From cloth wrappers to bags and envelopes of various kinds, textiles cover and carry bodies from persons to architectural elements. The editorial for our Fall 2024 issue on Textiles (Vol. 6, No. 1) makes a case for the revitalization of a comparative approach in studying cloth and fiber through the foci of its three editors. Sandra Dudley studies issues of fluidity and transformation through her work on forced displacement and museums. Emily Levick’s research as a doctoral candidate in museum studies offers a perspective on gender and representation. And Urmila Mohan is concerned with how communities are created through interactions of people and materials.

In “Decoding Women's Narratives of Gender and Creativity in 19th-20th century Beadwork of Saurashtra”, Medha Bhatt uses her great-grandmother Jadiba’s beaded bag to highlight the unique synergy of Kathiawadi (Saurashtra) makers’ cognition, spirituality, and imagination in Gujarat, India. In “A Handwoven Textile Narrates a Karenni Refugee Woman’s Journeys to Resettlement in Massachusetts”, Susan Rodgers examines a patterned back strap weaving made by Tu Meh, a Karenni master weaver as a narration of refugee journeys to a challenging resettlement. In “Giving Form to Memory: Drawn Thread Embroidery as Embodied ‘Re-membering’ of Trauma Narratives” Sana Naqvi examines the significance of her great-grandmother Amma’s needlework or Taarkashi as material acts of ‘re-membering’, probing how agency is influenced. We round this issue off with an interview with Lagi Maama Academy and Consultancy where we consider issues of ‘art’ and knowledge as forms of cultural weaving, and a book review by Lalita Waldia.

In the Winter 2023 issue (Vol. 5, No. 2), the idea of Work is “good to think with”, situated at the intersection of various socio-cultural and ontological contexts and complexities—and for our purposes—practices, materials, and interactions. Why are some activities more easily perceived as work while others are not? What practices and values become associated with different kinds of work? In “Amateur or Professional?: Reclaiming the Role of the Amateur at the Intersection of Work and Religious Faith”, Peter Bush uses media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s discussion of the ‘amateur’ vs the ‘professional’ to argue that the amateur’s ability to take risks for what they love for is vital to faith work. In “Stone Works: The Religious Power of Lithic Media in Contemporary Cambodia”, Elizabeth A. Cecil asks how Indigenous repertoires of ‘care’ intersect with the ‘work’ of historical conservation and preservation. In “Pathologies of Labour: How Work Destroys Health in Urban India” Tanuj Luthra casts a spotlight on “how precarity, a defining experience of contemporary working life across sectors, inscribes itself in laboring bodies and psyches in contemporary urban India.” Rachel Barber’s video and text essay “Artisans by Trade: Working as Weavers and Embroiderers in the Chiapas Highlands” profile three textile artisans from the Highlands region, highlighting the distinct ways in which they organize their work and fit it together with their family life and social relations in their communities. In “Writing, Aesthetic Judgment, and the Spectre of ChatGPT” Alexios Tsigkas responds to the entry of ChatGPT in higher education; it is able to respond to prompts, generate original content, and write. He reflects on the very practice of writing itself, and the values we ascribe to it. Maggie Hansen’s article “Green Thumbs: The Politics and Precarity of Land Care Labors” illustrates sustained approaches to reimagining human relationships with the land, while advocating for policies that support our shared environment and the labor that cares for it. In “Women, Work and Wine: Shifting Cultures of Brewing in Northeast India” Upasana Goswami and Abhishruti Sarma reflect on changing ideas about work by looking at shifts in discourses around heritage brews of Northeast India.

In our Book Review section, Emma Cieslik writes about The Jugaad Project’s first edited volume, “Disrupting Individualism through the Effects of Interactions: A Review of ‘The Efficacy of Intimacy and Belief in Worldmaking Practices’ (Routledge, 2024)”

In the Spring 2023 issue (Vol. 5, No. 1) on Museums we take the opportunity to explore some connected threads from the GLAM world where images of heritage can take many different shapes and forms. In “Caring for the Body and Spirit of Altars: An Ethical Exploration”, Emma Cieslik considers the ethical implications of museum definitions of objects as “living” or “non-living”. Laura Phillips highlights the importance for museums of questioning and de-centering Euro-Enlightenment values in “(Mostly) Indigenous Readings that Challenge Imposed Euro-Enlightenment (aka Colonial) Perspectives in Museums”. In the essay “Whitewash: Robert E. Lee and the New Iconoclasm”, Howard Skrill employs the concept of “whitewash” as a metaphor for the act of purposeful concealment to discuss meanings and implications of the defacement of national monuments in the U.S.’ racialized landscape. In “A conversation on difference, Otherness and possibilities in museums”, Poornima Sardana and Shivangi Pareek discuss their own experiences as, respectively, a museologist and an anthropologist, at the intersection of museum studies and ethnographic work and reflect on plural entanglements within museums. “Curating Ornament and Textile Exhibitions as Highwire Acts” by Susan Rodgers also takes up the theme of collaboration in museum exhibits and representations, discussing the author’s experiences as a guest curator on three separate museum exhibitions of Indonesian artefacts. In “White Womanhood, Hindutva and Spiritual Bypass”, Kajal Patel focuses on the popularity of “museum yoga”, asking what the use of media, imaging and bodily practices reveals about the socio-political significance of such practices in a globalized world. Finally, community involvement is a theme that Sara Ann Knutson brings to the fore in her peer-reviewed “Re-engaging Islamic Materials and their Stories”, exploring the display and interpretation of Islamic coins in European museums, and focusing on collections in the Bode-Museum, Berlin.

Our Fall 2022 issue (Vol. 4, No. 2) on Material Activism is on practices geared towards “activating” selves and others. In “Just Images” Rajgopal Saikumar explores how the materiality of images and legal documents are invoked and perceived as mitigating circumstance for commutation of a death sentence. In “The Artivism of Incantations in Isan”, Peera Songkünnatham considers the practice of artivism (the combination of art and activism) through the art of Patiwat “Molam Bank” Saraiyaem, a Thai folk singer-songwriter and former student activist. In “A Drawing Out: Visibilizing the Labor of Care, Enacting Mutual Aid” Angela Beallor explores radical caretaking labor reform during the Soviet 1920s to help pre-figure mutual aid, collaboration, and caretaking as we struggle to upend the current capitalist and patriarchal status quo(s). “Activating the Value of Handmade: The Role of Social Enterprises in Transforming India’s Artisan Economy” features an interview with Priya Krishnamoorthy, Founder/CEO and Aparna Subramanyam, Partner, of 200 million artisans in India, shedding light on how this platform conceives of the artisan handmade economy in India. In “Timur Merah Project: A Pilgrimage of Narrative, Memory, and Historical Legacy”, Balinese artist Citra Sasmita undertakes a mapping of the absence and presence of women as heroes and resistors in the Indonesian literary canon and its influence on her art. Our final offering “Interview with Sedekah Benih – Urban Ecology and Community-based Art Activism” by Anissa Rahadiningtyas explores Sedekah Benih, a collaborative, environmental practice initiated by urban farming activist, Dian Nurdiana (Mang Dian), and artist Vincent Rumahloine in 2020 in a dense urban neighborhoods in Bandung, West Java.

Our Spring 2022 issue (Vol. 4, No. 1) on Craft is co-edited by Simashree Bora and Urmila Mohan. The articles deal with communities and cultures in India and Indonesia, featuring peoples’ cosmologies and beliefs in different ways, directly or indirectly. Lira Anindita Utami’s article on gringsing, a sacred double-ikat textile of Bali, and Debapriya Chakrabarti’s article on the infrastructural impact of Durga Puja idol-making in Kolkata are more directly connected with the manifestation of “religion” as we have come to identify this term. Lalita Waldia’s article on the woodcarving craft of likhai in Uttarakhand, India, and Amira Rahardiani’s study of bamboo weaving development in Central Java, Indonesia, shift away from looking at these objects as vehicles of meaning and spirituality, delving, instead, into the complexities of crafts in these two Asian contexts as livelihood and heritage.

Our articles, essay, and video presentation in Fall 2021 (Vol. 3, No. 3, edited by Lillia McEnaney and Urmila Mohan) on Healing include contexts from museums and diasporic belonging to the renewed attention being paid to Indigenous cosmologies and farming practices.

Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt discusses the myriad of ways agricultural practices are interconnected with healing modalities in her article “Curing With Our Mother Corn.” In “Body, Goddess and Healing,” Maheshvari Naidu explores the affective and physical ‘territorialisation’ of the body during measles, and how vernacular Tamil beliefs consider this a visit from the Goddess called Mariammen. In “A Theory of Relational Affliction and Healing: Evil Eye in Iran and Greece” Rose Wellman and Dionisios Kavadias offer a comparative ethnographic study of the evil eye. Emily Levick’s talk “All Being Well: Exploring the Therapeutic Potential of Museums” is unique, bringing her own personal experiences with health conditions and definitions in conversation with museum praxis.

Summer 2021 (Vol. 3, No. 2) on ReBuilding 2 continues themes of the Spring Issue, relating processes of damage and restoration, loss and healing, and the never-ending making and doing of things in human lives. Nadhira Hill offers a thought-provoking opinion piece, “Archaeology’s Destructive Legacy: Burning it All Down to Better Support Scholars of Color”. In our second offering, we interview Sophie Bjork-James about her latest book “The Divine Institution: White Evangelicalism’s Politics of the Family” (Rutgers University Press, 2021). In “Handling Textiles: Rebuilding Object Lives in Museums”, Emily Levick turns our attention to textiles in museums. Textiles feature again in “Damage as Opportunity: The Art of Winnie Van Der Rijn”, where the artist explores themes of damage, deconstruction, remaking, and catharsis through various bodies of work. In “Transformations on the Margin: Jack Smith’s Vital and Difficult Art”, an article by Sanya Osha, we learn about the life and work of Jack Smith, visionary American filmmaker. Our last article is a peer-reviewed piece by Chairat Polmuk entitled “Wounded Landscapes: Debris of War, Residual Vulnerability, and (Toxic) Intimacy in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia”, investigating transnational ecologies of the vestiges of war in Southeast Asia.

Spring 2021 (Vol. 3, No. 1) focuses on ReBuilding and processes of damage, loss and healing as part of the never-ending making and doing of things that are fundamental to living. In light of the pandemic, and historical and socio-cultural issues that long pre-dated 2020, dynamics of ‘building and rebuilding’ are in even more urgent need of consideration. Religious themes and spiritual concerns are present in the form of beliefs involving social traditions and worship groups (Rebecca Peters’ “Colorism, Castism, and Gentrification in Bollywood”; Heather McClain’s interview with weaver Lily Hope titled “We’re Still Here”; Eliza West’s “Seeing the Lost Mural: How Damage and Restoration Inform Close Looking”). Secular beliefs are present in citizens’ evolving relationships with monuments as public embodiments of colonial and nationalistic history, evoking much debate and controversy (“Civil Religion in Turkey: The Unifying and Divisive Potential of Material Symbols” by Patrycja Hala Saçan; “Cecil John Rhodes: ‘The Complete Gentleman’ of Imperial Dominance” by Francis Nyamnjoh; a review of “Shaping the Past” and Monument Lab’s 2020 Town Hall by Lillia McEnaney, and Lindsay P. Crisp’s “Breaking Down Colston: Destruction and Transformation in London and Bristol”).

Our Winter 2020 issue (Vol. 2, No. 4) and editorial focuses on Color. The first piece is a photo essay by Tulasi Srinivas, “Kiwi Fruit and Kewpie Dolls: Transformative Alankara and Modernity in Bangalore”. In our second photo essay, Uthara Suvrathan addresses “Color, Graffiti and the Senses: Visitors and Worshipers at Indian Archaeological Sites.” Alexandra Dalferro writes about “The Prismatics of Silk” in the third offering of this issue. The fourth piece in this issue is a digital exhibit and curatorial essay on the artistic process of weaver Claire Le Pape whose series Giottoesques is inspired by Giotto’s frescoes.

Our Fall 2020 issue (Vol. 2, No. 3) consists of three pieces. Alexandra Antohin’s “Gazing to Africa: A Conversation with Art and Ethnology at the Museum” explores how the spectator’s experience of an exhibit can help reimagine the dismantling of ideologies of cultural domination in art and ethnological collections. In “Cinema as Metaxu”, Anat Pick explores Simone Weil's notion of the material world as "metaxu," within the tradition of cinematic realism to consider how the natural world in film functions as a bridge to the supernatural. And finally, Nafisa Valieva’s photo essay “Gǝʿǝz manuscripts in Ethiopia: What a trained outsider can see today” takes us to a country where parchment manuscripts are still produced, allowing scholars to historically trace textual transmission.

Our 2020 Special Issue (Vol. 2, No. 2) and editorial explores the theme of translocality as connections that disrupt. The ideas and objects created by scholars and artists in this issue form new connections and, in doing so, offer the potential to alter existing categories and ways of thinking: Chunrong Zhao explores the use of translocality as a conceptual tool in Gandhāran art; Susan Rodgers discusses her previous publication silences on embodied racism in Indonesia; Lillia McEnaney interviews Jason de León, UCLA archaeologist and founder of the Undocumented Migration Project; Jessica Hughes interviews the Korean artist Meekyoung Shin on her extraordinary soap sculptures; Anissa Rahadiningtyas situates the mythical Islamic Buraq figure in modern Indonesian art; and Morgan Spencer investigates trade textiles as early examples of cosmopolitanism.

Our Summer 2020 issue (Vol. 2, No. 1) and editorial on the theme of innovation is the second of a two-part series that explores instances of creativity and change drawn from various parts of the globe – India, Thailand, and the Western world. Our offerings include a photo essay on jugaad practices among costumers in the Indian film industry by Cheri Vasek and Deepsikha Chatterjee, a photo essay on sensory and community aesthetics in a South Indian flower market by Leah Comeau, a photo essay on care practices and questions of change in Thailand by Felicity Aulino, and an article by Aimee Hinds on how color (or its absence) perpetuates false racial narratives in modern classical reception of the Greco-Roman past.

Our Winter 2019-20 issue ((Vol. 1, No. 2) and editorial on the theme of innovation is the first of a two part series that explores examples drawn from various parts of the world – India, Cambodia, and the US. Our offerings include an article on worship in multicultural Singapore by James Mah, a think-piece on innovation by James Bielo, an essay on how traditional rituals are being adapted for new publics in Cambodia by Emilee Koss, and a discussion with Chandan Bose about his recent book dealing with Indian craft and heritage.

Our Fall 2019 inaugural issue (Vol. 1, No. 1) and editorial on the theme of “Landscapes and Material Religion” deals with the entity of land (and its representation) as integral to life and identity. Our three publications deal with ‘land’ and ‘scapes’ via a performance artwork in interior Java, Indonesia, by artist Ratu Saraswati, the study of a floral batik style called buketan in coastal Java by Karina Rima Melati, and the materializing of sacred landscapes in Pompeii, Italy, by Jessica Hughes). Landscapes are central to all of these discussions as a means to create contexts of spirituality and/or enchantment, and situate people, materials, beliefs, and cultures. In addition, a thought-provoking note “on context” by Professor David Morgan, Duke University, completes our offerings for this season.