Danielle Burke

“The Handicraft Map” is a collaborative, community-engaged research tool that visualizes networks of craft makers, supporters, and promoters who formed the Handicraft Movement (c. 1930-1950). The map offers a spatial rendering and searchable database of a crowd-sourced directory assembled by the Department of Agriculture, “A Partial List of Craftsmen and Handicraft Groups in the United States (1947),” which is the primary text of this dissertation. This digital humanities project draws from the fields of folklore and cultural geography to demonstrate the value of aesthetic experiences within everyday life; moreover, it provides an important intervention in art history, craft, and design scholarship as it studies how the interactive relationships between craft practices, materials, people, and places contributes to greater civic participation.