In-Between Textiles is a decentred study of how textiles shaped, disrupted, and transformed subjectivities in the age of the first globalisation. The volume presents a radically cross-disciplinary approach that brings together world-leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, conservators, curators, historians, scientists, and weavers to reflect on the power of textiles to reshape increasingly contested identities on a global scale between 1400 and 1800. Contributors posit the concept of “in-between textiles,” building upon Homi Bhabha’s notion of in-betweenness as the actual material ground of the negotiation of cultural practices and meanings; a site identified as the battleground over strategies of selfhood and the production of identity signs troubled by colonialism and consumerism across the world. In-Between Textiles establishes cutting-edge conversations between textile studies, critical cultural theory, and material culture studies to examine how textiles created and challenged experiences of subjectivity, relatedness, and dis/location that transformed social fabrics around the globe.

Beatriz Marín-Aguilera is a Derby Fellow at The University of Liverpool working on the archaeology of Indigenous slavery in the early modern Americas, and the Caribbean and Chile in particular. Until 2022, she has been a Renfrew Fellow at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Teaching Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge (UK). Her research straddles and connects the fields of postcolonial theory, social anthropology, and material culture studies, while contributing to Critical Indigenous and Subaltern Studies. She was trained in textile archaeology in Leiden (Textile Research Centre) and Cambridge. Her research focuses on the archaeology of colonialism and frontiers centring on clothing, body adornment, and body politics, for which she was also awarded a José Amor y Vázquez fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library in 2019.

Stefan Hanß is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at The University of Manchester and the winner of a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2019) as well as a Philip Leverhulme Prize in History (2020). Hanß works on cultural encounters and global material culture, currently with a focus on the history of hair, featherwork, and microscopic records. His research has been widely published, among others, in Current Anthropology, History Workshop Journal, Past and Present, Renaissance Quarterly, and The Historical Journal.

Contents
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1 Subjectivities In-Between Early Modern Global Textiles (Beatriz Marín-Aguilera (University of Liverpool), Stefan Hanß (University of Manchester))
Part I: Unhomeliness, Mimicry, and Mockery
2 Maori Textiles and Culture: Adaptation, Transformation, and Manifestation in Early Aotearoa (Catherine Smith (University of Otago))
3 Contesting Images: The Archaeology of Early Modern Textiles, Clothing and Closures from Puritan New England (Diana DiPaolo Loren (Peabody Museum, Harvard University))
4 “A Few Shreds of Rough Linen” and “a Certain Degree of Elegance”: Enslaved Textile-Makings in Colonial Brazil and the Caribbean (Robert S. DuPlessis (Swarthmore College))
Part II: The Material Enunciation of Difference
5 Textiles, Fashion, and Questions of Whiteness: Racial Politics and Material Culture in the British World, c.1660–1820 (Beverly Lemire (University of Alberta))
6 Abolitionism and Kente Cloth: Early Modern West African Textiles in Thomas Clarkson’s Chest (Malika Kraamer (MARKK Hamburg))
7 Dressing in the Deccan: Clothing and Identity at the Courts of Central India, 1550–1700 (Marika Sardar (Independent Scholar)
8 “Rags of Popery”: Dressing and Addressing the Material Culture of Disrupted Faith in Early Modern England (Mary Brooks (Durham University))
Part III: Identity Effects In-Between the Local and the Global
9 Globalizing Iberian Moorishness: Japanese Visitors, Chinese Textiles, and Imperial Cultural Identity (Javier Irigoyen-García (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign))
10 Tornasol Techniques as Cultural Memory: Andean Colonial Practices of Weaving Shimmering Cloth, and Their Regional Forebears (Denise Y. Arnold (University College London and Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, La Paz))
11 In Between the Global and the Local: Silk in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century Russia (Victoria Ivleva (Durham University))
12 African Cotton: Cultural and Economic Resistance in Mozambique in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Luís Frederico Dias Antunes (University of Lisbon))
Part IV: Material Translation and Cultural Appropriation
13 Mediating Mediterranean Cultures: Silk Embroidery and the Design of the Self in Early Modern Algiers (Leyla Belkaïd-Neri (Institut Français de la Mode))
14 The Material Translation of Persian and Indian Carpets and Textiles in Early Modern Japan (Yumiko Kamada (Keio University))
15 Globalisation and the Manufacture of Tablet-Woven Sanctuary Curtains in Ethiopia in the Eighteenth Century (Michael Gervers (University of Toronto) and Claire Gérentet de Saluneaux (Lyon))
16 Cochineal and the Changing Patterns of Consumption of Red Dyes in Early Modern European Textile Industries (Ana Serrano (University of Amsterdam))
Archives, Libraries, and Museums (Abbreviations)
Select Bibliography
Index