November Lecture Series

1290 Richmond Avenue,Staunton VA 24401

01 November, 2022

Description

Emanuel Suter learned the craft in a traditional manner and practiced the trade on his farm in the central Shenandoah Valley. As a refugee from the Civil War, he traveled to Pennsylvania in 1864, where he began to work for an established pottery manufactory. While there he absorbed ideas about how an industrial pottery could operate. Upon his return to the Valley in 1865, Suter set about restructuring his own pottery, and traveled outside of the region to modern potteries in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Ohio. The importance of this analysis lies in its study of the migration of ideas and their effect on a traditional folk craft. Meet the Speaker: Scott Hamilton Suter, Professor of English & American Studies and Director of the Margaret Grattan Weaver Institute for Regional Culture at Bridgewater College, received his Ph.D. in American Civilization from The George Washington University in 1994, where his research focused on American folklife and Material Culture Studies. In addition to his twenty years at Bridgewater College he has also worked in the museum world and as a public sector folklorist. He has published books, exhibition catalogs, journal articles, and book chapters on topics ranging from Southern literature to World War I humor to David Lynch to material culture studies and folk art. In 1999, the University Press of Mississippi published his Shenandoah Valley Folklife, an introduction to the traditions of the region. The University of Tennessee Press published his most recent book, A Potter’s Progress: Emanuel Suter and the Business of Craft, in 2020.