History & Art History

November 9, 2009, was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event was celebrated on the George Mason University Fairfax campus with the destruction of a replica of that wall, built earlier in October by students and faculty. Throughout the process of wall-building and demolition, Dr. Marion Deshmukh has been [...]

Several department telephone extensions will be changed at the end of this fiscal year (June 30, 2009). The faculty list on this website will note the new telephone numbers. For easiest contact, please consider contacting faculty members directly using their GMU email address.

Congratulations to Rob Townsend for his successful defense of his dissertation on April 29.  His dissertation, titled “Making History: Scholarship and Professionalization in the Discipline, 1880 – 1940,” was completed under the mentorship of Roy Rosenzweig and with Peter Stearns serving as advisor. Also serving on Rob’s dissertation committee were Rosemarie Zagarri and Rosemary Jann.

Congratulations to two of our undergraduate students for receiving college-level recognition for their academic excellence. Megan Fowler, a double major in History and Theater, received a College of Humanities and Social Sciences Dean’s Challenge Award. The Dean’s Challenge Award recognizes students who have excelled while taking academically challenging courses and have contributed to the Mason [...]

Congratulations to doctoral student Kevin Shupe, who has been selected to participate in the prestigious Western History Dissertation Workshop at Yale University. This workshop is organized by the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders. Shupe’s dissertation is entitled, “Geronimo Escapes: Envisioning Indianness in Modern America.” Using Geronimo and his public [...]

Benedict Carton was selected in December 2008 as a national finalist by the National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS) for the Inspire Integrity Award. The NSCS Inspire Integrity Awards are the only national student-nominated faculty awards program. These awards are presented to full-time faculty who have, through their teaching and actions, made an impact on [...]

On March 24-25, 2009, George Mason University will host the conference “1989: Looking Back, Looking Forward” featuring Mikhail Gorbachev as the keynote speaker. Gorbachev will also participate in a round table discussion with Lee Hamilton, President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and former FBI Director William Webster. The conference was the brainchild [...]

Dr. Roger Mellen, assistant professor of journalism at New Mexico State University who received his PhD in History from GMU in August 2007, was awarded an honorable mention by the American Journalism Historians Association for his dissertation “A Culture of Dissidence: The Emergence of Liberty of the Press in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia”  in the Margaret A. [...]

Dr. Mike O’Malley’s book, The Cultural Turn in U.S. History (co-edited with James Cook and Lawrence Glickman), has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. A definitive account of one of the most dominant trends in recent historical writing, the volume takes stock of the field at the same time as it showcases [...]

ABC News Presidential Historian and George Mason University professor Richard Norton Smith has been busy speaking and writing about historical context for the presidential election and the inauguration. Along with his schedule of television commentary, he has written a number of articles offering historical insight into the current political scene. Here are two recent examples [...]