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 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

Description

This course examines secular art of Europe and the Mediterranean cultures. The traditions of epic story telling, fabliaux writings, popular and courtly narratives and political commentary are examined by looking at medieval tapestries, ceramic tiles, glass, wood sculpture, woven and embroidered textiles, enamels, ivories, metalwork, wall paintings, architecture and articles of dress. Students look at how the world of visual satire invades the sacred space of church and religious manuscripts and how the narrative image, public and private, religious and profane acts as text in a time before the printed book. The course includes two field trips to local museums.

Class Number

2262

Credits

3