Adrienne Hood

Biography

Professor Hood’s main research interests are production and consumption in early America and the early modern Atlantic world, particularly related to textiles, clothing and fashion.  Her work has an interdisciplinary focus and includes material culture theory and methodology, and museology.  Professor Hood’s book, The Weaver’s Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania, was published in 2003 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.  She has published articles in the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of Social History, and the Journal of American History, and her work has appeared in several edited volumes and anthologies.  She is presently working on a new project called “Fashion and Memory” that explores the links between museum collections and historical realities, particularly as they relate to clothing and household fabric furnishings in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

rESEARCH iNTERESTS

Production and consumption in early America
Textiles and clothing; fashion, material culture theory and methodolody and museology

education

Ph. D History, University of California, San Diego (1988)

M. A. History, University of California, San Diego (1982)

B. A. Honours English and History, Glendon College, York University, Toronto (1979)

awards and distinctions

Columbia University Dissertation Prize in Economic History in Honor of Allan Nevins, 1989
Prize (book) for outstanding graduating student in European History, Glendon College, York University

Selected publications

BOOKS

The Weaver’s Craft: Cloth, Commerce, and Industry in Early Pennsylvania, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003)

Fashioning Fabric: The Arts of Spinning and Weaving in Early Canada, (James Lorimer & Company, Publishers, 2007)

ARTICLES

“Material Culture: The Object,” in History Beyond the Text: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, Sarah Barber and Corrina Peniston-Bird, eds., London and New York: Routledge, 2009, PP. 175-197

“Cloth and Color: The Fabrics in Chester County Quilts,” Layers: Unfolding the Story of Chester County Quilts, Ellen E. Endslow, ed., West Chester, PA: Chester County Historical Society, 2009, pp. 78-103.

“Flax Seed, Fibre, and Cloth: Pennsylvania’s Domestic Linen Manufacture and Its Irish Connections, 1700-1830.” The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective, editors Brenda Collins, and Philip Ollerenshaw, 139-58 Pasold Studies in Textile History, 13. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

“The Practice of

[American]

History: A Canadian Curator’s Perspective,” Journal of American History, special issue “The Practice of American” History” v.81 #3 (December, 1994):1011-1019

Courses

Topics in Material Culture – graduate course
American Consumerism