Dr. Sutherland is fascinated by the Renaissance and Baroque periods (roughly 1350 to 1700), including the Catholic Reformation in the Italian peninsula and Central Europe. Her teaching and research have focused on war, religion, the Scientific Revolution, the Republic of Letters, and the growth of states and empires. She views her most important role as helping students get to know and explore a wider world. For that reason, she organizes and leads a summer Study Abroad program in Prague that explores Central European history and culture and provides MTSU students with an opportunity to experience what it is like to live abroad.

Dr. Sutherland has also been involved in multiple collaborative, interdisciplinary projects including: Mapping the Republic of Letters as well as the Stanford-based "Early Modern Mobility: Knowledge, Communication, and Transportation, 1500-1800." Finally, she serves as a Subject Editor for the digital Routledge Resources Online - The Renaissance World, using digital tools to help interpret some of the most exciting new scholarship on the Renaissance for undergraduate and graduate student readers. 

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S. Sutherland, The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Habsburg Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022.

Lelková, P. Findlen, and S. Sutherland, “Kircher’s Bohemia: Jesuit Networks and Habsburg Patronage in the Seventeenth Century,” Erudition and the Republic of Letters Vol. 5 (2020), No. 5.2: 163-206.

P. Findlen and S. Sutherland, eds., The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1650. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019.  

S. Sutherland, “War, Mobility, and Letters at the Start of the Thirty Years War, 1621-23” in The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1650, eds. P. Findlen and S. Sutherland. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019.  

S. Sutherland, “Epilogue. From Renaissance to Republic of Letters: Letter-Rack Still-Life Paintings” in The Renaissance of Letters: Knowledge and Community in Italy, 1300-1650, eds. P. Findlen and S. Sutherland. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2019.

S. Sutherland, P. Findlen, and I. Lelková, “Etruscan Dreams: Athanasius Kircher, Medici Patronage, and Tuscan Friendships, 1633-80” in I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Fall, 2018).   

S. Sutherland, “Warfare, Entrepreneurship, and Politics,” in The Routledge History of the Renaissance, ed. William Caferro. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 302-18.  

S. Sutherland, “From Battlefield to Court: Raimondo Montecuccoli’s Diplomatic Mission to Queen Christina of Sweden after the Thirty Years War,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 47 (2016), 4 (Winter): 915-38.

Works-in-Progress

S. Sutherland, "Dangerous Routes: Bridal Journeys and Diplomatic Alliances in the Late Renaissance"

S. Sutherland, "Women and Jewels"

S. Sutherland, "Athanasius Kircher's US Collectors"

P. Findlen, S. Sutherland, and I. Lelková, The Baroque Postmaster: Athanasius Kircher between Rome and the World (under consideration at Stanford University Press)  

P. Findlen, S. Sutherland, and I. Lelková, “Kircher’s Orient: A Jesuit’s Letters from the East”

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Dr. Sutherland's current research project examines Renaissance brides, marriages, and diplomatic alliances. Her goal is to place the reader on the ground alongside brides from ruling families such as the Medici, Gonzaga, and Habsburgs to see the world of marriage negotiations, weddings, childbirth, child-rearing, and other wifely duties, including political duties, through their eyes by analyzing their own writings.

Dr. Sutherland is currently working on a few articles. The first focuses on bridal journeys or how royal brides got from their native courts to the courts of their grooms, traveling hundreds of miles on difficult, dangerous roads with thousands of followers. The second article focuses on how brides accumulate and transfer family wealth and the power that goes with it, especially through acquiring, protecting, and exchanging jewels.

She also continues to study the world of baroque Catholic scholarship through the correspondence of the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. She is currently investigating the history of US collections of Kircher's books.

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