Deborah Valoma's specialized field of teaching at California College of the Arts is the cultural history of textiles as a global aesthetic practice. Drawing on a growing body of textile scholarship, she has developed a comprehensive series of graduate and undergraduate courses on textile history and theory, focusing on textiles as signifiers of identity and agents of cultural continuity. These are taught through multiple theoretical lenses including industrialism and globalism; colonialism and indigenization movements; cultural appropriation and notions of so-called authenticity; and gendered and racialized hierarchies of value.These courses introduce students to the theoretical discourses in the field of textiles and provide them with intellectual tools to navigate the historical terrain they walk through daily.
