In American culture, the handmade quilt has long been a freighted signifier of home comforts, domestic economy, and "women's work" in the private realm. In Quilts and Human Rights, four quilt scholars from the Michigan State University Museum subvert that notion mightily, demonstrating that, for over two hundred years, thousands of women across many cultures have used their quilting skills instrumentally, to assert themselves as citizens of the wider world, capable of organizing to address human rights abuses and agitate for social change at home and abroad.