Selected pUBLICATIONS
BookS
Fashioning Acadians: Clothing in the Atlantic World, 1650-1750 (McGill-Queens University Press)
Now available everywhere non-fiction is sold!
Exciting news! Fashioning Acadians has been shortlisted for the Canadian Historical Association’s prize for ‘Best Scholarly Book in Canadian History’ for 2024. The prize is part of the Governor General’s Awards for history, and the winner will be announced on June 18, 2024.
“Fashioning Acadians is an innovative and path-breaking study that is not only a crucially important work in Acadian history but also a leading model of the importance of material culture analysis in early modern history more generally.”
– John G. Reid, Saint Mary’s University, author of Essays on Northeastern North America: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
A remarkable reconstruction of everyday Acadian fashion.
Fashion history, Canadian studies
The clothing and dress of past societies are often challenging for historians to determine, owing to the disintegration of natural textiles and materials over time. Yet when new findings from archaeological excavations are compared with documentation about early Acadia, a fascinating picture of the society’s early fashions is revealed.
Fashioning Acadians is a history of clothesmaking and dress in Acadia from 1650 to 1750 CE. Through the analysis of four different Acadian settlements in what is now Nova Scotia, Hilary Doda uncovers the regional fashions and trends that had begun to emerge prior to the violence of the deportations of 1755. Men’s and women’s wardrobes are described from head to toe, from headdresses and hairstyles down to stockings and shoes, along with accessories such as buttons, buckles, and jewellery. While Acadians retained many aspects of their original fashion system, a distinct Acadian identity emerged over time as their dress evolved from its French roots and was influenced by other regional styles.
Exploring the possibilities of a new methodology for identifying lost or decayed garments, Doda argues that surviving notions, sewing tools, and accessories — the small finds of archaeological sites — are important sources of information not only about daily domestic life, but about manufacturing processes, dress and textile cultures, and the influence of intersecting fashion systems in colonial spaces.
Fashioning Acadians expands our understanding of Acadian lives and their connections to both the Atlantic world of goods and the landscapes of Nova Scotia.
Book CHAPTERS
2024 Spurs and Negotiations of Masculinity in Early Modern England. (Konrad Eisenbichler and Jacqueline Murray, eds., Masculinities in Transition in Premodern Europe. Gender in the Middle Ages, 23. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer)
2016 Lady Mary to Queen of England: Transformation, Ritual, and the Wardrobe of the Robes. In The Birth of a Queen, Palgrave-MacMillan. Sarah Duncan and Valerie Schutte, Eds. 49-68.
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-58728-2_4
JOURNAL ARTICLES
2023 “Be sure to incorporate a little history”: Nostalgia and Stories of Place in Cape Breton Overshot Weaving.” Textile History. (vol. 53, Spring 2023.)
DOI: 10.1080/00404969.2023.2189442
2022 “Nova Scotia Wool Mural,” entry in CanadARThistories, an Open Educational Resource in Canadian and Indigenous Art Histories. Queens University.
2021 “Scissors, Embellishment and Womanhood: The Material Culture of Acadian Sewing To 1755.” Acadiensis. (Vol. 50, no. 1, Spring 2021): 62-95.
2014 “Saide Monstrous Hose”: Compliance, Transgression and English Sumptuary Legislation. Textile History. (Vol. 39, no. 2, November 2014): 171-191.
DOI: 10.1179/0040496914Z.00000000046
2013 “Rounde Heades in Square Cappes: The Role of the Vestments in the Vestiarian Controversy.” Dress, The Journal of the Costume Society of America. 39, no 2: 93-110.
DOI: 10.1179/0040496914Z.00000000046
BLOG POSTS
Borealia: Early Canadian History. A post on material culture and ways of thinking about domestic history. May 31, 2021.
Recorded Talks
Nostalgia and the Shuttle: Cape Breton Overshot Weaving and the Pursuit of Community.
Conference talk recorded at Stories of Place: Coastal Communities and Rural Settlement on Cape Breton Island & RSC Open Academy: Contexts and Legacies of Settler Colonialism in Mi’kma’ki/Acadie/Nova Scotia, August 27-28, 2021.
Recording by Clint Bruce, Université Sainte-Anne.
“Fine sewing and its associated toolkit played a crucial role in the definition of early modern elite European womanhood, and the presence of embroidery scissors in pre-deportation Acadia sheds new light on some of the Acadian value systems and means of navigating complex social structures in the colonial environment.”