Cynthia A. Kierner
Professor
Director of the PhD Program, History and Art History
U.S. History: Colonial and revolutionary America; early republic; Old South; women and gender
Cindy Kierner received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1986. A specialist in the fields of early America, women and gender, and early southern history, she is the author or editor of six books and many articles. Kierner is an OAH Distinguished Lecturer and past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH), and she has served on several editorial boards. Her research has received support from the American Historical Association, the Virginia Historical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She joined the department in 2008 and became Director of the Ph.D. Program in August 2010.
Current Research
Kierner is completing two major projects. One, a biography titled A Perfect Temper: The Life and Times of Martha Jefferson Randolph, will be published in 2011 by the University of North Carolina Press. The other, a coauthored book on Virginia women's history, will be published by the Library of Virginia. Her next big research project will involve the history of leisure in America from the colonial period through the Civil War era.
Selected Publications
“Martha Jefferson and the America Revolution in Virginia,” in James Marten, ed., Children and Youth in a New Nation (2009).
The Contrast: Manners, Morals, and Authority in the Early American Republic (2007).
“Women, Gender, Families, and Households in the Southern Colonies,” Journal of Southern History (2007) .
Scandal at Bizarre: Rumor and Reputation in Jefferson’s America (2004).
Revolutionary America, 1750-1815: Sources and Interpretation (2002).
“‘The dark and dense cloud perpetually lowering over us’: Gender and the Decline of the Gentry in Postrevolutionary Virginia,” Journal of the Early Republic (2000).
Beyond the Household: Women's Place in the Early South, 1700-1835 (1998).
Southern Women in Revolution, 1776-1800: Personal and Political Narratives (1998).
“Gender, Hospitality, and Sociability in the Southern Colonies,” Journal of Southern History (1996).
“Genteel Balls and Republican Parades: Gender and Early Southern Civic Rituals, 1677-1825,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1996).
Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790 (1992).
Courses Taught
Undergraduate: Revolutionary America, Jefferson’s America (HIST 300)
Graduate: Colonial America, Revolutionary Era, Leisure in America
Dissertations Supervised
Gwen White—on George Washington, Mount Vernon, and the wider Virginia and Atlantic communities
Jon Barth—on banking and political culture on the early America republic
Recent Presentations
“Virginia Women and the Politics of the Early Republic: the Strange Case of Martha Jefferson Randolph,” 2nd Annual Crenshaw Lecture, Virginia Commonwealth University, Nov. 2010.
“Martha Jefferson Randolph and the Performance of Domesticity: Politics, Patriarchy, and Presidents in the Early Republic,” Newberry Seminar on Women and Gender, Oct. 2010.
“Writing a History of Virginia Women: Opportunities and Challenges,” Southern Historical Association, Oct. 2009.
“Scandal at Bizarre: Sex, Rhetoric, and Reality in Jefferson’s Virginia,” Frostburg State University, Feb. 2009.
“Jefferson and the Bizarre Scandal,” International Center for Jefferson Studies, Dec. 2007.