Author ORCID Identifier
Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2025
Document Type
Dissertation (Campus Access)
Defense Form
CertificateOfCompletion.pdf (119 kB)
PhD survey
Trautwein-ETD-CampusAccessForm.pdf (925 kB)
campus only form
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
English
Committee Chair
Rosemary Hathaway
Committee Co-Chair
Katy Ryan
Committee Member
Michael Germana
Committee Member
Shelia Bock
Abstract
Material Girls brings women’s domestic labor evidenced through various material culture traditions and objects into the skilled and occupational labor discussion. It does so on the premise that the labor required in the domestic sphere involves the very same characteristics of skilled labor and by destabilizing the data collection methods of patriarchal and capitalist quantitative research. I argue that the skilled knowledge and techniques required of women’s domestic labor for both current and past generations of women have been trivialized, seen as privileged pastimes, or simply a woman’s duty. Throughout occupational folklore studies and historical documentation, the coal miners, farmers, cowboys, railroad workers, and adventurers that decorate American history have been storied extensively, while the women who labored alongside them, who made those occupations possible, have been either forgotten or separated from the same type of study. I explore this history by contextualizing and narratively reimagining specific traditions and practices of material culture in my own family; such as considering the labor history evident in ethnic foodways, domestic practices of survival in the coal camps, the economy of gardening, subsistence-farming, food preservation, sewing, and many other undocumented ways women performing domestic labor in and for their own homesphere have influenced the operating and finances of both industry and home. This dissertation explores the skilled work of different women in my family who contributed to the necessary (unpaid) labor of the home
Recommended Citation
Trautwein, Sarah Ann, "Material Girls: Stories of Appalachian Women's Forgotten Work Culture" (2025). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 12759.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/12759