Cassandra Good
Ph.D. Student
(ABD)
cgood (at) sas (dot) upenn (dot) edu
Education
B.A. summa cum laude in American Studies, George Washington University (2004); M.A. in American Studies, George Washington University (2005)
Research Interests
Early American cultural history, religion, gender, art/material culture, anthropological approach to history
Dissertation Topic
“‘A Golden Mean’: Friendship Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic, 1780-1830”
My dissertation project argues that friendships between men and women helped create the social fabric of the new nation. In a republican polity that relied on the virtuous bonds of its citizenry, heterosocial friendships gave women an entry point into the civic body and tied together political, social, and religious circles. I argue that these friendships flourished outside of prescribed gender roles and relationships, with men and women improvising to create fulfilling friendships within the bounds of propriety. That space for improvisation and the egalitarian relationships created between men and women suggest that the sexual and gender systems in this era were not as constraining as historians have imagined. Men and women could make what they would of these friendships, adapting the dynamics of power and the meanings of gender and sex.
Advisory Committee
Personal Statement
My work is interdisciplinary, and the receptiveness to that approach at Penn is really exciting for me. My interest in historical research began with a project comparing a husband and wife's diaries when I was 18, and since then my interests have broadened through work at the Supreme Court, an archaeology dig, new media work at the Smithsonian, and consulting for the forthcoming American Revolution Center. I'm particularly interested in bringing anthropological theory into my research and I did one of my exam fields in historical anthropology. I have presented my work at the American Historical Association, the Smithsonian Institution, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the Newberry Library, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, among others.
