Dr. Cynthia Edmonds-Cady
Professor
Office
RC Rachel Cooper 303
Office Hours
Flexible.
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Selected Research
Biography
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady is a Professor of Social Work, and affiliated faculty in the Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program. She has an expertise in Intersectionality and community engagement, women and poverty, social movement work, ecotherapy methods, and the connection between nature and improved mental health.
Current Courses
SWK 456.001 Child and Family Policy | Syllabus
SWK 418.001 Generalist Social Work Practice II: Families And Groups | Syllabus
SWK 419.001 Generalist Social Work Practice III: Organizations and Communities | Syllabus
Teaching Interests & Areas
Diverse Populations, Community Practice, Practice with Families and Groups, and Advanced Child and Family Policy. All courses include a community engagement component.
Research Interests & Areas
Nature-based ecotherapy practices (including working with the land, plants, and animals using agroecological approaches) strengthening the human/more-than-human bond for improved mental health and environmental outcomes, the community engagement of young low-income mothers, the uses of maternalism in the history of poor women’s social movements, and intersectionality in poor women’s access to reproductive rights during the Jim Crow era.
Research methods include qualitative methods such as: arts-based methods (photo-voice, poetic inquiry, autoethnography), focused ethnography, participatory qualitative mapping/spatial analysis, oral history, and archival methods.
Dr. Edmonds-Cady has presented and published papers on improved mental health and healing through nature, feminist standpoint theory, the history of the Welfare Rights Movement, race/class and women’s reproductive control in the 1940s-1950s American South, and the use of feminist research methods.
Ph D Social Work
Michigan State University
East Lansing
MSW Social Work
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
BS Social Work
Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti
University Outstanding Teaching Initiative Award
Illinois State University
2012
Grants and Contracts
Exploring the Potential of an Embodied Nature Practice for Increased Well-Being
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Illinois State University CAS URG. August 2024 - August 2025
Re-Integration of Mixed-Power Systems in Agroecological Intensification
Ruth Burke, Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
U.S. Department of Agriculture SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Projects). 2024 - 2025
SoTL Civic Engagement Small Grant Program
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Illinois State University Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology. August 2011 - May 2012
Illinois State University, Pre-tenure Faculty Initiative Grant (PFIG)
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Illinois State University. August 2010 - August 2011
Illinois State University, New Faculty Initiative Grant (NFIG)
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Illinois State University. June 2008 - June 2009
Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Illinois State University, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Workshop seed money. 2007 - 2007
Active Voices of Youth (AVOY) Student Advocacy Center (SAC) of Michigan
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
W.K. Kellogg Foundation. 2001 - 2002
State of Michigan, Children’s Trust Fund Initiative
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
State of Michigan. 2000 - 2001
Book Review
Review of the book Shared prosperity in America’s communities, by S.M. Wachter & L. Ding
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
(2016), 43, 165-68, The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare
Book, Authored
Piling Rocks on the Dead
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
(2023), Bottlecap Press
Journal Article
Finding the Solace Outside
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Canary Literary Journal, Summer 2023 (June 21, 2023), (2023)
Mapping Communities of Mothering: Where Race, Class, Gender, and Space Intersect.
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Journal of Progressive Human Services, (2023), DOI:10.1080/10428232.2023.2173473
A Right to Motherhood? Race, Class, and Reproductive Services in the Jim Crow South
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 44 (4), 143-166, (2018)
Social Workers: Agents of Change or Agents of Oppression?
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady, Tuwana Wingfield, LCSW.
Social Work Education, 36 (4), 430-442, (2017)
Motherhood and agency: American welfare rights activists’ resistance to state control over sexuality and reproduction
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative (JMI), 3 (2), 134-149, (2013)
A view from the bridge: Insider-outsider perspectives in an historical study of the welfare rights movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Qualitative Social Work (QSW), 11 (2), 174-190, (2012)
Applications of situated learning to foster communities of practice
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady, M. Sosulski.
Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE), 48 (1), 45-64, (2012)
Getting to the grassroots: Feminist standpoints within the welfare rights movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (JSSW), 36 (2), 11-38, (2009)
Mobilizing motherhood: Race, class, and the uses of maternalism in the welfare rights movement.
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ), 37 (3&4), 202-218, (2009)
Children in crisis: Special education and other stressors in the lives of children removed from school by expulsion
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady, R. Hock.
School Social Work Journal, 32 (2), 72-86, (2008)
Presentations
Using an Embodied Nature Practice with College Students for Improving Mental Health and the Health of our Planet
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
The Stewardship Network Annual Conference, E. Lansing Michigan, November, 2025
When Human Connection Becomes Dangerous: Creating an Embodied Nature Practice for the Age of Covid.
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Nineteenth annual International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign., May, 2023
Making our way Outside: Toward an Embodied Nature Practice
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, April, 2023
Women in the Wild: Writing Evocative Autoethnographies on Trauma, Nature, and Healing
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), Champaign, Illinois, May, 2019
Through the Looking Glass: Teaching Macro Practice Skills Through Immersive, Community-Engaged Learning
Marya Sosulski, Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
CSWE Annual Program Meeting, Orlando, FL, October, 2018
Anti-Poverty Warriors: Lessons from the Welfare Rights Movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
ISU's Office of Diversity Advocacy Lunch and Learn series, Normal, IL, April, 2017
From Behind the Walls of the Ivory Tower to the Streets: Knowledge Construction and Positionality in Social Justice Work
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady, Tuwana Wingfield, LCSW.
Race, Gender, & Class (RGC) conference, University of New Orleans Department of Sociology, New Orleans, Louisiana., March 31, 2016
Overcoming stereotyping and prejudice: Is it possible?
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady, Christopher Gjesfjeld.
International Studies Seminar Series, Illinois State University, September, 2015
Socially Constructing Single-Mother Communities by Mapping the Intersection of Gender, Class, Race, and Space
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Eleventh Annual International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May, 2015
Defining Community at the Intersection of Motherhood, Race, and Space: Low-Income Women’s Civic Engagement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Ninth Annual International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), Online, May, 2013
(Re) defining Civic Engagement: Understanding Community through Women’s Work and Women’s Bodies
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Eighth Annual International Congress for Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May, 2012
Motherhood Revisited: Maternalism in the Next Generation
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Amherst, MA, June, 2011
Defining Welfare, Work, and Motherhood: Women's Participation in the Welfare Rights Movement in Detroit, 1964-1972
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives series, E. Lansing, Michigan, March, 2011
Using Historical Research to Examine the Shaping of Family Planning Services through the Lens of Race, Class, and Gender
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), Tampa, FL, January, 2011
Oppression and Agency: Detroit Welfare Rights Activists’ Resistance to State Control over Sexuality and Reproduction during the War on Poverty
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual conference of the Social Science History Association (SSHA), Chicago, IL, November, 2010
Blurring the Outsider/Insider Divide: Race, Class, and Gender in the Welfare Rights Movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference, Denver, CO, November, 2010
Mobilizing Motherhood in the Welfare Rights Movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Motherhood Symposium, New York, NY, March, 2010
Race, Class, and the Rights to Motherhood in the Southern United States 1939-1950
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual conference of the Social Science History Association (SSHA), San Diego, CA, November, 2009
Situating Privilege and Oppression in the Classroom: Emotional Resistance, Acceptance, and Action
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), San Antonio, TX, November, 2009
Welfare Policy in Illinois for a panel on Financial Literacy
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
ISU College of Education’s co-sponsored Financial Literacy Awareness Week, Normal, IL, May, 2009
Complicating Gender: Using an Intersectional Analysis to Examine Women’s Participation in the Welfare Rights Movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual conference of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), New Orleans, LA, January, 2009
Why is Cultural Competence Important? Understanding Historical and Political Groundings of Inequality in the U.S.
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
ISU Diversity Advocacy Office summer training and orientation program, Normal, IL, July 17, 2008
Boundaries Maintained Boundaries Crossed: Lessons from the Welfare Rights Movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Symposium, Ypsilanti, MI, January, 2008
Getting to the grassroots: Feminist standpoints within the welfare rights movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), San Francisco, CA, October, 2007
Boundaries of sisterhood: Race, class, and gender in Michigan’s welfare rights movement
Cynthia Edmonds-Cady.
Annual Program Meeting of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), Chicago, IL, February, 2006