Spinning Resistance: Women, Cloth, and the Long Memory of 1776

Molly McClain is coming to the San Diego History Center on Thursday, November 5, for a talk titled Spinning Resistance: Women, Cloth, and the Long Memory of 1776. It's part of the center's America at 250 series, which is looking back at the country's history as it approaches its 250th anniversary.

The talk takes a single object—the spinning wheel—and follows it across three continents and 150 years, tracing how it kept reappearing at moments of political crisis. In the 1760s, American women turned spinning bees into public acts of resistance against British taxation. Later, Arts and Crafts reformers claimed the wheel against industrial capitalism. Gandhi made the charkha the emblem of Indian independence, and twentieth-century American women rediscovered it as a symbol of a revolutionary female tradition. McClain also brings in the enslaved women who spun and wove, and the coerced labor that harvested the cotton feeding industrial production.

McClain is a Yale PhD and a professor of history at the University of San Diego, and she's a ninth-generation San Diegan. She's written four books, including Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy (2017). This talk fits into the America at 250 series the History Center is running.

The talk runs from 6 PM to 7 PM at the San Diego History Center, 1649 El Prado, Suite #3, San Diego, CA 92101. Tickets are $20 for the general public and $10 for museum members.