March 28, 2024

Good Appears on CSPAN

Cassandra Good, associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe, was interviewed for CSPAN’s American History TV.  She spoke about James Monroe’s life and foreign policy.  The interview originally aired on September 6 and is available online at http://www.c-span.org/video/?326815-7/discussion-james-monroe-foreign-policy.

Cassandra Good Speaks at Mount Vernon

good_founding-revisedCassandra Good, associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe, presented the Ford Evening Book Talk at the Fred W. Smith Library at Mount Vernon on July 23. She spoke about her book, Founding Friendships, with a focus on George Washington and his family’s friendships. The talk is available at http://livestream.com/gwmountvernon/events/3750382.

Good Presents Research at Conference

Cassandra Good, associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe, presented a paper titled “James Monroe and the Passions of Foreign Policy” at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia on June 25.  The paper was based on correspondence published in the latest volume of The Papers of James Monroe, edited by Good, Daniel Preston and Heidi Stello.

Cassandra Good Speaks in Leesburg, Chicago

Cassandra Good, associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe, recently spoke at two venues on her research. On June 3, she spoke at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Va, on her book, Founding Friendships. On June 19, she presented a paper from her new research on George Washington’s family at the Omohundro Institute for Early American History & Culture conference in Chicago, Ill.

Good Presents at Five Venues in March

Cassandra Good, associate editor of the papers of James Monroe, was the Women’s History Month speaker at the Library Company of Philadelphia on March 3.

Good also chaired a panel on masculinity and emotions at the Virginia Forum on March 14 and lectured on her new book at the Society of the Cincinnati and the Library of Congress on March 16 and 25.

Good presented on a panel at the Virginia Festival for the Book on March 22, which was featured by the local NBC affiliate in Charlottesville.

Author Discovers Founding Friendships

Friendships between men and women are usually regarded with suspicion, but Cassandra Good, associate editor of the Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington, discovered instances of genuine friendships between men and women hidden away in an unexpected time in history. Cassandra Good  Photo by Julia Davis '15 Good’s recently published book, Founding Friendships: Friendships between Men and Women in the Early American Republic,” draws on diaries, portraits and letters between men and women who lived in the early stages of the United States’ history and explores their relationships. Some of the relationships include familiar names: Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson wrote letters back and forth. George Washington corresponded with a woman named Elizabeth Powel, also through letters. Good spent nearly a decade researching friendships between men and women from 1780 to 1830. She traveled to about two dozen archives and museums all over the east coast and read letters written by men and women to each other among other documents. Some prohibitions existed against writing letters to unrelated members of the opposite sex during the late 1700s and early 1800s, but Good found substantial material. Friendships between elite men and women, such as the one between Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson, had political, social and personal benefits that were not romantic in nature, an idea that Good conveys in her book. “I argue that elite men and women in the early American republic formed loving friendships that exemplified the key values of that period: equality, virtue, freedom and choice. These friendships were building blocks of new American systems of politics, gender, and power,” said Good, whose book was published by Oxford University Press. Good aims to show that relationships between men and women are not always limited to marriage or romance. Friendship between men and women is not only possible, but it can be healthy, she said. “The idea of companionate marriage—that a husband and wife should be friends—started in the period I write about, and with that arose the idea that marriage should be the central place for adults to fulfill emotional needs. I think both then and now we put too much weight on marriage as the pinnacle of fulfillment,” said Good. “I hope readers will consider how it takes many different relationships and types of love to support us and make us happy.”

Cassandra Good Publishes Book, Founding Friendships

Published by Oxford University Press

Published by Oxford University Press

Cassandra Good, Associate Editor of the Papers of James Monroe, published Founding Friendships: Friendships Between Men and Women in the Early American Republic with Oxford University Press. The book is a cultural history of male/female friendships in the period 1780-1830 using letters, diaries, novels, portraits and more to explore issues of gender and power.  Good will be doing book talks at a number of venues in the coming months, including Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Feb. 14, and the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville on March 22.

UMW Faculty Member to Appear on Travel Channel (Fredericksburg.Com)

Cassandra Good Appears on History TV Show

Cassandra Good, Associate Editor of the Papers of James Monroe, will appear on a Travel Channel special titled, “Mysteries at the White House” on Friday, Nov. 7 at 9 p.m.  She was interviewed for a segment about Andrew Jackson’s 1829 inaugural ball.

Cassandra Good Presents at Conference

Cassandra Good, assistant editor of the Papers of James Monroe, presented a paper titled “Making Friends, Making Gender: Friendships Between Men and Women in the Atlantic World” at the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture annual conference in Baltimore, Md., on June 15.