A wide shot of a ceramics studio, featuring students working with pottery wheels and other tools.

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Nancy Feldman

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Bio

Associate Professor, Adjunct, Art History, Theory and Criticism (1989), Education: BFA, 1981, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; MFA 1986 University of Chicago, Chicago; PhD, 2012, University of Chicago, Chicago. Concurrent Position: Faculty Supervisor, Textile Resource Center, Fiber & Material Studies Department. Exhibitions: Screenings for Shipibo: Movie of our Memories, Amo Amazonia, Lima and Pucallpa, Peru, 2019; George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, Washington DC, 2018; Field Museum, Chicago, 2017; II Festival de Cine y Medio Ambiente Latinoamericano, Rome, Italy, 2011; Bogata, Columbia; Caco Macayo and multiple remote villages in the Upper Amazon, Peru. Publications: Fieldiana, Journal of the Field Museum, Textile Society of America Proceedings. Awards: Phoenix Award, University of Chicago; President’s Award Outstanding Paper, Textile Society of America.

Personal Statement

Dr. Nancy Feldman is an art historian whose work engages with textile histories as well as medieval art. Through the study of objects, her work explores the foundational significance of place, materials, and processes of making and exchange. Her research interests include medieval textiles, illuminated medieval manuscripts, colonial documents, and contemporary indigenous textiles with a focus on Peru. Recent papers feature the study of materials, production, consumption and display of luxury medieval textiles, bodies as sites of legitimacy, and contemporary Shipibo textiles from the upper Amazon of Peru. She served as co-director and producer for the Field Museum’s Amazonian documentary, Shipibo: Movie of our Memories, a MacArthur Foundation supported film.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This course studies the medieval book in Europe and the visual arts crafted in medieval Paris as well as their connections to the global medieval world through exchange and gifting. The medieval cosmos in Islamic and European cultures, humans? relationship with the natural world, and artist?s practices of making will be studied as well as manuscripts, textiles, metal work, and more. Books in the medieval world include narratives of heroes, saints, love, magic, scientific knowledge, and documentation of artistic techniques. This course is Eurocentric however includes arts of Middle East and North Africa for a broader understanding of the medieval world.

Coursework includes field trips to view Chicago's medieval manuscript and art collections at the Newberry and the Art Institute. Readings include works by Sharon Farmer, ?Surviving Poverty in Paris,? Edson and Savage-Smith, ?Medieval Views of the Cosmos,? Michael Camille, ?Nature of Gothic,? Madeline Caviness, ?Patron or Matron?,? Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair, ?Islamic Penmen and Painters,? and more.

Coursework will vary but typically includes discussions, reading responses, in-class quizzes, short presentations and a research paper.

Class Number

2158

Credits

3

Description

This class explores a worldwide view of textiles in the historic period of Middle Ages and the Renaissance when new trade routes connected Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania, and the Americas. Topics focused on the global transfer of goods and information include exploration, exploitation, colonization, mapping, urban growth, and industrial production. We also look at textile's role in contemporary globalization and new economic theories for the developing world, such as reflected by Practec in Peru, and discussed in books such as The Spirit of Regeneration. This course includes field trips.

Class Number

2363

Credits

3