Cynthia Patterson is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of South Florida Polytechnic. She received her Doctorate in Cultural Studies from George Mason University (GMU) in May 2005. At GMU she co-founded the annual "Visual Culture Symposium," served as an active member of the "New Media Group in English," and guest-edited the English department's electronic journal, English Matters.
Her research interests include 19th century American literature and cultural history, visual culture, and American periodical literature. Her interdisciplinary research received fellowship support from the Smithsonian Institutions, Winterthur Library (twice), the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and, most recently, the Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship in Visual Culture from the American Antiquarian Society.
Dr. Patterson has presented her research at a variety of respected academic venues, including the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Literature Association (ALA), the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (Berks), the Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW), the Popular Culture/American Culture Association (PC/ACA), and the Cultural Studies in Education (CSE) conferences. Her work has appeared in an edited collection Material Women, in American Periodicals and in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
Dr. Patterson's book, Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s, is scheduled for September 2010 publication by the University Press of Mississippi. She is currently working on a second book on the contributions of Unitarian and Universalist women to 19th century social movements. She is a member of the Faculty Technology Integration Institute (FTII) learning community at USFP, and is committed to hands-on, real-world, collaborative teaching and learning experiences.
Dr. Patterson teaches Professional Writing, Communication for Engineers, Advanced Technical Writing and Cultural Studies and the Popular Arts.