Projects
&Publications
PAST, CURRENT & UPCOMING WORK
RESEARCH AREAS
Eighteenth-century British and French art, landscape design, and dress: textiles, wearing, hybridization, and chinoiserie
Global perspectives on Anglo-American visual and material culture and identity
U.S. women's hereditary societies, their collecting and interpretive strategies, the promotion of nationalism, and the creation of mythologies surrounding
"true" Americanism
Scots-Irish migration to the early American South,1700-1775
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Past & Postponed Work
Past research at the Washington Library included recovering the identities of Mount Vernon's enslaved seamstresses, underscoring their lives, labor, and the material products they created.
Delayed indefinitely due to COVID, plans included replicating a silk gown owned by Martha Washington that was refashioned with captive labor.
Girl with a Tray
Philip Mercier (1689-1760)
Cultures: France
c. 1750
Oil on canvas
Height: 91.4 cm (35.9 in); Width: 71.3 cm (28 in)
Hermitage
PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS
Cynthia's article on U.S. womens' hereditary societies and their exclusionary interpretive strategies of early American period rooms is forthcoming in the themed issue of History: Journal of the Historical Association, Women and History, c.1500-Present (September 2021).
Her other work has been featured in Textile History, The Junto, Washington's Quill (The Washington Papers Project/The University of Virginia), Mount Vernon Magazine, What Weekly Magazine, The Saranac Review, Ellipsis: Literature and Art, The Slush Pile Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and on MountVernon.org.
Her most recent presentations include talks at the The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon, Yale University, and the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C.
She looks forward to presenting at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and at the Omohundro Institute's Annual Conference in 2021.*
*These events, originally scheduled for 2020, were postponed due to COVID-19.
