Teaching with Textile Collections

Presented as part of a panel session titled "Beyond Manuscripts: Teaching with Special Formats in Special Collections" at the Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Section annual meeting held virtually June 7-10, 2021.Alison Reynolds, Research Services & Instruction Archivist, Georgia Institute of Technology Library, Atlanta, GA.This presentation speaks to the use of textiles and fabric samples in a classroom setting, and how these objects can stimulate discussions around audience, purpose, and socio-economic power structures. It discusses a sampling of textile artifacts from the Georgia Tech Archives collections, followed by examples of how they have been used with students in a first-year writing class, and closes with lessons learned from incorporating these non-traditional materials into primary source instruction