Collections & Research Staff
Sarah Fee
Associate Curator
Eastern Hemisphere Textiles and Costume
B.A. Anthropology, Grinnell College, USA
MSt (Distinction) Anthropology, University of Oxford, UK
PhD Institut National des Langues et Civilisations (INALC), Paris, France
Dr. Fee joined the ROM in April, 2009, as Associate Curator of Eastern Hemisphere Textiles and Costume. She was raised on the plains of South Dakota, always curious as to what lay beyond the empty horizon. Having envisioned a career as an archaeologist, she converted to cultural anthropology as an undergraduate, setting her sites on Madagascar. For four years between 1989 and 1995 she lived with several communities of Tandroy cattle herders in the spiny desert at the southern tip of the island. There, she learned to spin, dye, and weave with village women and studied the central roles played by women and their cloth in funerary rites, ceremonial exchange and social life more generally. During this time, she also participated with Georges Heurtebize in the creation of Arembelo, the Tandroy Ethnographic Museum, located in Berenty, Madagascar.
Having undertaken additional research across the island, Dr. Fee guest curated the exhibition Gifts and Blessings, the Textile Arts of Madagascar at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art. Most recently her research interests have spread to the weaving traditions that have historically interconnected with and influenced those of Madagascar, namely Southeast Asia, Swahili East Africa, Southern Arabia, and India. Thematic interests include the historic trade of textiles, East-West interconnections, local appropriations of industrial cloth, gender, ceremonial exchange, spinning and dye technologies.
Dr. Fee's work has received financial support from The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Comité scientifique de l’Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and the Institute for Intercultural Studies. She is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and a Chercheuse Affiliée at the musée du quai Branly.
Publications
| In Prep. | "The Thread of Life: Weaving, women and ceremonial exchange in southern Madagascar." | 2011 | "Not for art’s sake: an early exhibition of Pre-columbiana at the Toledo Museum of Art, 1928-29." Museum Anthropology, 34(1): 13-27. | 2011 | "Futa Benadir: A Somali Tradition within the Folds of the Western Indian Ocean." In S. Cooksey ed., Africa Interweave. Textile Diasporas. Gainseville: University of Florida Harn Art Museum, pp. 120-127. | 2010 | "Silks and Soga: an historical survey of cloth imports in Madagascar." In Chantal Radimilahy and N. Rajaonarimanana eds, Civilisations des Mondes Insulaires, Homage u Professeur Claude Allibert (Paris: Karthala), pp. 299-336. |
| 2009 | "Recipes from the past: 19th century Merina authors on highland textile dyes." Co-authored with Bako Rasoarifetra, Etudes Océan Indien (Plantes et sociétés dans l’Océan Indien occidental), (42-42):143-174. |
| 2008 | "Handicapped heroes, Sambilo the bull, and the treacherous terrain of polygynous relations in southern Madagascar." Etudes Océan Indien. No. 36 (Littérature orale à Madagascar et aux Comores). |
| 2006 | "Tie it on tight, girls!: Speaking and acting through cloth in southern Madagascar." Proceedings of the Textile Society of America Bi-annual Conference, Narratives and Conversations, Toronto, October, 2006. |
| 2005 | "Ze maneva aze. Looking for patterns in Malagasy textiles." In Ruth Barnes and David Parkin, eds. Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies. London: Routledge, pp. 85-109. |
| 2004 | "Textile traditions of Southwest Madagascar." In Chap Kusimba, Claire Odland and Ben Bronson, eds. Unwrapping Madagascar's Textile Traditions. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum/The Field Museum of Natural History, pp. 92-111. |
| 2002 | "Cloth in Motion: Madagascar's Textiles through History." In Christine Kreamer and Sarah Fee, eds. Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery and Diplomacy in Madagascar. Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 33-94. |
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Contact Information
Department of World Cultures
Royal Ontario Museum
100 Queen's Park
Toronto, ON
M5S 2C6
Fax: 416.586.5877
E-mail: World Cultures
Dr. Sarah Fee photo by Evelyn Fee.
Detail of Merina silk cloth, weft patterned warp faced tabby 102" x 73" Madagascar, Africa 19th century, 948.121.
