2013

Cheek, Dr. Cheryl

United States

From Uncoverings 2013, Volume 34 of the Research Papers of the American Quilt Study Group

Cheryl Cheek is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State Mont Alto. For fifteen years, she has been researching identity, or how individuals define who they are. She is particularly interested in studying how a sense of self develops and also how it is expressed over a lifetime. She believes that as people go through their lives, they have new opportunities to express different aspects of their identities. One way that Cheryl researches the way individuals express their identities is through their use of "identity kits," or the objects that they keep near them. In particular, she has studied the ways in which Amish, Appalachian, and Mormon quilters, as well as quilters on the Isle of Man, express their identities through quilting.

​When AQSG added Uncoverings articles to the Quilt Index, they omitted all the illustrations, for lack of permissions. Although the articles found in the QI (1980-2010, 2012-2016) lack illustrations, they link to quilts, essays, special collections, and documentation projects across the Quilt Index, introducing them to a wider audience. The permission issues have since been resolved and in 2024, AQSG completed adding all the Uncoverings volumes from 1980-2023 to the Digital Commons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They are completely searchable and include all the illustrations. You can find, Uncoverings 2013, Volume 34, at this link, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/aqsg-uncoverings/29/.