Lisa Gail Collins, Professor of Art on the Sarah Gibson Blanding Chair and Director of Vassar’s American Studies Program, is author of Stitching Love and Loss: A Gee’s Bend Quilt, a thickly layered story of a work-clothes quilt made in mourning and the memory of its making.

In her review of the book, Tiya Miles writes: “In Stitching Love and Loss, the gifted art historian Lisa Gail Collins wraps an achingly beautiful story of artistry, family, community, and place around the form and function of one stunning Gee’s Bend ‘utility quilt.’” A meditation on suffering, creativity, and grace, Beverly Guy-Sheftall calls the interdisciplinary study “a praisesong for the artistry, resilience, and resistance of Black women in Alabama’s rural Black Belt.”

A New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Scholars-in-Residence Fellowship, funded by the NEH, launched this long-loved book project. A residency as an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in DC, as well as a Vassar College Research Committee award, helped bring it to completion.