Among the artifacts crafted by humankind, textiles have always held a uniquely interdependent relationship with the environment. Textiles derive from vegetal (hemp, raffia, ramie, cotton, or bark cloth), animal (wool, silk) and even mineral origins (as in the case of asbestos fibers). The production of textiles has depended upon access to and the processing of raw materials, while cloth manufacturing has reshaped entire landscapes from the transplantation of mulberry trees for sericulture to the mounds of murex shells discarded after the extraction of Tyrian purple dye. Textile patterns abound with imagery of flora and fauna, while fabrics have come to shape myths and metaphors of the natural world. Textiles have connected distant regions, but they have also been responsible for and complicit in the enslavement of human beings and the exploitation of agricultural, artisanal, and industrial labor. Textile production has led to the despoliation of landscapes and water resources, often in unequal ways that resulted from colonialism and environmental racism. Despite the recent concern with historical legacies of environmental harm, the field of ecological humanities has mostly neglected the textile realm. For this online workshop we welcome contributions that consider the relationship between textiles and the environment from any time period and geographic region and seek scholars, artists, and cultural practitioners who grapple with the aesthetic dimensions, ecological conditions, and the past, present, and potential futures of cloth.

After a session on “Textile Ecologies” that we organized for the College Art Association conference (CAA) in 2019, we are now inviting proposals for an online workshop that is scheduled to take place February 5-7, 2025. We welcome submissions from artists, practitioners, conservators, art historians, historians of science, anthropologists, and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences, as well as those analyzing textiles and ecology within the natural sciences. Please send us a brief bio and an abstract of maximum 350 words for 20 min presentations by July 15, 2024 to Sylvia Houghteling and Vera-Simone Schulz to textile.ecologiesgmail.com