Cassandra Good

Cassandra Good (no photo)

Associate Professor

Academic Credentials

B.A., M.A., The George Washington University
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Biography

Dr. Cassandra Good joined the faculty at Marymount in Fall 2017.  Prior to that, she served as associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington.  There she did research, writing, and editing, as well as teaching a material culture-centered course titled The World of James Monroe.

Professor Good was trained in a multidisciplinary approach to history, integrating literature, art, material culture, gender studies, and anthropology.  Her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American Studies included courses ranging from religion to archaeology.  She interned and later worked full time at the Smithsonian Institution in new media as part of a team that started one of the Smithsonian’s first blogs and its first podcast series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.  She later worked in research and scholarly programs at the Freer and Sackler Galleries.

A native of the DC area, Professor Good is passionate about connecting her teaching and research with the city’s cultural and historical resources.

Other Information

Teaching Area

Professor Good teaches the history of early America from contact to 1877.  Her upper level courses include Colonial and Revolutionary America, The Early Republic and Jacksonian America, Race and Myth in Southern History, and The United States: Civil War and Reconstruction.  She integrates material culture and public history into many of her courses.

Research Interests

Professor Good is a scholar of gender and culture in the early American founding era.  She presents regularly at scholarly conferences and to public audiences.  Her work has also appeared in academic journals and popular websites including Slate, Smithsonian.com, and the History News Network.

She also wrote and narrated an audio course titled America’s Founding Women for The Great Courses and Audible.com

Professor Good’s first book, Founding Friendships: Friendships Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.  It received the Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize for the year’s best gender or women’s history book from the Organization of American Historians in 2016.  Good’s current research focuses on George Washington’s family and the ways succeeding generations grappled with their political role in the new nation.

Publications

First Family: George Washington’s Heirs and the Making of America (Harper Collins, forthcoming 2023)

“Defining the Family of Washington: Meaning, Blood, and Power in the New American Nation,” Journal of Social History, Summer 2022

Papers of James Monroe, Volume 7: 1814-1817, edited with Daniel Preston & Robert Karachuck (ABC-Clio: 2020)

“Washington Family Fortune: Lineage and Capital in Nineteenth Century America,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Winter 2020

Papers of James Monroe, Volume 6: 1811-1814, edited with Daniel Preston (ABC-Clio: 2017)

Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press, 2015; paper, 2017)
Mary Jurich Nickliss Prize for best gender history book, Organization of American Historians

“Friendly Relations: Situating Cross-Gender Friendships in the Early Republic,” Gender & History, April 2012

Papers of James Monroe, Volume 5: 1803-1811, edited with Daniel Preston (ABC-Clio: 2014)

“‘A Transcript of My Heart’: The Unpublished Diaries of Margaret Bayard Smith,” Washington History, Fall/Winter 2005

Contact

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