Hinda Mandell – författare

This anthology offers a framework for understanding why people urgently turn to textile handwork as a site of repair in a world on the brink and examines how craft expression aligns with political activism in a sometimes quirky and always colorful way. In a world at a constant crossroads of despair and disruption, chapter contributors provide a clear-eyed assessment of specific craft-activism campaigns since the “Pussyhats,” focusing on the most pressing political issues of our time, as people seek to stitch a world aligned with their belief systems that is built on a DIY-ethos of hands-on community building.The chapters explore the impact of craftivism in the late digital age, where hands-on production and creativity can serve as an antidote to the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence and a pervasive mistrust of political processes. Does craftivism serve any meaningful purpose at a time when it’s been increasingly corporatized in a capitalistic system devoted to profits and divisive sloganism? Can craftivism do more than amplify political divisions and reinforce suspicions of perceived ideological enemies, or can it model a more expressive and inclusive activist platform around the globe? With contributions from among the most prominent thinkers on DIY civic engagement, Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation, gives politically expressive crafting its due as a powerful social force.

This book explores the way today’s interconnected and digitized world--marked by social media, over-sharing, and blurred lines between public and private spheres--shapes the nature and fallout of scandal in a frenzied media environment.

This book explores the way today’s interconnected and digitized world--marked by social media, over-sharing, and blurred lines between public and private spheres--shapes the nature and fallout of scandal in a frenzied media environment.

Examining how gender impacts political sex scandals in the United States, this book explains how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and identifies why these events have serious consequences for our political system.The increasing tabloidization of politics and focus on politicians involved in sex scandals is both problematic and important. When a major political sex scandal occurs, it occupies as much as 25 percent of all news coverage in the United States. Even if people may deny it, they enjoy "consuming" and talking about political sex scandals. Written by a former journalist who has frequently explored the intersections of politics, sex, and gender in the United States, Sex Scandals, Gender, and Power in Contemporary American Politics investigates how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and why these events have great significance in our frenzied media environment.The book makes use of comprehensive descriptive data (including statistics) to explain how political sex scandals are a representation of society's broader gender dynamics, conveying subtle messages about power and morality. It addresses the roles of men and women in political sex scandals over time, the increasing tabloidization of politics, and the often-overlooked consequences of sex scandals for the political system. Author Hinda Mandell also documents how scandals' multiple negative effects for the politicians themselves and for society include turning politics into a spectator sport, contributing to the mistrust of government, the questioning of politicians' competence and judgment as a group, and politicians' diminishing effectiveness in office.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with a wide variety of people, this book answers two questions: How and why do we personally engage with elected officials online and offline? What influence does this personal political engagement have on our democracy?Never before has it been so easy for Americans to make their personal views known to their elected officials. Citizens can tweet their opinions to their political representatives or respond to a Facebook post on politicians' pages to convey their approval or dislike for policies. They can engage politically through virtual town halls or show up in person at a protest easily organized through digital platforms. But this mediated relationship also makes it easy for politicians to push back against the opinions of their constituents by deriding their views or even blocking them online. The New Town Hall gives readers a firsthand look at personal political experiences through vivid stories from a variety of Americans. Researcher and former journalist Gina Masullo documents how Americans feel when they are blocked on social media and demonstrates how political talk with elected officials—both online and offline—leads to more involved types of political participation, such as protests or campaigning for political candidates. She contextualizes these personal political experiences with an eye toward understanding how these interactions influence the democratic process.

Pussyhats, typically crafted with yarn, quite literally created a sea of pink the day after Donald J. Trump became the 45th president of the United States in January 2017, as the inaugural Women’s March unfolded throughout the U.S., and sister cities globally.But there was nothing new about women crafting as a means of dissent.Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats is the first book that demonstrates how craft, typically involving the manipulation of yarn, thread and fabric, has also been used as a subversive tool throughout history and up to the present day, to push back against government policy and social norms that crafters perceive to be harmful to them, their bodies, their families, their ideals relating to equality and human rights, and their aspirations. At the heart of the book is an exploration for how craft is used by makers to engage with the rhetoric and policy shaping their country’s public sphere.The book is divided into three sections: "Crafting Histories," Politics of Craft," and "Crafting Cultural Conversations."Three features make this a unique contribution to the field of craft activism and history:The inclusion of diverse contributors from a global perspective (including from England, Ireland, India, New Zealand, Australia)Essay formats including photo essays, personal essays and scholarly investigationsThe variety of professional backgrounds among the book’s contributors, including academics, museum curators, art therapists, small business owners, provocateurs, artists and makers.This book explains that while handicraft and craft-motivated activism may appear to be all the rage and “of the moment,” a long thread reveals its roots as far back as the founding of American Democracy, and at key turning points throughout the history of nations throughout the world.

Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. represents the first known inquiry into how people deploy publicly engaged handcraft campaigns as a means for abortion-political action. Whether crafters turn to yarn as a platform to fight for reproductive justice or to limit abortion access, this work takes a holistic approach to study how liberals and conservatives choose yarn as a political-activation tool in a Democracy. As a comprehensive investigation grounded in the shifting legality of abortion through two monumental U.S. Supreme Court decisions (including Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022), this book explains why efforts at persuasive handcrafting galvanize people around abortion politics, and what impacts craftwork serves an ever-polarized American public. While “craftivism” is typically regarded as a tool of the left, with the whimsical and often tongue-in-cheek campaigns, this book also offers rare consideration of how those on the political right are actively engaged in their own craftivism efforts with abortion.

A look at how Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and American voters invoked ideas of gender and race in the fiercely contested 2016 US presidential electionGender and racial politics were at the center of the 2016 US presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The election was historic because Clinton was the first woman nominated by a major political party for thepresidency. Yet it was also historic in its generation of sustained reflection on the past. Clinton's campaign linked her with suffragist struggles--represented perhaps most poignantly by the parade of visitors to Susan B. Anthony's grave on Election Day--while Trump harnessed nostalgia through his promise to Make America Great Again. This collection of essays looks at the often vitriolic rhetoric that characterized the election: "nasty women" vs. "deplorables"; "bad hombres" and "Crooked Hillary"; analyzing the struggle and its result through the lenses of gender, race, and their intersections, and with particular attention to the roles of memory, performance, narrative, and social media.Contributors examine the ways that gender and racial hierarchies intersected and reinforced one another throughout the campaign season. Trump's association of Mexican immigrants with crime, and specifically with rape, for example, drew upon a long history of fearmongering that stereotypes Mexican men--and men of other immigrant and minority groups--as sexual aggressors against white women. At the same time, in response to both Trump'smisogynistic rhetoric and the iconic power of Clinton's candidacy, feminist consciousness grew steadily across the nation. Analyzing these phenomena, the volume's authors--both journalists and academics--engage with prominent debates in their diverse fields, while an epilogue by the editors considers recent ongoing developments like the #metoo movement.CHRISTINE A. KRAY is Associate Professor of Anthropology, TAMAR W. CARROLL is Associate Professor of History, and HINDA MANDELL is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, all at Rochester Institute of Technology.

This catalogue explores the role of craft in voicing dissent in an era of political disruption.Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism calls upon craft, during an era of political disruption, as a creative force to voice dissent, express hope, critique the curtailment of civil rights, and to restore dignity to the human experience. The essays and artwork featured in this exhibition catalogue are framed within the context of American democracy and disclose how we, as individuals and as a culture, "craft democracy" and ultimately question what democracy means today.This is the catalogue of an exhibition held at Harold Hacker Hall, Central Library of Rochester [New York] & Monroe County: August-October, 2019.Juilee Decker is associate professor of museum studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her publications include the 3rd edition of Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (2017) and the four-volume series Innovative Approaches for Museums (2015).Hinda Mandell is associate professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology and is a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018). She is editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (forthcoming with Rowman & Littlefield).