Philippine Textiles - Identity + Power
About
Learn how craft, textiles, and fashion are inextricably connected to empire and diaspora. Curator Angela Herman Crenshaw and Dr. Genevieve Clutario, Associate Professor of American Studies, Wellesley College will delve into the fascinating histories of the textiles featured in our current exhibition From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles, the labor behind them, and how they got to the United States. This conversation will unlock how material objects offer insight into historical complexities such as the relationship between the Philippines and the United States.
Free. Registration requested for this in person program.
Angela Hermano Crenshaw is an art historian, curator, and educator specializing in dress and textiles. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, where she recently earned her MA. Her work focuses on American receptions of the Philippines in the US colonial period via material objects, particularly textiles. She has shared her work at conferences at Yale University, Boston University, and the New England Museums Association, and regularly lectures on Philippine textiles and dress history. Angela received her undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of St Andrews in Scotland and has held positions at Providence College Galleries and the RISD Museum, where she also curated the exhibition From Pineapple to Pañuelo: Philippine Textiles.
Dr. Genevieve Clutario is Associate Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of Beauty Regimes: A History of Power and Modern Empire in the Philippines,1898 - 1941 (Duke University Press, March 2023) and is the recipient of the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University First Book Award, and Honorable mention for the History category of the 2025 Association of Asian American Studies Book Awards.
She published, “Pageant Politics: Tensions of Power, Empire, and Nationalism in Manila Carnival Queen Contests,” in the anthology, Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (Brill Press, 2017) and “World War II and the Promise of Normalcy: Filipina Lives Under Two Empires” in Beyond the Edge of the Nation: Transimperial Histories with a U.S. Angle (Duke University Press 2020). She co-edited with Rana Jaleel a special issue of the Amerasia Journal, entitled Rethinking Gendered Citizenship. Intimacy, Sovereignty, and Empire. Her new research project, Power and Allure: Gender, Authoritarianism, and the Promise of Development, focuses on a history of feminized power (beauty, celebrity, allure, and charisma) in the Philippines under authoritarian regimes of the Cold War, international development projects, U.S. imperialism, and the making of the global south. Her research and teaching interests focus on Asian American narratives in global perspectives; comparative histories of culture and modern empire; and the politics of fashion and beauty.