Cynthia Fowler

Ph.D., University of Delaware; A.L.M, Harvard University; B.A., University of Massachusetts Boston

• ART 1203: Social Justice and the Visual Arts
• ART 2201: Understanding Gender Through Art
• ART 2204: Cultural Exchange and the Visual Arts
• ART 2213: History of Photography
• ART 2215: Modern Art
• ART 2217: An Anti-Racist and Progressive History of American Art
• ART 2221: Contemporary Art and Artistic Practice
• ART 2223: The Catholic Art Tradition
• ART 2224: Irish Art
• ART 3209: Art Since 1940
• ART 3391/2: Special Topics in Art History

Most Recent Publications:

• Art History at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States. Paula Murphy, co-editor. London: Routledge, 2022.
• “Women Art Educators of the Design Workshop and the Advancement of Progressive Art Education.” Studies in Art Education (forthcoming 2022).
• Hooked Rugs at Henry Francis du Pont’s Chestertown House.” Americana Insights. 2021. https://americanainsights.org/essays/hooked-rugs/ 
• Transatlantic Textiles:  Ireland’s Dun Emer Textiles in America During the First Decade of the Twentieth Century."  Textile History 50, no. 2 (2019): 163-186.
• The Modern Embroidery Movement: Marguerite Zorach, Georgiana Brown and Their Collaborators. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. For more information, click here.
• "Marguerite Zorach's Modernist Embroideries." In Marguerite Zorach: An Art-Filled Life. Jane Bianco, ed. Rockland, ME: Farnsworth Art Museum, 2017.
• Locating American Art:  Finding Meaning in Art Museums. Editor. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2016. For more information, click here. 
• "Gender, Modern Art and Native Women Painters in the First Half of the Twentieth Century." In American Women Artists, 1935-1970. Helen Langa and Paula Wisotzki, eds. Burlington, VT:  Ashgate, 2016. For more information, click here.
• "A Progressive View on Religion and Modern Art:  The 1944 Religious Art of Today Exhibition at Boston's Institute of Modern Art."  Religion and the Arts (spring 2016).
• "Brenda Miller and Post-Minimalist Art."  Woman's Art Journal 36, no. 2 (fall/winter 2015): 12-19.
• "A Sign of the Times:  Sheila Hicks and the Fiber Arts Movement."  Journal of Modern Craft 7.1 (March 2014):  33-52.
• Hooked Rugs:  Encounters in American Modern Art, Craft and Design. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. For information, click here. 
• "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.

Book And Exhibition Reviews 

• Exhibition and catalogue review: Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists. Jill Ahlbert Yohe and Teri Greeves, curators.  CAA Reviews (posted 20 August 2020) http://caareviews.org/reviews/3741#.X0UjlhNKgSJ 
• Book review: “Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract,” by Philip Deloria. Woman’s Art Journal 40, no. 2 (fall/winter 2019): 61-62. 
• Book review: “Irene Avaalaaqiaq:  Myth and Reality,” by Judith Nasby Native Arts Council Newsletter 2 
  (Summer 2004): 7. 

Emmanuel Publications

• Mary Reardon:  Catholic Art in the Twentieth Century.  Boston:  Emmanuel College, 2013. This book is a compilation of student essays based on research that students completed using archival material from the Emmanuel College Archives on artist Mary Reardon.
• A Bridging of Art and Faith: Sister Vincent de Paul Curran, SND de Namur.  Boston:  Emmanuel College, 2012.
• Herman Trunk:  Catholic Modernist.  Boston:  Emmanuel College, 2010. 

Most Recent Presentations

• “Crossing the Atlantic: Visual Culture at the Crossroads of Ireland and the United States” 2021 Annual American Conference on Irish Studies (virtual) Panel organizer, and presenter of paper titled “Transnational Solidarity: The Frederick Douglass Mural in New Bedford, MA
• The Women of the Design Workshop:  Educating the General Public on Modern Art” 2020 Annual Southeast College Art Conference (virtual)
• "Irish Identity in a Global Market: The Embroidered Landscapes of Lily Yeats." 2018 Biannual conference of the Textile Society of America, Vancouver, BC.
• "Transatlantic Exchange: Ireland and the United States in the Twentieth Century." Panel chair. 2017 Annual conference of the Southeast College Art Conference, Columbus, OH.
• "The American Reception of Irish Textiles in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century," 2016 Biannual Conference of the Textile Society of America, Savanah, Georgia
• "Georgiana Brown Harbeson:  Modern Embroidery and the Amateur/Professional Divide," 2015 Annual conference of the Southeast College Art Conference, Pittsburgh, PA
• "The Modern Embroidery Movement in Early 20th-Century America," 2014 Annual Feminist Art History Conference,  American University, Washington, DC
• "Gendering American Indian Modernism" Panel chair  2013 Biannual Conference of the Native American Art Studies Association (October 2013), Denver, CO
• "The Feminist Threads of the Fiber Arts Movement"  2012 Biannual Conference of the Textile Society of America (September 2012), Washington, DC
• "Native Women Artists and American Modernism" 2011 Biannual Conference of Native American Art Studies Association (October 2011) Ottawa, Ontario.
• "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's 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

• Publication Grant, Society for the Preservation of American Modernists, 2017.  Awarded to support publication of the book, The Modern Embroidery Movement.  
• 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.
• 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.

My area of specialty is American art from the first half of the twentieth century, and my scholarship focuses on American women artists and craft production from this time period. For example, my book titled The Modern Embroidery Movement: Marguerite Zorach, Georgiana Brown Harbeson and Their Collaborators (2018) examines the modernist inspired embroideries of a group of American women artists who argued through their embroideries and their writing that embroidery should be taken seriously as an art form.

More recently, inspired by the Irish Art course that I teach, I've been concentrating on transcultural exchange between Ireland and the United States. I've published on the display of Irish textiles in America by an Irish cottage industry called Dun Emer whose founding members included Lily and Lolly Yeats, the sisters of the celebrated writer W.B. Yeats and one of Ireland's most highly regarded artists, Jack Yeats. I've co-edited an anthology on transatlantic exchange between Ireland and the United States with Dr. Paula Murphy, an Irish art historian and professor emeritus of University College Dublin.