Lauren BradshawGraduate Studentshe/her/hers

I am a PhD student of design history in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. My research focuses on the ways in which 18th-century needlework practice contributed to the social construction of feminine identity and how these effects permeate into contemporary craft and culture. Leading with my own material literacy and embodied knowledge as a maker, I read objects as primary sources using methodologies that center tactility and affect as valid approaches to epistemology and historiography. The history and material culture of textiles and needlework provide a framework for honoring centuries of domestic labor performed by women while rejecting their associated notions of confinement and the absence of bodily autonomy. Handcrafted domestic objects often provide narratives that shed light on historical and contemporary entanglements of gender, race, and class and work to dismantle oversimplified notions of normative identities surrounding femininity, cisheterosexuality, and motherhood. I aim to identify and draw out the dynamic relationships existing between touch, emotion, memory, and identity which remain embedded in affective textile objects across the temporal boundaries of human survival.

In conjunction with my historical research, my studio practice has gradually shifted towards textiles, and my most recent body of work integrates found objects of cultural significance with materials and processes historically associated with the labor of women. I have recently shown these embroidered works at galleries in New York, Philadelphia, and across the Southeast. Additionally, I curated the 2025 exhibition Interstitial Agency at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art in Athens, Georgia, as well as upcoming exhibitions at the Appalachian Center for Craft in 2027 and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2028.

Research interests & methodologies:

• 18th-Century Needlework & Textiles
• Material Culture & Contemporary Craft
• Embodied Knowledge & Sensory Studies
• Queer Feminist Theory & Affect Theory
• Ethics of Care in Curatorial & Archival Practice

Selected Publications

Bradshaw, L. (2026). “A Piece of Lucinda’s Dress: The Fragmented History and Material Culture of a Woman Enslaved in Eighteenth-Century Boston.” In Revolution in Their Words, edited by Carrie Blough. Washington, D.C.: Daughters of the American Revolution Museum.

Bradshaw, L. “Materializing Maternity: Affective Needlework Practices and Textiles as Surrogate Objects in Eighteenth-Century England and Early America.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Philadelphia, PA, April 2026.

Bradshaw, L. (2025). “Prophetic Pins: Sentiment and Sensation in Layette Pincushions, 1760–1840.” Master’s thesis, University of Delaware. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Bradshaw, L. “Tactilities of Transience in English & Early American Layette Pincushions, 1760-1800.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, UK, January 2025.

Teaching Experience

• University of North Georgia
  • ART 1030 – Three-Dimensional Design
  • ART 1020 – Two-Dimensional Design & Color Theory
  • ART 1100 – Art Appreciation
• North Georgia Technical College
  • ARTS 1101 – Art Appreciation
• Clemson University
  • ART 2100 – Art Appreciation
  • AAH 1010 – Survey of Art and Architectural History I
  • ART 4170 – Advanced Ceramic Arts
  • ART 1520 – Three-Dimensional Design

Awards and Recognition

• School of Human Ecology Graduate Research Scholars Fellowship
• Society of Winterthur Fellows Research and Continuing Education Grant
• British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies Postgraduate Bursary
• Society of Winterthur Fellows Professional Development Grant
• Center for Material Culture Studies Graduate Research Presentation Fund
• Lois F. McNeil Fellowship, Winterthur Program in American Material Culture