpet weaving was centered in jails where convicts produced high-quality rugs using historic designs in prison factories that served as laboratories for…
Crafting the Nation in Colonial India
Modernizing Artisanship: Rationalization, Efficiency, and the Cult of the Craftsman
In 1889, writing at the height of the preservationist efforts discussed in Chapter 3—with the Lahore and Jaipur exhibitions less than seven years before, the Journal of Indian Arts and Industries in its second volume, the Technical Art Series only three years old, and the Reay Workshops to open the following year—the Gujarati poet Dhirajrai issued a plea for industrial regeneration in India in the pages of the Buddhiprakash: O Natives, now take p…
An All-Consuming Subject? Women and Consumption in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Western India
This article examines the emergence of women as new consuming subjects in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century western India. In a period of material and social change, elite women had new access to and new control over goods; reformers argued that it was the duty of the modern wife to manage the material comforts of household life. Examining writing by and for women, including memoirs, advice manuals, and popular journals, this article f…
All that is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful: Design and the Defense of Tradition in Colonial India, 1851-1903
In the 1880s and 1890s, British officials worried that traditional Indian design was disappearing in the face of rapid westernization. But their idea of what constituted 'traditional' design was itself new, forged first at international exhibitions and then in the context of Indian artisanal and consumer experimentation with novel combinations of foreign styles and objects. Indeed, it was the latter which prompted British art officials in India t…
Convict Carpets: Jails and the Revival of Historic Carpet Design in Colonial India
One promising traditional industry slated for revival in late colonial India was carpet weaving. Characterized by low technology, high product value, and strong demand, carpets appealed for obvious economic reasons, while simultaneously evoking India's luxurious artisanal past. In western India, carpet weaving was centered in jails where convicts produced high-quality rugs using historic designs in prison factories that served as laboratories for…
An All-Consuming Subject? Women and Consumption in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Western India
This article examines the emergence of women as new consuming subjects in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century western India. In a period of material and social change, elite women had new access to and new control over goods; reformers argued that it was the duty of the modern wife to manage the material comforts of household life. Examining writing by and for women, including memoirs, advice manuals, and popular journals, this article f…
Mothers and Godmothers of Crafts: Female Leadership and the Imagination of India as a Crafts Nation, 1947–67
Among the many nation-building projects launched soon after India’s Independence, crafts had a prominent role as a key way to support Indian culture, encourage diverse Indian production and build rural employment. These new efforts in crafts reveal the leadership of a group of powerful women, including most prominently Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar. Together, Chattopadhyay, Jayakar and others helped forge the idea of India as a craft…
Khadi Curtains and Swadeshi Bed Covers: Textiles and the changing possibilities of home in western India, 1900–1960
In examining the remarkable expansion of India's textile production in the late colonial period, many scholars have identified consumption trends as shaping the relative success of mills as opposed to handlooms. That scholarship, however, has focused on only one component of consumption: clothing. This article explores another important area of cloth consumption in western India: non-clothing textiles. Across classes, urban dwellers used curtains…
Ahmedabad's Home Remedies: Housing in the Re-Making of an Industrial City, 1920–1960
Long known as innovative in modernist architecture, mid century Ahmedabad was also pioneering in another area of built form: housing. Starting in the 1920s when Indians seized control of urban politics, Ahmedabadis launched a number of bold new initiatives to improve housing in the city, involving a striking range of actors—labour activists, middle-class reformers, mill owners, and municipal leaders. Largely ignored under earlier British leadersh…
All that is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful: Design and the Defense of Tradition in Colonial India, 1851-1903
In the 1880s and 1890s, British officials worried that traditional Indian design was disappearing in the face of rapid westernization. But their idea of what constituted 'traditional' design was itself new, forged first at international exhibitions and then in the context of Indian artisanal and consumer experimentation with novel combinations of foreign styles and objects. Indeed, it was the latter which prompted British art officials in India t…
All that is Rare, Characteristic or Beautiful: Design and the Defense of Tradition in Colonial India, 1851-1903
In the 1880s and 1890s, British officials worried that traditional Indian design was disappearing in the face of rapid westernization. But their idea of what constituted 'traditional' design was itself new, forged first at international exhibitions and then in the context of Indian artisanal and consumer experimentation with novel combinations of foreign styles and objects. Indeed, it was the latter which prompted British art officials in India t…
An All-Consuming Subject? Women and Consumption in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth-Century Western India
This article examines the emergence of women as new consuming subjects in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century western India. In a period of material and social change, elite women had new access to and new control over goods; reformers argued that it was the duty of the modern wife to manage the material comforts of household life. Examining writing by and for women, including memoirs, advice manuals, and popular journals, this article f…
Crafting the Nation in Colonial India
Modernizing Artisanship: Rationalization, Efficiency, and the Cult of the Craftsman
In 1889, writing at the height of the preservationist efforts discussed in Chapter 3—with the Lahore and Jaipur exhibitions less than seven years before, the Journal of Indian Arts and Industries in its second volume, the Technical Art Series only three years old, and the Reay Workshops to open the following year—the Gujarati poet Dhirajrai issued a plea for industrial regeneration in India in the pages of the Buddhiprakash: O Natives, now take p…
Ahmedabad's Home Remedies: Housing in the Re-Making of an Industrial City, 1920–1960
Long known as innovative in modernist architecture, mid century Ahmedabad was also pioneering in another area of built form: housing. Starting in the 1920s when Indians seized control of urban politics, Ahmedabadis launched a number of bold new initiatives to improve housing in the city, involving a striking range of actors—labour activists, middle-class reformers, mill owners, and municipal leaders. Largely ignored under earlier British leadersh…
Convict Carpets: Jails and the Revival of Historic Carpet Design in Colonial India
One promising traditional industry slated for revival in late colonial India was carpet weaving. Characterized by low technology, high product value, and strong demand, carpets appealed for obvious economic reasons, while simultaneously evoking India's luxurious artisanal past. In western India, carpet weaving was centered in jails where convicts produced high-quality rugs using historic designs in prison factories that served as laboratories for…
Khadi Curtains and Swadeshi Bed Covers: Textiles and the changing possibilities of home in western India, 1900–1960
In examining the remarkable expansion of India's textile production in the late colonial period, many scholars have identified consumption trends as shaping the relative success of mills as opposed to handlooms. That scholarship, however, has focused on only one component of consumption: clothing. This article explores another important area of cloth consumption in western India: non-clothing textiles. Across classes, urban dwellers used curtains…
Selling Home: Marketing Home Furnishings in Late Colonial Bombay
This essay explores the emergence of new forms of retail in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bombay, an era which saw the development of new shopping districts, department stores, showrooms, and retail culture in the city. In a city known for its market density and commercial vibrancy, elite retailers tried to reach out to consumers in new ways, enticing them in from the street with window displays, standardized product lines, and nove…
The Materials of Home: Studying Domesticity in Late Colonial India
In this essay I argue for opening up South Asian historiography on the home to explore not just ideals of middle-class domesticity, but also the material goods and spaces of home lives. This helps to rethink class, as ideals of middle-class respectability were often worked out in buildings and through goods shared with lower classes, deploying caste hierarchies to articulate definitions of proper home life. At the same time, taking materials and …
Mothers and Godmothers of Crafts: Female Leadership and the Imagination of India as a Crafts Nation, 1947–67
Among the many nation-building projects launched soon after India’s Independence, crafts had a prominent role as a key way to support Indian culture, encourage diverse Indian production and build rural employment. These new efforts in crafts reveal the leadership of a group of powerful women, including most prominently Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Pupul Jayakar. Together, Chattopadhyay, Jayakar and others helped forge the idea of India as a craft…
Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Colonialism (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Fashion and Cultural Textiles (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Social science (4 works)