Emmanuel College

Art

Science Building

 Cynthia Fowler

Cynthia Fowler

Associate Professor of Art
Ph.D., University of Delaware; A.L.M, Harvard University Extension School; B.A., University of Massachusetts Boston

Office hours: Tuesday, Thursday 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Other times by appointment

Office: Administration Building, Room 524
Phone: (617) 975-9110
E-mail: fowlecy@emmanuel.edu

My area of specialty is American art from the early twentieth century to the present, and my scholarship focuses on Contemporary American Indian Art and Modernist Craft Production in Early Twentieth Century America.

Professional Highlights

Forthcoming book, 2012: Hooked Rugs and American Modern Art. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. This book is an examination of the convergence of the traditional craft of hooked rug making with modern art through the efforts of two modernist hooked rug businesses located in New York during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Upcoming Presentation

"Native Women Artists and American Modernism"
2011 Biannual Conference of Native American Art Studies Association (October 2011) Ottawa, Ontario.

Most Recent Publications

  • "Herman Trunk's Cubist Crucifix: A Case Study." Religion and the Arts 15.5 (December 2011): 628- 647.
  • "Aboriginal Beauty and Self-Determination: The Photographic Projects of Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie." In Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art. Denise Cummings, ed. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011.
  • "Materiality and Collective Experience: Sewing as Artistic Practice in Works by Marie Watt, Nadia Myre, and Bonnie Devine." American Indian Quarterly 34, no. 3 (fall 2010): 344-364.
  • "Hooking Magic: Transforming Women's Handicraft into Art." In Threading Women: Gender and the Material Culture of Textiles. Edited by Maureen Goggin and Beth Tobin. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2009.
  • "Strategies for Self-Determination in American Indian Art." Social Justice 34 (2007): 63-79. (Special edition on art and social change).
  • "Oklahoma: A View from the Center." Co-authored with Maria DePriest and Ruthe Blalock Jones. Studies in American Indian Literature 19 (fall 2007): 1-44.
  • "Representations of the Female Nude by Women Artists of Generation X." In Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism. Edited by Karen Frostig and Kathy Halamka. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007.
  • "Gender Representation in the Art of Jaune Quick To See Smith." Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art VI (2005): 79-85.
  • "Book Review of Irene Avaalaaqiaq: Myth and Reality, by Judith Nasby." Native Arts Council Newsletter 2 (Summer 2004): 7.
  • "The Embroideries of Marguerite Zorach and the Development of Early American Modernism." In The Most Excellent Women Artists, edited by Liana de Girolami Cheney. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
  • "Dorothy Dehner." In Encyclopedia of Sculpture, edited by Antonia Boström. London: Routledge, 2003.
  • "The Greatest Show on Earth: Visual Images of Women Circus Performers in Post World War I America." Mid-Atlantic Almanack 10 (2001): 7-28.
  • "The Intersecting of Theosophy and Modernism: Katherine Dreier and the Modern American Woman." Oculus 3, no. 1 (2000): 2-15.

Awards/Honors Received

Research Grant, Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, 2009

Award for research on modernist hooked rugs.

Founding Presidents' Award Nominee, Textile Society of America, 2008

Recognized for outstanding scholarship in textile studies. Nomination included a financial award.

James Renwick Fellowship in American Craft, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Summer 2007

Awarded for three months of research on craft production and its relationship to modernism in early twentieth century American art.

Winterthur Fellowship, Winterthur Museum, Wilmington, DE, Summer 2005

Awarded for one month of research on the hooked rug tradition in early twentieth-century American art.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, Evergreen College, Olympia, WA, Summer 2003

"Working from Community: American Indian Art and Literature in a Historical and Cultural Context," six weeks of intensive study of American Indian art and literature to further more thoughtful scholarship on native culture and to encourage teaching strategies that integrate native topics into general courses on art and literature.

Most Recent Presentations

  • "Modernist Hooked Rugs at the New Age School in North Carolina" 2010 Annual Conference on American Material Culture (October 2010) Madison-Morgan Cultural Center, Madison, GA.
  • "Herman Trunk and the Cubist Crucifix" 2010 Annual Conference of The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945 University of Portland, Portland, OR.
  • "Religion and Modernist Art in 1920s and 30s America"  Panel organizer and chair 2009, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA.
  • "Suturing Old Wounds: The Act of Sewing in Works by Contemporary American Indian and First Nations Women Artists" 2008 Annual Textile Society of America Symposium, Honolulu, HI.
  • "Remedies for Healing in the Art of Jaune Quick To See Smith" 2008 Annual Native American Literature Symposium, Minneapolis, MN.

Courses Taught

  • ART 2201: Visual Constructions of Gender
  • ART 2202: Art of Resistance: Social Justice and the Visual Arts
  • ART 2204: From Globalization to Transnationalism: Art in the Contact Zone
  • ART 2213: History of Photography
  • ART 2215: Modern Art
  • ART 2217: American Art to 1940
  • ART 2221 Contemporary Art and Artistic Practice
  • ART 2223: The Catholic Art Tradition
  • ART 3209: Art Since 1940
  • ART 3391/2: Special Topics in Art History