History & Art History » Blogroll

Book Launch for Dr. Michele Greet’s Latest Book

Susie — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:39:36 +0000

On Thursday, December 10, 2009, Dr. Michele Greet’s latest book Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art will be launched at the Art Museum of the Americas. The event will start at 6:30 pm. Street parking is available beginning at 6:00 pm.

This book is being lauded as “an excellent contribution to the literature on Latin American art and culture” (Katherine Manthorne, CUNY Graduate Center). Dr. Greet’s work is praised as being “purposeful, careful, and thoughtful, a nuanced analysis of indigenism in twentieth-century Andean art” (Stacie Widdefield, University of Arizona).

The Art Museum of the Americas is located at 201 18th Street, NW, in Washington, DC, just one block from Constitution Hall. Please RSVP at 202-234-7200 if you would like to attend.

Dr. Marion Deshmukh Instrumental in GMU’s Part in “Freedom Without Walls”

Susie — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:44:38 +0000

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 instrumental in organizing a wide range of programs. From moderating a panel discussion during the Fall for the Book festival with German journalists and scholars Dieter Dettke, Thomas Kline-Brockhoff, and Oliva Schoeller to swinging a hammer at the wall replica, to inviting German novelist Peter Schneider to speak at GMU, she has been tireless in her efforts to further our understanding of this monumental event.

For further information, please check out the Center for History & New Media’s site Freedom Without Walls.

Administration Note: Change to Several Faculty Telephone Numbers

Susie — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:13:25 +0000

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.

Townsend Successful Dissertation Defense

Susie — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:57:36 +0000

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.

2 GMU History Undergrads Recognized for Academic Excellence

Susie — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:51:40 +0000

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 community through research or outreach. Sana Mirza, a double major in History and Art History, received the Outstanding Research Project award at CHSS’s Undergraduate Research Symposium. Her project examines the political implications of the creation of a mosque by Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII, as well as the preservation of Orthodox Christian churches and the incorporation of Byzantine forms in Ottoman architecture by Sultan Mehmed II, and places them within larger artistic discourses. Congratulations to Megan and Sana!

GMU Doctoral Student Attending Yale’s Western History Dissertation Workshop

Susie — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:46:36 +0000

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 performances as a focal point, he examines the changes in the representations of American Indians from the end of the Indian Wars through the first decade of the twentieth century. His dissertation looks at images and discourses surrounding anthropology and the social sciences, commercialism and popular culture, religion and reform, frontier mythology and political ideology.

Carton Finalist for Inspire Integrity Award

Susie — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:40:33 +0000

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 the lives of their students and instilled a high degree of personal and academic integrity. Carton was chosen as a national finalist out of the southern region of the United States, which includes colleges and universities in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. This month he received a monetary prize for representing the southern region.

Chang and Kelly Create Compelling Conference–Gorbachev Keynote Speaker

Susie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 21:33:34 +0000

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 of Professors Michael Chang and Mills Kelly in the Department of History and Art History, and includes a number of visiting scholars as well as Mason professors leading discussions with students and the community on the legacies of the end of the Cold War and what we might expect in the future.

Recent PhD Graduate Mellen Receives Recognition

Susie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:01:30 +0000

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. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize for 2008. The AJHA’s Blanchard Prize is awarded annually for the best doctoral dissertations dealing with mass communication history.

O’Malley Investigates Social History in Newly Published Book

Susie — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:46:11 +0000

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 exemplars of its practice. The first of this volume’s three distinct sections offers a comprehensive genealogy of American cultural history, tracing its multifaceted origins, defining debates, and intersections with adjacent fields. The second section comprises previously unpublished essays by a distinguished roster of contributors who illuminate the discipline’s rich potential by plumbing topics that range from nineteenth-century anxieties about greenback dollars to confidence games in 1920s Harlem, from Shirley Temple s career to the story of a Chicano community in San Diego that created a public park under a local freeway. Featuring an equally wide-ranging selection of pieces that meditate on the future of the field, the final section explores such subjects as the different strains of cultural history, its relationships with arenas from mass entertainment to public policy, and the ways it has been shaped by catastrophe. Taken together, these essays represent a watershed moment in the life of a discipline, harnessing its vitality to offer a glimpse of the shape it will take in years to come.