From curlers to chainsaws : women and their machines / edited by Joyce Dyer, Jennifer Cognard-Black, Elizabeth MacLeod Walls.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Dyer, Joyce, editor.

Cognard-Black, Jennifer, editor.

Walls, Elizabeth MacLeod, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Material culture.

Technology and women.

Tools--Social aspects.

Tools.

Implements, utensils, etc--Social aspects.

Implements, utensils, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (336 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

East Lansing, Michigan : Michigan State University Press, 2016.

Summary:

The twenty-three distinguished writers included in From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women and Their Machines invite machines into their lives and onto the page. In every room and landscape these writers occupy, gadgets that both stir and stymie may be found: a Singer sewing machine, a stove, a gun, a vibrator, a prosthetic limb, a tractor, a Dodge Dart, a microphone, a smartphone, a stapler, a No. 1 pencil and, of course, a curling iron and a chainsaw. From Curlers to Chainsaws is a groundbreaking collection of lyrical and illuminating essays about the serious, silly, seductive, and sometimes sorrowful relationships between women and their machines. This collection explores in depth objects we sometimes take for granted, focusing not only on their functions but also on their powers to inform identity. For each writer, the device moves beyond the functional to become a symbolic extension of the writer's own mind--altering and deepening each woman's concept of herself.

Contents:

Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Hearth and Home; Norma Tilden - Maytag Washer, 1939; Joyce Dyer - My Mother's Singer; Psyche Williams-Forson - If You Can't Stand the Heat: Ruminations on the Stove from an African American Woman; Rebecca McClanahan - Sad-Iron, Glad-Iron; Joy Castro - Grip; Bedroom and Birthing Room; E. J. Levy - Of Vibrators; Jennifer Cognard-Black - The Hot Thing; Emily Rapp - Beautiful Monster: Life with a Prosthetic Limb; Monica Frantz - Midwife Hands, Mother Hands; Farm, Lawn, Hill, and Wood; Mary Swander - Tsantas and the Mind-Expanding Power of a Small Machine

Mary Quade - Old Iron: A Restoration Maureen Stanton - All Flesh Is Grass; Karen Salyer McElmurray - Driven; Ana Maria Spagna - More Than Noise; Stage and World; Debra Marquart - The Microphone Erotic; Elizabeth MacLeod Walls - I, Phone; Melissa A. Goldthwaite - Body, Camera, Self; Diana Salman - Lebanese Airwaves; Monica Berlin - Remembered Is Misremembered, Then Turns; The Writer's Studio; Jen Hirt - Swingline Nine; Sue William Silverman - The Qwertyist; Karen Outen - On Typing and Salvation; Nikky Finney - Inquisitor and Insurgent: Black Woman with Pencil, Sharpened; Contributors

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-62895-249-0

1-60917-477-1

OCLC:

930758585