Helen Sheumaker – författare

In the largely forgotten craft of hairwork, practiced widely in nineteenth-century America, the hair of loved ones-living and deceased-was woven into jewelry, wall decorations, and keepsakes. Rings, bracelets, lockets, and brooches were set with metalwork or ivory and painted with rich patterns. Pocket watches hung from long, woven hair fobs. Parlor walls were decorated with elaborate wreaths made of hair fashioned into twigs and flowers, often adorned with beads or ribbons. More unusual items even included a tea set made entirely out of hair. Victorian men and women treasured hairwork not only as remembrances of loved ones and memorials of relationships but also as objects of beauty and means of personal expression.Beginning as a trade of highly skilled craftsmen in the late eighteenth century, hairwork became tremendously popular among the middle class, and supported at its peak in the mid-nineteenth century an industry that included catalog dealers of premade pieces, standardized patterns, and how-to books for hobbyists. Advertisements, stories, and illustrations in popular publications depicted hairwork as the height of sentimental fashion.Using a wide array of evidence drawn from poetry, fiction, diaries, letters, and, above all, examples of hairwork, Love Entwined traces the widespread and long-lived popularity of the craft and its place in the American marketplace. During a period that saw a growing mechanization of production methods, hairwork stood apart not only for being made by hand but also for using a part of the body as a material. Helen Sheumaker argues that this refiguration of a loved one's hair into a commodity created a unique meeting point between sentimentality and consumerism, intensifying the close relationship between the goods one purchased and the kind of person one wished to be.

Explores how the process of memorialization keeps the past alive in the present and shapes the way we imagine our possible futures."The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William FaulknerThe three thought-provoking essays in Memory Matters explore how the process of memorialization keeps the past alive in the present and shape the way we imagine our possible futures. The product of a one-day symposium hosted by the Humanities Center at Miami University of Ohio, it focuses on issues of commemoration in the contexts of U.S. history, Native America, and museums. In "From Lexington and Concord to Oklahoma City: The Perils and Promise of Public History," Edward T. Linenthal offers a fresh perspective on creating national memorials. In "The Remembered/Forgotten on Native Ground," Daniel M. Cobb draws upon Benedict Anderson's notion of the "remembered/forgotten" to explore the work of memory at the sites of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the Miami Removal. And in "Museums Matter," Helen Sheumaker explores how museums function as repositories and creators of cultural memory. The volume also includes a transcript based on the question-and-answer session following the original presentations. Stemming from a two-year scholarly project, "Memory and Culture: Engaged Scholarship, Multidisciplinary Connections, and the Public Humanities," Memory Matters provides scholars and those interested in such fields as museum studies, memorial studies, and cultural history with provocative discussions of the ways in which representation, power, and memory intersect.

This intriguing book examines how material objects of the 20th century—ranging from articles of clothing to tools and weapons, communication devices, and toys and games—reflect dominant ideas and testify to the ways social change happens.Objects of everyday life tell stories about the ways everyday Americans lived. Some are private or personal things—such as Maidenform brassiere or a pair of patched blue jeans. Some are public by definition, such as the bus Rosa Parks boarded and refused to move back for a white passenger. Some material things or inventions reflect the ways public policy affected the lives of Americans, such as the Enovid birth control pill. An invention like the electric wheelchair benefited both the private and public spheres: it eased the lives of physically disabled individuals, and it played a role in assisting those with disabilities to campaign successfully for broader civil rights.Artifacts from Modern America demonstrates how dozens of the material objects, items, technologies, or inventions of the 20th century serve as a window into a period of history. After an introductory discussion of how to approach material culture—the world of things—to better understand the American past, essays describe objects from the previous century that made a wide-ranging or long-lasting impact. The chapters reflect the ways that communication devices, objects of religious life, household appliances, vehicles, and tools and weapons changed the lives of everyday Americans. Readers will learn how to use material culture in their own research through the book's detailed examples of how interpreting the historical, cultural, and social context of objects can provide a better understanding of the 20th-century experience.