Archives - 961 News Items

In a video presented by China Global Television Network America, Kevin Matthews, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discusses the UK elections for prime minister as well as Brexit questions.

Sun-Young Park and Robert DeCaroli, faculty members in the Department of History and Art History, have each received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies to pursue quite diverse research.

The Mapping Early American Elections website offers new visual representations of Congressional elections held from 1787 to 1825, including interactive maps, spatial data, and election results.

With regret and sadness, we note the passing of Marion Deshmukh on Saturday, April 13, 2019. Dr. Deshmukh was a giant at George Mason University whose broad impact on her field, her students, and campus was foundational.

As the National Museum of African American History and Culture searches for a new director, Spencer Crew, Robinson Professor of American, African American, Public History, steps in as interim director.

Mack Holt’s recent book wins accolades Last year Mack Holt, Professor Emeritus of French history, published his most recent book, The Politics of Wine in Early Modern France: Religion and Popular Culture in Burgundy, 1477-1630 (Cambridge University Press). Since its publication the book has received two major accolades.

With a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, Mills Kelly and his team will create a digital historical guide of the evolution of the Appalachian Trail over the past century.

With regret and sadness, we note the passing of Marion Deshmukh on Saturday, April 13, 2019. Dr. Deshmukh was a giant at George Mason University whose broad impact on her field, her students, and campus was foundational.

Catey Borden, a History major who graduated in May 2018, was recently named as a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Award. The award gives recent undergraduates the opportunity to live abroad and engage in daily cultural exchange with people in their host country. This is among the most prestigious of national academic awards for undergraduate students in the U.S. We recently asked Catey some questions about her upcoming experience.

"We still have to wrestle with slavery as an institution even if we were not complicit as an institution in the system of slavery," said Wendi Manuel-Scott.

Prof. Jane Censer delivers Presidential Address to the Southern Historical Association; Retires from Department of History and Art History

Susan Wood, Office Manager of the Department of History and Art History, has won the 2018 Mary Roper Award.

Andrew McMichael, an alum of Mason’s History B.A. (1993) and M.A. (1996) programs, has recently been named Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Auburn University in Montgomery, AL.

This new report notes that in 2018, none of the American winners were foreign-born individuals who immigrated permanently to the United States. But the United States did play an important role in their formation; nine of the twelve 2018 Nobel Laureates were either students, teachers, or research fellows at U.S. institutions of higher education at some point in their lives.

On 5 November 2018, Binghamton University professor Robert G. Parkinson delivered a lecture entitled “Making ‘the Cause’ Common: Fear, Prejudice, and the Making of the American Union” to the Department of History and Art History and the wider George Mason community.

While exploring newspaper clippings in the Fenwick Library archives, art history major Lana Mason found a piece of Mason history that sparked her interest, so she decided to dig deeper.

As part of her dissertation, history PhD candidate Stephanie Walters built her own datasets and digital networks to identify the role that loyalists played in the Virginia Revolutionary narrative.

On October 23, a group of George Mason University students in Dr. Christopher Hamner’s “History of the Civil War Era” course took a trip to an important historic site, right here on the Mason campus.

Matthew DiRisio, a student in the MA program in history, has published Lessons Learned: Battlefield Deception - From Alexander the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf, with co-author Spencer Beatty.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has provided Mason with $5.801 million in the past decade to fund 37 projects.

A recent Washington Post article features the research of Dr. Ray Clark, who completed his History PhD from Mason in 2016.

Honors College and history alumnus Desmond Moffitt (above) and LaNitra Berger, director of the Honors College's Office of Fellowships, are at the forefront of a push for more support for diverse Fulbright scholars teaching overseas.

Mills Kelly has officially begun his tenure as president of the the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL).

The center spearheaded the project to provide digital access to World War I era sheet music and new recordings of it, made by students.

In summer 2018, LaNitra Berger, an art historian who serves on the faculty and staff of the Honors College, orchestrated an unusual intense and varied trip for several Mason undergraduates to South Africa. The theme of the three-week program was Monuments, Museums and Memory in South Africa, and the organizing principle was exposure to a diversity of viewpoints on the nation’s past and future.

Congressman Lewis was a headline speaker at the annual college-supported four-day festival, which brought to campus and other nearby locales over 150 writers.

George Mason’s Department of Communication and the Insight Committee host the annual communication forum, Pathways to your Future, on Tuesday Oct. 23, 2018. The venue is Dewberry Hall in the Johnson Center on Mason’s Fairfax campus. Sports broadcaster, Lindsay Czarniak, gives the keynote address. All students are welcome to attend.

The abolitionist and iconic face of the Underground Railroad would be the first African American and first woman on a U.S. currency bill.

Tues 10/10 Johnson Center Cinema 7:30pm: Tamer El Said will present and discuss his film about Khalid (Khalid Abdalla), a 35-year-old filmmaker in Cairo, 2009, struggling to make a film that captures the soul of his city while facing loss in his own life. Free and open to the public.

On Thursday, September 28, Jeffrey Ryan, the author of Blazing Ahead: Benton MacKaye, Myron Avery, and the Rivalry That Built the Appalachian Trail, spoke to students in Professor Mills Kelly's course on the history of the Appalachian Trail.

Lincoln Mullen’s recent book, The Chance of Salvation: A History of Conversion in America (Harvard University Press, 2017), has just been awarded the “Best First Book in the History of Religions Award” by the American Academy of Religion.

GMU Professor Hüseyin Yılmaz publishes Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought

Emma Lyons was one of 15 college students nationwide to receive a scholarship to attend the Presidential Sites Summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by the White House Historical Association. ​

Platt will assist Mason President Ángel Cabrera on projects related to faculty engagement. His top priority, he said, is to facilitate communication between the faculty and the administrative sides of the university.

Sun-Young Park's book is part of the University of Pittsburgh Press’s series on “Culture, Politics and the Built Environment.”

For over thirty years, Harry Butowsky worked as a historian for the National Park Service while teaching part-time for the Department of History and Art History.

Dan Martins (MA, '16), has just published an article in the Naval War College Review (vol. 71, no. 4). The article, entitled, "The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Joint Chiefs," was based on a research seminar paper he wrote under the direction of Professor Martin Sherwin.

Dr. Jacqueline Beatty, who received her History PhD from Mason in 2016, has accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor of History at York College of Pennsylvania. She will begin her position at York in fall 2018.

World History Commons receives NEH Award

Dr. Alison Landsberg and Dr. Yevette Jordan are the first two recipients of the newly established Dr. Marion Deshmukh Award. This award honors the distinguished accomplishments of Dr. Deshmukh and the inaugural awarding of funds will support research for two book projects.

In an oped in TheAtlantic, history professor Lincoln Mullen offers context to the U.S. Attorney General's use of Romans 13 as support for Trump administration immigration decisions.

In Art Daily, Steven Barnes, faculty member in the Departments of History and Art History and Russian and Eurasian Studies, comments on the implications of alleged destruction of Gulag records by the Russian government.

Well-being is more than just a concept – it’s a way of living. At Mason, we aim to thrive together. A vital part of that is inspiring each other. Have you screwed up? We all do sometimes. Tell us your rebound resilience story. Do you enjoy a certain well-being practice? Let us know.

At its degree celebrations, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences sends off its doctors, masters, and bachelors with an enthusiastic salute.

At a Human Rights Day commemoration in Taipei on December 10th 2017, Dr. Gerrit van der Wees and his wife Meichin were honored by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen for their work in support of human rights and democracy in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Fall for the Book continues the literary tradition of the Well Library, with the induction of the work of Kimberly Mehlman-Orozco, Jennifer Ritterhouse, and Rick Davis into its collection.

Over the spring break Dr. Michele Greet traveled with eleven students from her Mexican Muralism seminar to Mexico City. The trip was part of GMU’s new initiative to embed study abroad into regular semester classes, and received a competitive “global discovery” grant to cover half of the students’ travel costs. The seminar focuses on the study of the murals (wall paintings) executed in Mexico City during the years following the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) until the 1950s, with an emphasis on works by the so-called Big Three: Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco.

Three History MA alumni have published books as part of Savas Beatie’s new series: The Emerging Revolutionary War.

Curriculum impact grants, designed to encourage innovative programs with interdisciplinary, cross-unit curriculum, offer students new ways to consider some of the most critical issues facing our society. College faculty are involved with eleven of the newly funded programs.

Meet Atif Qarni, Virginia's 19th Secretary of Education, who brings to Richmond his very direct classroom experience, his sense of public service, and a history MA (and teaching degree) from George Mason University.

In a Washington Post article about the questionable sources of the carpet used in Washington, D.C., Metro train cars, history professor Zachary Schrag reveals the system's surprising rationale for carpeting the cars.

In an article in the New York Times, Meredith Lair, director, MAIS, and faculty member, Department of History and Art History, recalled the Tet offensive of 1968 and how news of it changed Americans' perceptions of the conflict in Vietnam.

In the context of the Cleveland Indians' decision to deemphasize their Chief Wahoo logo, history professor C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa discusses the continuing controversy over sports logos that depict Native Americans.

MA History student Michael Tricomi talks about his internship in the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.

Charles H. Byrd, II, MA History '04, has shown extraordinary tenacity in earning his doctorate at the University of Oxford.

Mason alum Lisa Struckmeyer (BA, History, 2012) is raising awareness of artifacts important to African American and women's history in Prince William County that have made the Virginia Association of Museum's list of Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts.

Rebecca Erbelding, a 2015 alum from our History PhD program, has published the book, “Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe.”  The book is published by Doubleday.

Dr. Vanessa Schulman is a specialist in the art and visual culture of the United States. She received her PhD in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine, in 2010, and has published her research in the academic journals Invisible Culture, American Periodicals, and Early Popular Visual Culture. 

In the Yakima Herald, Christopher Hamner, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discusses the importance of continuing relevance and perspective in teaching about the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.

Internationally published photographer Jan Rosseel's work has been influenced by the books of history and cultural studies Professor Alison Landsberg; she has contributed a featured essay to the brochure that accompanies his thee-year exhibition.

In an op-ed in the New Haven Register, Peter Stearns, Provost Emeritus and University Professor of History and Art History, writes about America’s shifting attitudes towards shame.

Two Mason history students, Ayman Fatima and Alexis Bracey, recently participated in an important conference at the University of Virginia. The conference was entitled, “Universities, Slavery, Public Memory, & The Built Landscape Symposium October 18-21, 2017.”

Each year the Department of History and Art History recognizes one of its alums with its Outstanding Alum Award. This year’s recipient was Sharon Deane, who works for the Department of Defense to promote public understanding of the Vietnam War.

A New Exhibit of Buddhist Art Robert DeCaroli, Professor of Art History at Mason, is serving as one of three curators of a major new display of Buddhist art (“Encountering the Buddha”) that recently opened at the Smithsonian’s remodeled Sackler Gallery. The exhibit runs from Oct. 14 to Nov. 29, 2020.

With the big-budget sequel, Blade Runner 2049, in theaters this weekend, Brooke talks with Alison Landsberg, a professor of history and cultural studies at George Mason University.

Fall for the Book’s 19th annual festival at George Mason -- and locations around Northern Virginia -- runs from October 11-14, and welcomes a robust list of poets, historians, novelists, memoirists, children’s authors, YA writers, and more.

Robert DeCaroli is co-curator of an exhibition entitled “Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice across Asia” at the Freer|Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Intuition in Washington DC.

Funded by Mason's Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR), history department faculty members Benedict Carton and Wendi Manuel-Scott led a team of students in exploring the largely untold story of George Mason's enslaved people.

The DC Palestinian Film and Arts Festival previews their seventh annual run (October 2nd) with a showcase of Palestinian performance artists covering storytelling, musical ensemble, and theater. The cultural production, a contemporary expression of the colorful Palestinian diaspora, celebrates Palestine as a vision for the future as much as an object of commemoration.

Named for Provost Emeritus and University Professor Peter Stearns, the new center is a one-stop destination dedicated to digital learning and teaching excellence.

9/11 6pm: Almost Sunrise follows two Iraq veterans, tormented by depression for years after they returned home, as they embark on an extraordinary journey, a 2,700 mile walk across the country from Wisconsin to California, in order to reflect on their haunting experiences of war and to save themselves.

In the Washington Post, Zachary Schrag, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discusses the costs and benefits of a naming rights plan being considered by Washington's Metro system.

Dr. Kurt Knoerl, an alum of the department’s History PhD program, has earned a tenure-track position in the Department of History at Armstrong State University.

Ho's "Creating Distinctions in Dutch Genre Painting" was published by Amsterdam University Press.

Stearns's new book, "Tolerance in World History," "draws together the many discrete studies of tolerance to create a global and comprehensive synthesis."

Gonzaba won the prestigious fellowship for LGBTQ students.

Terri Pous of Buzzfeed has a discussion with Mason provost emeritus and professor of history Peter Stearns and others about the current climate of foreboding in American culture and places it in its context within our history and in doing so illustrates that things are not quite as dire as we may think.

Jennifer Reeder has published two books on the history of Mormon women since receiving her PhD in 2013.

Each year the Department of History and Art History names recognizes one of its alums with its Outstanding Alumni Award. This year’s recipient was Matt Salter (BA History 2000), an accomplished DC-area consultant.

The mood in EagleBank Arena was lively on May 18 and 19, as the College of Humanities and Social Sciences held its degree celebration ceremonies. Congratulations again to all of our graduates! We are pleased to welcome you to an impressive community of alumni, made only stronger by the class of 2017.

Filter presented a research paper on the 19th-century "White Zulu Chief" he wrote for Professor Benedict Carton's course.

An NEH grant-funded project led by Sheila Brennan, Matthew Karush, and Michael O'Malley will work with the Library of Congress’ National Jukebox and the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Audio Archive.

Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe has created the first history dissertation in the country to be presented in an entirely digital format.

This semester students in "The Museum," an art history course taught by Jacquelyn Williamson, an assistant professor in the Department of History and Art History, have an unusual assignment. For their final project, students are incorporating a semester-long 3D printing project.

History professor Mills Kelly has been elected president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, an association dedicated to the trans-disciplinary study of the ideas and practices that drive teaching and learning within and across the academic disciplines.

Undergraduate history major Maari Weiss talks about her internship at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration.

The George Mason University PhD student wanted to enroll in History 688: Digital Storytelling, but Salamone, who is visually impaired, wanted to make sure he would be able to do the course work and that the professor, Kelly Schrum, would be willing to make the curriculum more accessible to him.

George Mason University's Presidential Awards for Faculty Excellence are designed to recognize exceptional teaching, research and scholarship, social impact, and diversity and inclusion. The college is extremely proud that two of our faculty members are recipients of these awards.

Hannah Matangos presented a poster titled "The Christianization of Pagan Ritual Space in Byzantine Athens" which won an award at the CHSS undergraduate research symposium.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the May 2017 degree celebrations will be led by two outstanding alumni: chief historian for the White House Historical Association, Edward Lengel, and Lt. Col. Suzanne Devlin, a former acting chief of police for the Fairfax County Police Department and the current supervisor of safety and security for Loudoun County Public Schools.

Professor Wendi Manuel-Scott will be the inaugural recipient of the prestigious Alcalde Family Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion.

Under the direction of Professor Michele Greet, art history students created the exhibit "Evoking Place: Fifty Years of Landscapes from the Art Museum of the Americas."

Larrie Ferreiro, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History and in the Volgenau School of Engineering, was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his book, "Brothers at Arms: American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It."

Lebovic's book "Free Speech and Unfree News" won the 2017 OAH Ellis W. Hawley Prize, which is given annually for the best book-length historical study of the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to announce that two of its faculty members' projects have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The United States’ dominant role in the economic world, conflicts in the Middle East, and other major world events can all be traced to a single event that happened 100 years ago this month—America’s entry into World War I.

Ben Cowan has received a book prize for his book, "Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil."

An associate professor in the Department of History and Art History, Greet specializes in twentieth century Andean art, as well as Latin American artists in Europe. Greet was previously serving as ALAA’s vice president and began her three year term as president at the organization’s annual conference in February 2017.

GMU’s History and Art History Department placed 44th in the latest US News and World Reports ranking of the Best History Graduate programs in the country. This represents a jump of over twenty spots since the last ranking two years ago.

Mason was fortunate to earn a place in his marvelous life. Wilkins spent nearly two decades teaching history and American culture at Mason, writing books and helping to put a then-fledgling university on the map.

Her lecture was titled "The 1928 Christmas Day Murders in Eros, Louisiana: Race, Gender and Class Dynamics of White Supremacy."

Suiter has been working on "Project DAPS: The Desegregation of Arlington Public Schools."

Her new book follows journalist Jonathan Daniels's tour through the South in 1937.

Steven Barnes is hosting two events in Slavic Studies, while Wade publishes a new edition of his well-known book on the Russian Revolution.

George Mason historians, particularly Professor Zachary Schrag, have played an important role in amending federal regulations that will make it easier for historians and journalists to conduct oral history interviews.

The revised and expanded third edition introduces new approaches to the political, social and cultural history of the Revolution, incorporating people and places too often left out of the story, including women, national minority peoples, peasantry, and front soldiers.

On Thursday, February 9 The Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, in conjunction with the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program, hosted a town hall titled “Perspectives on the Immigration Ban.”

Benjamin L. Huggins (PhD, 2008) published "Willie Mangum and the North Carolina Whigs in the Age of Jackson."

Panelists Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis, Dr. Peter Stearns, and Mr. Abdallah Hendawy will discuss the implications of the inauguration on international students and the world on Thursday, February 2, 2017 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Dewberry Hall.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has received a Discovery grant to plan "Hearing the Americas."

Mason students visited a Civil War redoubt (earthen fortification) located on the university's campus. Though covered with underbrush, the structure remains intact and is clearly visible—a valuable historic structure, right under our noses, tucked behind a parking lot on the Mason campus.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) is thrilled to announce a new program with the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Foundation to begin The Networked Curator initiative.

Leon won the fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project titled "As Justice and Charity Demands: An Examination of the Enslaved Persons Owned (and Sold) by the Maryland Province Jesuits, 1717-1838."

Undergraduate history major Amy Glen was an intern at the Fairfax Circuit Court Historic Records Center.

Published by Duke University Press, the book is history of the transnational careers of seven of the most influential Argentine musicians of the twentieth century.

In an article about verifying the veracity of news sources found online, the Smithsonian Magazine notes Mason history professor Mills Kelly's 2008 course in which students created fake websites about a historical figure.

The journal, which is edited at George Mason University, has been publishing for fifty years.

The project documents the encounter and evolving relationship between the secular/Orthodox state and the Islamic regions, groups, individuals, and ideologies on the territory of the former Soviet Union and neighboring countries.

Mills Kelly's new course in the History and Art History Department combines the beauty and deep history of the Appalachian Trail with digital media.

The Department of History and Art History is celebrating the work of Professor Emerita Marion Deshmukh by establishing the Marion Deshmukh Faculty and Student Scholarship Support Fund.

The 2016 Outstanding Achievement Awards recognized thirty-five faculty and staff who had been “Elected for Success” by their colleagues.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University is pleased to announce the public beta release of Omeka S (1.0). The software expands the web publishing capacity for cultural heritage materials.

This semester, classes in the Department of History and Art History have examined issues raised in the presidential election from a variety of contexts. Prior Election Day, the public was invited to join in!

IIR co-hosts discussion with Middle East Institute about the contributions made by immigrant artists to the United States

Wendi Manuel-Scott will moderate a dialogue with thought leaders Laurie Robinson, Earl Smith, Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Shirley Ginwright on policing and crimes against people of color, including current issues and the national climate, for this semester's President's Freedom and Learning Forum.

Professor Jacquelyn Williamson has published a book with Brill about a new cult complex at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt.

Peter Stearns has published a new book, "The Industrial Turn in World History," with Routledge.

Robinson Professor of History Spencer Crew worked behind the scenes for many years to bring to life the exhibits in the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened September 24.

On September 26, 2016, Professor Serena Zabin of Carleton College will present a talk, "The Boston Massacre: An Intimate History," which examines the social and familial circumstances surrounding the event, offering insight into of the direct causes of the Revolutionary War.

Jane Turner Censer begins two years as an officer of the organization, first as vice president in 2016-17, then in 2017-18 as president.

Fall for the Book brings writers, readers, and scholars together like no other event in the region. In its eighteenth year, Fall for the Book is a weeklong literary festival with events taking place on Mason's Fairfax campus and at other venues across the region between September 25 and September 30.

A research project which Mason undergraduate history major Scott Saunders contributed to has been featured on the blog of the American Historical Association.

On Thursday, September 8, 2016, the Department of History and Art History hosted its annual Undergraduate Welcome Reception at University Career Services. The focus of the event was an animated discussion of the benefit of internships for History and Art History Majors.

A Mason history alumna solves a mystery about W.E.B. DuBois and a portrait of Frederick Douglass.

In a Washington Post article, Robinson Professor of Public Affairs Steven Pearlstein describes the challenge of convincing incoming students' parents of the value of liberal arts education. The college's senior associate dean Robert Matz contributes, leading the effort to promote humanities and social sciences degrees.

Professor Williamson, a specialist in the history of ancient Egypt and of gender in the ancient world, talks about her research and classes in an interview with Ben Cowan.

Ben Cowan has won a prestigious fellowship to work for a year at the Library of Congress on his next book, "Mundane Magic."

Mason's Office of Graduate Admissions cordially invites you to attend our largest annual event for prospective graduate students. Learn about graduate degree programs, graduate certificates, and professional degrees. Come see the excitement of our campus, meet our faculty, and speak with admissions representatives.

Stephen Robertson and Jennifer Rosenfeld led two summer teacher institutes focusing on the Civil War through the lives of soldiers who left their mark in Northern Virginia landmarks now known as "Civil War Graffiti Houses."

Lincoln Mullen and Patrick Murray-John both created digital projects using millions of newspapers for a National Endowment for the Humanities challenge.

Mason's Spirit magazine features Mason historian Sam Lebovic's work, which traces the role of the press in America, its history, and factors that affect press freedoms.

"They arrested them not for themselves supposedly being criminals, but just for having been married to this person who was arrested and in almost in every case, someone who was arrested and executed."

In this profile of a student in the Department of History and Art History, Professor Suzanne Smith interviews Carrie Smith about her internship at Gadsby's Tavern Museum in Old Town Alexandria.

Last spring, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) launched—in collaboration with the Smithsonian Associates—a unique online program for a graduate certificate in digital public humanities.

Craddock, BA History ’00, accepted the Chronos Prize for Most Inspiring Screenplay by an Established Filmmaker for “American Exodus,” an action story based Tubman’s life as a conductor on the Underground Railroad.

Cynthia A. Kierner is working on a book tentatively titled “Inventing Disaster: the Culture of Calamity from Jamestown to Johnstown.” The project traces the origins of how government, corporations, media, clergy, philanthropic groups and the general public imagine disaster and appropriate responses to it and looks closely at how these entities acted and interacted in an Atlantic and British imperial context over the course of the long eighteenth century.

In this lead article, Jane Turner Censer explores the forty-year intimate friendship between two Virginia female novelists. In a relationship that changed over time, Rives and Glasgow shared intellectual and literary interests and insights into love, beauty, and religious experience as they each sought literary fame and personal fulfillment.

The Department of History and Art History awarded six PhDs in eastern European as well as colonial, nineteenth-century, and twentieth-century U.S history.

David Turk says George Mason University's proximity to Washington, D.C., provides job opportunities for history majors.

In this profile of a student in the Department of History and Art History, Professor Suzanne Smith interviews Erika Walser about her internship at the Manassas Museum.

John Lemza, a recent graduate of the PhD program in history, has recently published "American Military Communities in West Germany: Life in the Cold War Badlands, 1945–1990."

Adriana Ospina, who received her MA from the Art History program in 2013, has received an NEH grant to support an exhibition she is organizing: Converging Cultures: Asian Diasporas and Latin American and Caribbean Art from 1940 to the Present.

Two GMU historians, Chris Elzey and David Wiggins, have won the award for "Best Edited Collection" from the North American Society for Sport History for "D.C. Sports: The Nation's Capital at Play."

The Folger Shakespeare Library recently began a massive undertaking. The new project hopes to create a digital platform that will allow users to browse, search, download, curate, and read first edition plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries in a variety of formats. This is just the sort of project that Mason’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) does best.

Jerry Prout, an alumnus of the PhD program in the Department of History and Art History, has recently published a book titled "Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs: Unemployment in the Gilded Age."

In a Washington Post article on President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to Hiroshima, Christopher Hamner, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, describes how textbooks addressing the bombings have changed.

Ruth Kohn, a Holocaust survivor, spoke to the students in Harry Butowsky's class on the history of World War II.

Pam Smith received her MA in 2014 from the Department of History and Art History. She and several other collaborators have recently published an edited collection titled "The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North."

Professor Michael O'Malley was recently interviewed by the radio program Knowledge@Wharton about Harriet Tubman being selected for the new $20 bill.

Congratulations are in order for several members of the department whom the Organization of American Historians (OAH) has named Distinguished Lecturers. The most recent honor goes to Meredith Lair, who joins seven other historians from George Mason.

Dr.Jennifer Ritterhouse's spring 2016 class, "The 1920s and the Making of the Modern US," enjoyed an engaging fieldtrip to the Library of Congress.

On April 18, the Department of History and Art History held its annual award ceremony to celebrate the academic achievements of its students over the past year.

The book is a consideration of "modern" revolutions, those that seek to bring about changes to society that implement a new ideal, as opposed to a reversion to any system in place before. “The idea of revolution is only going to run out of steam when people stop believing in positive changes that can be made here on Earth,” Censer explains.

Ben Cowan has published "Securing Sex: Morality and Repression in the Making of Cold War Brazil" with the University of North Carolina Press.

The Guardian has included Suzanne Smith's "Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of America " as a top-10 books on the 1960s.

The Vox.com website has featured an interactive map, prepared by Lincoln Mullen, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, that depicts the spread of slavery in the United States from 1790 through 1860.

Brennan, Mullen, and Zagarri will map American elections from 1788 to 1825, and enable citizens as well as academic researchers to ask their own questions about past elections.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has launched "A Liberian Journey: History, Memory, and the Making of a Nation."

On March 16, 2016, the Washington, D.C., subway shut down for 29 hours to allow inspection of its electrical system. In Politico, Zachary Schrag, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discusses the system's tenuous financing through the federal government.

History MA student Michael Williams was an intern at public television station WETA, where he wrote about history for the Boundary Stones blog.

Sam Lebovic has published his new history of press freedom, "Free Speech and Unfree News: The Paradox of Press Freedom in America" (Harvard University Press, 2016).

The Institute for Immigration Research (IIR) hosted Tom Gjelten, correspondent for National Public Radio and author of A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, at the April colloquium. Mr. Gjelten shared his insights on how the landscape of America has changed over the past fifty years with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, as told through the experiences of families in one suburban county in Virginia.

PhD student Eric Gonzaba has won the Student Project Award from the National Council on Public History for his project, Wearing Gay History: A Digital Archive of Historical LGBT T-Shirts.

Sheri Huerta, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Art History, will be giving a talk as part of Loudoun County's Black History Month program.

Mason History major Desmond Moffitt has been selected as a Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute Fellow to study nonprofit leadership at Princeton University this summer.

Professors Carol Mattusch, Chris Gregg, and Richard Mason have offered instrumental contributions to a cutting-edge traveling exhibition, Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, currently on display at the National Gallery of Art.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media will develop a new tool, called Tropy, for historians and other scholars to organize their photos taken in the archives.

Mason Ph.D. Jerry Prout will be publishing his first book, Coxey’s Crusade for Jobs Unemployment in the Gilded Age, this Spring

While contributing to the American Historical Association's plenary session addressing Confederate monuments, Jane Censer, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discussed the origin of many Confederate soldiers' memorials.

Dina Copleman, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, provides historical context for the popular PBS program on the WETA PBS website. In this interview, she reveals what the show's producers get right (and not quite right).

Eric Nolan Gonzaba's digital project, Wearing Gay History, was chosen as one of the most notable digital history projects of the year

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences presents the Mary Roper Award annually to a classified staff member, nominated by his or her co-workers, who embodies the goals of the college. This year's awardee is Sara Duval, of the Department of History and Art History.

GMU's Department of History and Art History is leading the effort to establish guidelines for digital media dissertations. The effort is drawing praise from the profession as a whole.

On November 13, history major James Blondell presented his research at the 42nd Annual Conference on DC Historical Studies.

GMU student Amanda Vercruysse has completed and internship at NMAH and describes the experience here. Vercruysse is currently in the MA program at GMU

GMU's Nathan Moore received the Best Graduate Presentation award for “Capitalism on Trial: The Great Communism Trial of 1925”

Mason history major Georgia Brown, an intern in the clerk's office at the Fairfax Circuit Court Historic Records Center, has established a system to index information about slaves mentioned within the county's will and deed books.

Distinguished GMU historian publishes new book on the management of Universities in the 21st century

In a timely Voice of America piece on the significance of Columbus Day, Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, faculty member in the Department of History, describes the negative legacy of exploration on America's native population.

Marion Deshmukh, Robert Hawkes Professor of History (Emeritus), recently published her book on the German painter Max Liebermann

Lindsey Bestebreurtje has been hired as a Research Assstant at the New Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture

Heather Gonyeau (BA History 2016) has aspired to curate an exhibition since starting at Mason. With the support of the Department of History and Art History and the Office of Creative Research and Scholarship, she accomplished her goal with Voices of Resistance, on view at the Mason Hall atrium from September 10-28th. The exhibition brings together artwork from Brazil, Argentina and Chile as examples of protest and resistance to oppressive political regimes of the 1970s.

George Mason University, together with the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (NCUSCR), will convene the 9th Annual CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections on the evening of Monday, October 5, 2015.

Professors Michael Chang and Carma Hinton will lead a panel discussion this Thursday, September 10, as part of a new exhibit on Chinese painting on Mason's Fairfax Campus.

GMU History Major Megan Glenn describes her internship at the Holocaust Museum

On August 5, history professor Michael O'Malley participated in a round table discussion of the new designs for American currency hosted by the Secretary of the Treasury

For two weeks in July, twenty Art History graduate students participated in an intensive digital humanities training institute funded by the Getty Foundation.

This year, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) celebrated 20 years of focusing on the past in a radically new way. Through digital technology, the center has worked to bring the public into the experience of history, allowing people to not only learn, research, and organize the stories of the past, but to contribute their own voices to how those stories will be told into the future.

Mobile farmer’s markets have developed as an alternative, community-based intervention to improve access to healthy food in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Members of the Department of History and Art History received three grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Peter Stearns, History professor and formerly GMU provost, offers a mostly favorable review id David Brooks' newest book in http://www.the-american-interest.com/2011/05/01/social-studies/

Christina Markish, who received her BA in history from GMU in 2010 and her MA in history in 2014, will be working for the Menokin Foundation.

Alison Landsberg, Associate Professor of History and Art History, has just published her latest book, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (Columbia University Press)

We will be running a series on internships in history. Our first is on Georgia Brown, who interned at the Fairfax Circuit Court Historic Records Center

In a story on Newsweek's site, Michael O'Malley, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History and associate director, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, discusses the relationship between "currency face-lifts" and public confidence, in reference to proposed Harriet Tubman twenty dollar bills.

Matthew Robinson, who recently graduated from Mason with a B.A. in History, has been named as a recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant.

Learn about an exciting new graduate certificate program in digital public humanities, developed jointly by Mason's Department of History and Art History, its Roy Rosezweig Center for History and New Media, and the Smithsonian Associates.

This month marks the retirement of two of our most esteemed faculty, Marion Deshmukh and Ellen Todd

Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, an author and scholar of Native American studies, is a new history professor at George Mason. This fall, he will teach a section of HIST 389, Topics in U.S. History, on Native American history, and HIST 615, Problems in American History, on the topic of “Decolonizing Museums,” a graduate course on the representations of native peoples in museums.

Professor Meredith Lair, who specializes in war and American Society on the late twentieth century, was interviewed for a documentary on the draft in the Vietnam War.

At its annual student ceremony on April 20, the Department recognized the achievements of more than two dozen students and inducted thirty students into the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society.

Adjunct faculty member Gail Hook has just published her book on the British administration of Cyprus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Funded by U.S. Department of State, Rangel Scholars participate in selective six-week summer program at Howard University designed to develop knowledge of international affairs and related career opportunities.

Award recognizes students who have excelled while making academically challenging choices in their education.

Celeste Tường Vy Sharpe has been awarded a Penn Predoctoral Fellowship for Excellence through Diversity.

In July, GMU Ph.D. student Lynn Price will be starting as Assistant Editor of the Martha Washington/Washington Family Papers Project at UVA.

The City of Alexandria will observe the Days of Remembrance, Yom HaShoah, for the victims of the Holocaust at noon on Wednesday, April 15 in Market Square, 301 King St. This year’s theme is “Resistance through Art”. The Alexandria City Council hosts the annual ceremony as part of the weeklong commemoration of the national Days of Remembrance, Sunday, April 12, through Sunday, April 19. This is the 28th consecutive year that the City has held the Days of Remembrance ceremony. The event is free and open to the public. The speaker this year will be Marion F. Deshmukh, Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History.

The Life of Saint Basil the Younger, one of the longest and most important middle Byzantine saints’ lives, presents the life of a holy man who lived in Constantinople in the first part of the tenth century.

On the Time magazine website, C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History and Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, discusses his research (and forthcoming book) on Indian history in the District of Columbia and surrounding region.

Rwany Sibaja, GMU PhD 2013, will be joining the faculty at Appalachian State in North Carolina.

The Department of History & Art History, Interdisciplinary Studies, the Office of Military Services, and some off-campus veterans organizations are sponsoring a free screening of Rory Kennedy's 2014 Academy Award-nominated film, "Last Days in Vietnam" on Sunday, March 29th, at 6:30 PM in the JC Cinema.

I had already been on the bottom of the Niagara River bed for over two hours, slowly excavating small test holes and looking for evidence of an 18th-century shoreline off Old Fort Niagara. Wine bottle bottoms, ceramics, trade beads, and numerous other artifacts dating from 1760 to 1780 had been deposited as trash throughout this small cove.

Katherine Roeder, Adjunct Instructor in Art History, was just given the Rollins Book Award by the Southwest Popular Culture Association for her book on Winsor McKay.

The Department of History and Art History is delighted to congratulate Robert DeCaroli on the publication of his new book on the earliest images of the Buddha in South Asia

The National Council on Public History selected Histories of the National Mall as the winner of the 2015 Outstanding Public History Award. The award is presented each year for work that contributes to a broader public reflection and appreciation of the past or that serves as a model of professional public history practice. The selection committee commended Histories for its clean design, and concluded “the site stands as an excellent destination for anyone interested in our nation’s Front Yard and as an outstanding example of how public historians can harness mobile technology to forge place-based historical connections.”

"The Spread of U.S. Slavery, 1790-1860, by historian Lincoln Mullen...shows the presence of slavery in American counties across the specified decades. The slider takes you forward and backward in time, and hovering the cursor reveals the data for each county, including the total number of people, the people per square mile, and the percentage of white, free black, and enslaved people present. Mullen’s discussions of the reliability and usefulness of his data are a model of transparency."

Kleine, of Pennsylvania, flew to Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., to meet Maury Willis...Wills also is one of 10 finalists on this year’s Golden Era ballot being considered for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

ASU's School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies has hired Jonathan Barth as an assistant professor of history of capitalism and political economy.

Professor of modern British history Dina Copelman considers Downton Abbey for WETA TV

Among winter graduates was Mary Linhart, who earned her PhD in American history at age 77.

New book on the Buddha's image in early South Asia awarded a Millard Meiss Grant by the College Art Association

To celebrate 20 years of work, the Center hosted a two-day conference at Mason.

MA Art History student, John Heins, and others awarded top prizes from the Order of St. Constantine The Great.

Jasmaine Downes, a history major with a minor in women and gender studies, was one of four Mason students who presented a panel discussion on the importance of higher education at the first Virginia Girls Summit, held at Mason's Fairfax Campus. More than 200 7th - 12th grade girls participated in the event.

Tim Grove, who received a Masters degree in History at Mason, has published A Grizzly in the Mail and Other Adventures in American History.

The Atlantic talks with Peter Stearns, University Professor in the Department of History and Art History (and Provost Emeritus), about nations without regular armed forces.

Two recently retired Emerita Professors received major awards in recent weeks

Ray Niederhausen is a history major working on a minor in sport and American culture. He's got a great family, and they have been selected to receive the Alan and Sally Merten Family of the Year Award. The Niederhausens will be honored as part of Mason's Family Weekend 2014.

Mason hosts Annual Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference of the American Conference for Irish Studies

Farrington, who earned a Masters degree in history at George Mason, is working for Hampton Roads Naval Museum

C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, assistant professor of history, is co-editor of Beyond Two Worlds: Critical Conversations on Language and Power in Native North America.

The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design Announces its 2014 Research Grant Fund Recipients

In Professor Kelly Schrum's course, students use historical materials to produce digital stories.

The Department of History and Art History has named Lee Glazer (B.A. Art History, 1984) as the recipient of its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Kurt Knoerl (PhD 2012), the chairman of the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, has used Omeka to post the Proceedings of the 2014 Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Underwater Cultural Heritage.

This summer, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History in New Media (RRCHNM) was busy preparing, coordinating, and leading two separate summer institutes.

Mary Babson Fuhrer (MA 1994) has published A Crisis of Community: The Trials and Transformation of a New England Town, 1815-1848.

The Smithsonian Office of Fellowships & Internships has posted a video showing Art History major Madeline Cole discussing her work at the National Portrait Gallery.

Marion Deshmukh, Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History, is co-curator of “Postcards from the Trenches: Germans and Americans Visualize the Great War.” The exhibit will feature about 50 hand-painted watercolor postcards crafted in the trenches by Otto Schubert, a German soldier who fought in World War I.

Twelve George Mason University history majors had the rare opportunity this spring to conduct original research at the new Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.

The National Endowment for Humanities is holding a five-week summer institute for college and university faculty at Mason, focusing on the role of the US government in the settlement of the nation's western territories in the nineteenth century.

The Northern Virginia Civil Rights Archive represents the result of a year long, community-wide endeavor to gather personal testimonials from Northern Virginia residents about the Civil Rights Movement, including their struggles and successes as well as their everyday experiences from the time period.

Although Mason graduates nearly 70 percent of its students within six years, history professor T. Mills Kelly, newly named a Presidential Fellow by George Mason University President Ángel Cabrera, has been is tasked with finding ways to improve those statistics.

Ben Cowan, assistant professor of history, spoke at a public hearing held by Brazil’s National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade, CNV) on March 29th.

Part of the Students as Scholars program, Mason’s undergraduate research and creative activities initiative, this project entails students doing original research and presenting it to a wider public audience.

Cynthia Powers Burgett (BA, history, 2006), a student in the history MA program, has received a John Marshall Foundation teacher award for excellence in teaching the United States Constitution.

The Department of History and Art History has named Celeste Sharpe as the inaugural recipient of the Joseph and Dorothy Censer Fellowship for contributions to the work of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

On April 28, students and faculty from the Department of History and Art History and the traveled to Reston, Virginia, to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of the opening of that planned community.

History major Zi Yang presented two projects at the 2014 National Conference on Undergraduate Research, held in April in Lexington, Kentucky.

Jennifer Lansbury (PhD 2008) has published A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America. The book is based on Lansbury's dissertation, which she wrote under the supervision of Professor Suzanne Smith.

Undergraduate coordinator Carrie Grabo was among ten advisors recognized by the university for outstanding achievement in the field of academic advising. She was previously recognized in 2012.

Doctoral candidate Sheri Huerta has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon research fellowship to conduct research at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond.

Professors Ben Cowan and Yevette Richards Jordan have won funding from the university for their research.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has launched a new website, Histories of the National Mall mallhistory.org, developed with with funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities.

The Southern Association for Women Historians has awarded its Julia Spruill Prize for the best book published in Southern women’s history to Professor Cynthia Kierner for Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello, Her Life and Times.

Robert Townsend (PhD 2009) has won the book award from the National Council on Public History for History’s Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880-1940 (University of Chicago Press, 2013), which is based on his George Mason University dissertation.

Mason alumna and graduate coordinator for the Department of History and Art History Nicole Roth has been named the university's employee of the month.

Professor Dina Copelman analyzes season 4 of Downton Abbey for WETA public television.

"Coping with Violence: patterns from the 20th century" will be taught by Professor Steven Barnes of Mason and Professor Irina Filatova of the Higher School of Economics.

A team of Mason faculty and students recently completed work on the George Mason Plaster Cast Collection website, which showcases approximately 70 plaster casts located at George Mason University.

History and global affairs major Zi Yang represented George Mason University at the inaugural conference of the 100,000 Strong Foundation.

Professor Matt Karush was recently awarded a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support work on his new book project, Sonic Travelers: The Transnational History of Argentine Popular Music in the Twentieth Century.

Each year, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences honors selected classified staff members with the Mary Roper Award, to recognize exemplary service in support of the college's goals. This year's celebration was held on December 3, 2013.

As part of the Signature Conference series sponsored by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, Mason will host "The American Civil War in a Global Perspective" on May 31, 2014. The conference will explore the Civil War's impact on global trade, social issues, and international conflicts during the same period.

Harry Butowsky, retired National Park Service Historian and a member of the department's adjunct faculty, has launched the National Park Electronic Library at www.npshistory.com.

The American Historical Association has named Steven A. Barnes, faculty member, Department of History and Art History and director of the Center for Eurasian Studies, the winner of the 2013 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for his book Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton Univ. Press, 2011).

Deadwood History, which manages museums and historic sites in Deadwood, SD, has hired Ellyn Van Evra (B.A. History '11) as curator of interpretation.

The Getty Foundation recently awarded the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media a grant to organize and run a digital humanities summer institute for art historians in 2014.

The Department of History and Art History welcomes professors Jane Hooper, Sam Lebovic, and Jennifer van Horn to its faculty this autumn.

Winning a contest sponsored by Marvel Comics and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles, history major Elizabeth Bass has become the model for Backfire, a motorcycle-riding superhero.

C-SPAN's American History TV airs Professor Suzanne Smith's class discussing the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and its aftermath.

PhD students Jeri Wieringa and Celeste Sharpe will host a Digital Humanities focused Rails Girls event at George Mason University, September 6 and 7.

The Virginia Historical Society has honored Professor Cynthia Kierner with the 2012 Richard Slatten Award for distinguished contributions to Virginia biography. The award recognizes Kierner's book, Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello.

Professor Meredith Lair is the 2013-2014 Minerva Research Fellow in the Department of History at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Joe Downer, who received his B.A. from the Department of History and Art History in 2012, has been awarded a Scottish Rite Endowment Graduate Fellowship by the George Washington University for the 2013-2014 academic year

Daniel Gifford (PhD 2011) has published American Holiday Postcards, 1905-1915: Imagery and Context.

Alumnus Jerry Prout (PhD '12) and PhD Student William Jordan Patty each have articles in the Summer 2013 issue of Washington History, pubished by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

The Department of History and Art History has named Robert Townsend (PhD 2009) as its Alumnus of the Year.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities awarded the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media a grant to organize and host, “Doing Digital History: An Institute for Mid-Career American Historians” during the summer of 2014.

Teachinghistory.org, a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, is honored to receive an Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).

Professor Steven Barnes’ recent book, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton University Press), has been named as a finalist for the 2013 Central Eurasian Studies Society book award.

Erik Johnson, a student in the History M.A. program, has been named as the 2013 recipient of the Randy Beth Clarke Fellowship in U.S. history. The fellowship is given each year to an outstanding student in the History M.A. program.

PhD Student Alexandra Boni has been awarded a Swann Foundation Fellowship by the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.

History major Katie Harris and history alumnus Joe Downer are among nine students studying at this summer's field school at George Washington's Mount Vernon. At the school, they will study historic preservation, archeology, and public interpretation.

An article in The Torch, an online publication of the Smithsonian Institution, profiles the Smithsonian-Mason Master of Arts in the History of Decorative Arts Program.

Yevette Richards, associate professor of history, will speak at "Feminism in International Labour Organizations," a workshop hosted by Stockholm's Labour Movement Archives and Library.

Sharon Leon, research associate professor of history, has published An Image of God: The Catholic Struggle with Eugenics

Art history MA students Adriana Ospina and Shira Loev Eller have organized an exhibit at the Art Museum of the Americas.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University are delighted to announce that Stephen Robertson will become the new director of the center. Robertson joins RRCHNM and Mason from the History Department at the University of Sydney, where he has been since 2000.

Michele Greet, associate professor of art history, and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media have launched Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, a website featuring Greet's research on Latin American artists who lived and worked in Paris in the two decades after World War I.

“Without the flexibility, knowledge, and experience I gained at Mason,” says Crespo, “I would not be finishing my bachelor’s degree—the first in my family—and moving on to my dream job at age 26. I’m so thankful to have spent my time here and extremely excited to be going in the direction I am.”

This May, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences plans to host three convocations: one each for its graduate students, undergraduate humanities and interdisciplinary programs students, and undergraduate social sciences students.

The Organization of American Historians has named Professor Yevette Richards to its Distinguished Lectureship Program.

The Organization of American Historians has named Professor Yevette Richards to its Distinguished Lectureship Program.

Huseyin Yilmaz, assistant professor of history, has been awarded a Mathy Junior Faculty Award for 2013-14, for his project, "Translation and Cultural Formation in the Early Ottoman Empire."

T. Mills Kelly, associate professor of history, has published Teaching History in the Digital Age.

Ph.D. Candidate Rwany Sibaja has accepted a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC).

At this year's Celebration of Distinction, Marion Deshmukh, Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History, was recognized as George Mason University's Faculty Member of the Year.

PhD Student Roger Connor is one of four Smithsonian curators behind the new exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum: "Time and Navigation: The Untold Story of Getting From Here to There." The exhibit, which opened this month, has received glowing reviews in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other national media.

Associate Professor Kelly Schrum has received an America's Media Makers Production Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Public Programs.

The Mason Center for Teaching & Faculty Excellence has announced its 2013 Teaching Excellence Awards. The college's faculty members are well represented among the award winners.

Mason history students have helped build a website for George Washington’s Mount Vernon Midden Project, an archeological excavation of the eighteenth-century South Grove Midden at Mount Vernon.

Carol C. Mattusch, Mathy Professor of Art History, has edited Rediscovering the Ancient World on the Bay of Naples, 1710-1890.

Members of the Department of History and Art History will present their work at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians.

Cynthia Kierner, professor of history, has co-authored Changing History: Virginia Women Through Four Centuries, with Jennifer Loux and Megan Taylor Shockley.

Professor Dan Cohen, Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, will leave Mason to become the founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America

Professor Rosemarie Zagarri, of the Department of History and Art History, has been named a University Professor at George Mason University.

In the next few weeks, prestigious honor society Phi Beta Kappa will invite its first George Mason University students to join the university's new chapter. The college looks forward to congratulating these scholars!

Paul Polgar, who received his M.A. from the Department of History and Art History in 2007, has been awarded one of the field's most prestigious post-doctoral fellowships by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.

The 5th Annual War on the Silver Screen Film Festival will be held on Feb. 26-28 at 7 PM in the JC Cinema. This year's theme is "Hollywood's Cold War."

Two projects of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media have been awarded Digital Humanities Awards for 2012.

Professor Cynthia Kierner's book, Martha Jefferson Randolph: Daughter of Monticello, is among four finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Mount Vernon museum.

Professor Cynthia Kierner's book, Martha Jefferson Randolph: Daughter of Monticello, is among four finalists for the $50,000 George Washington Book Prize, co-sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Mount Vernon museum.

The Provost has announced that Dr. Deborah Boehm-Davis will succeed Dr. Jack Censer as dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Associate Professor Kelly Schrum has received a Faculty Research and Professional Development Award in the amount of $4,990 to support her Child Custody Project.

PhD Candidate Jenny Reeder has accepted a position with the LDS Church History Library in Salt Lake City as a historian-writer specializing in women's history.

WETA Television invited Mason history professor Dina Copelman to preview the third season of the popular PBS program and comment on its depiction of English society in the aftermath of World War I.

PhD Candidate Gwendolyn K. White is among seven scholars selected for the inaugural class of fellows for the new Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.

Robert B. Townsend (PhD 2009) has published History's Babel: Scholarship, Professionalization, and the Historical Enterprise in the United States, 1880 - 1940.

Faculty and students from the Department of History and Art History are heading to New Orleans for the 127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.

Professor Suzanne Smith was recently awarded a research fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support work on her new book project, “The Happy Am I” Preacher: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux.

On Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences honored the winners of the 12th annual Mary Roper Award, given to outstanding staff members working in the college’s departments.

Matthew Phillips, who will receive his MA in American history in December 2012, has been hired as a park ranger at Arlington House: The Robert E. Lee Memorial, after completing an internship there as part of his degree program.

Mills Kelly, director of the global affairs program and associate professor in the Department of History and Art History, spoke with the Chronicle of Higher Education about universities "flipping the curriculum" and providing small-group, intense learning to freshmen.

WETA Television invited Mason history professor Dina Copelman to preview the second season of the popular PBS program and comment on its depiction of English society during World War I.

Gabriella Petrick, associate professor in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies in the College of Health and Human Services, will tie together food, history and technology in the semester’s final lecture of the Vision Series on Monday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m.

On Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012, The Cold War Museum, the Department of History and Art History, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences recognized the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis with a discussion unlike any other.

The Cold War Museum, the Department of History and Art History, and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences will host a half-day conference, “The Cuban Missile Crisis: 50 Years Later,” on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012, at Harris Theater on Mason’s Fairfax campus. The college recently interviewed The Cold War Museum’s founder and chairman emeritus, Gary Powers, Jr., MPA ’95.

PhD Candidate Ammon Shepherd has been awarded a Richard M. Hunt Fellowship for the Study of German History, Politics, Society, and Culture by the American Council on Germany.

Laura McCloskey has been awarded one of two 2012 Faculty/Staff Book Scholarships, which will support her pursuit of a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction.

The Center is pleased to host an exhibit of artwork by Nikolai Getman a former Gulag prisoner. There are a number of related events including an opening reception with guest speakers, the film One Day in the Life ..., and several lectures.

Mills Kelly, Director, Global Affairs, discusses the larger lessons to be learned from his Lying About the Past class in an interview with The Morning News online magazine.

Kevin Shupe (Ph.D. 2011) has won the Westerners International Scholarship Award, a $1000 cash award given to a graduate student member of Phi Alpha Theta for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Western History.

George Mason University and the Latin American Studies program welcome professor Ben Cowan.

The Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies is pleased to welcome its new Co-Director, Dr. Huseyin Yilmaz, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Art History, who joins George Mason University after teaching at the University of South Florida for the past three years.

Salome Jeronimo (BA, History, '12) will be starting a Master's degree in Public History and Archives at New York University this fall.

George Mason University will have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, considered the most prestigious of the academic honor societies. The Phi Beta Kappa Society voted on Aug. 3 to establish a chapter at Mason. New chapters are announced only once every three years.

Steven Barnes, associate professor of history, has been awarded a research fellowship from the American Councils for International Education, which receives funding from the U.S. State Department's Title VIII Program.

On July 1, 2012, Angel Cabrera became the sixth president of George Mason University.

Research Assistant Professor Sheila Brennan (PhD '10) has been awarded one of the first two University of Michigan Press/HASTAC Digital Humanities Publication Prizes.

Michael O'Malley, associate professor of history, has published Face Value: The Entwined Histories of Money and Race in America.

A record number of students from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University walked across the stage in grand fashion during their convocations on May 17 and 18, 2012. More than 2,500 graduating students were recognized for their efforts in two distinguished ceremonies.

The Organization of American Historians has named Spencer Crew, Robinson Professor of American, African American and Public History, to its Distinguished Lectureship Program.

Writing in The Atlantic, historian Yoni Appelbaum describes the latest version of Professor Mills Kelly's course, Lying About the Past.

Angela Ho, assistant professor of art history, has won a Mathy Junior Faculty Award in the Arts and Humanities, given jointly by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Visual and Performing Arts.

The recipient of this year’s Roy Rosenzweig Outstanding Alumnus Award is Jessica Finnefrock. Finnefrock received her M.A. in History at Mason in 2002. She is Senior Vice President for Product Development at Blackboard, leading Blackboard’s development efforts and serves as a member of Blackboard’s corporate executive team.

Andrew Pedry, a graduating senior majoring in history and religious studies, has been awarded a 2012 Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Montenegro.

Matthew Karush, associate professor of history, has published Culture of Class: Radio and Cinema in the Making of a Divided Argentina, 1920–1946.

PhD Candidate George Oberle has been awarded a Nancy Halverson Schless Fellowship by the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

Cynthia A. Kierner, professor of history, has published Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello: Her Life and Times.

Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and Douglas Greenberg, Executive Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, are the featured speakers of the 2012 College of Humanities and Social Sciences convocations.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Ali Vural Ak Center are pleased to announce that two new faculty members will soon be joining Mason’s bourgeoning Islamic Studies program.

Cynthia Burgett, a student in the History master's program, has been awarded a James Madison Fellowship. James Madison Fellowships were created to honor Madison's legacy and "Madisonian" principles by providing support for graduate study that focuses on the Constitution, its history and contemporary relevance to the practices and policies of democratic government.

PhD Candidate Maureen Santelli has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Research Fellowship in Colonial and U.S. History and Culture at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

History major Jessica Campbell has won a Dean’s Challenge Award, given by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences to celebrate exceptional undergraduate students who have excelled academically while challenging themselves outside of the classroom. Jessica has done a wonderful job balancing academic work and service work. She in the Honors Program and is minoring in Ancient Mediterranean Art and Archaeology. She also works as a researcher and writer at the Mason History Project and in the Admissions office as a tour guide. Jessica is active in Honors College Connects and serves as the secretary in the Mason chapter of Students Helping Honduras. We are very proud to have her represent the major and the department!

Professor Michael G. Chang will deliver his Fenwick Fellow Lecture: “Service at the Manchu Court: The Young Kangxi Emperor and His Personal Advisors."

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media is pleased to announce that it has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs over three years to create a mobile-optimized website that provides visitors to the National Mall with access to a rigorous interpretation of the history and culture of the space as a place where national identity is built, negotiated, celebrated, protested, and remembered.

This year all History and Art History faculty and staff who are in advising roles--Professors Joan Bristol, Jane Censer, Meredith Lair, Randy Lytton, and Ellen Todd and undergraduate coordinator Carrie Grabo--were among the 60 advisors university-wide who were nominated for the 2012 Academic Advisor of the Year Award.

The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany has selected George Mason University as one of 30 universities nationwide to participate in an October 2012 Campus Week, with the theme "Think Transatlantic--The US and Germany in the 21st Century."

As part of the college’s extensive study abroad offerings, faculty members will lead three weeklong trips during spring break in March 2012. They will travel to Germany, Greece and Memphis for comprehensive programs.

Doctoral Candidate Steven Harris-Scott was awarded a one-month Gilder Lehrman residential fellowship at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library, sponsored by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

MA student Laura O'Hara has won funding from the Cosmos Club Foundation to have historic recordings transferred from an obsolete format so she can incorporate them into her research.

Mills Kelly, director of the Global Affairs Program at George Mason University, teaches students who want to make a difference in the world through international service and volunteerism. This past semester, he set an example for his students by volunteering his time with an international foundation.

The 4th annual War on the Silver Screen Film Festival will be held February 13-15 at 7 PM in the Johnson Center Cinema.

Starting in Fall 2012, a new Master's of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies concentration in War and the Military in Society will be available to students in the Washington, DC, area.

On Wednesday, November 16, 2011, George Mason University was delighted to serve as the greater Washington, D.C. region's sole venue for the fifth annual CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections.

Richard Norton Smith, Scholar in Residence in the Department of History and Art History, was a guest on the PBS NewsHour on Jan. 3, 2012. He and two other historians discussed Iowa's rise to election season prominence.

The Department of History and Art History has expanded its course offerings in the history of sports and welcomed two professors in the School of Recreation, Health and Tourism as affiliated faculty.

The Economist recently published a feature story about the Center for History and New Media's Occupy Archive, a collection of stories, photos, and other digital materials related to the current Occupy Movement. The archive welcomes public submissions.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences honored Susan Ridley, office manager in the Department of Psychology, with the Mary Roper Award in a ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 6. Four other staff members also received awards.

Michele Greet, associate professor of art history, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for her current research project, "Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars."

Sean Takats, assistant professor of history, has published The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France with the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Meredith Lair, assistant professor of history, has published Armed with Abundance: Consumerism and Soldiering in the Vietnam War.

Steve Barnes, director of the Center for Eurasian Studies at George Mason University, recently authored a blog post, titled: "Why Russian Historians Should Blog." Russian and Soviet history fall in Barnes' area of research expertise.

Shaul Bakhash, Robinson Professor of History, recently wrote an article about the Iranian presidency for the United States Institute of Peace's "Iran Primer" program.

Steven A. Barnes has received the 2011 Baker-Burton Award for Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society, (Princeton University Press, 2011).

Martin De Nys, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, and Rosemarie Zagarri, a professor in the Department of History and Art History, both received the Award for Scholarship, presented each year by the college to faculty members who make sustained, consistent contributions to their fields of study.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences will host a special two-day seminar, entitled “Revolutions: Past, Present, and Future.” This seminar will feature seven one-and-a-half-hour discussion panels, taking place in Mason Hall’s Edwin Meese III Conference Room.

As part of its college series, C-SPAN's BookTV program recently came to campus and interviewed five history faculty. All five programs have now aired and can be watched on the C-SPAN website.

Professor Yevette Richards Jordan presented "Gender Politics: The AFL-CIO’s Underhanded Practices against the ICFTU’s Women’s Committee" on October 7 at an international workshop hosted by the Amsab-Institute of Social History. The workshop entitled, "The AFL-CIO and the International Cold War: Problems, Paradigms, and Pragmatic Responses," explored the Cold War international history of US labor's relations with worldwide organized labor. The workshop aimed to offer a global approach to the phenomenon of an “activist” American trade union movement.

Yevette Richards Jordan, PhD,was recently  awarded a Mason Faculty Research Development Award to support her book project, "Kampala Labor College: A History of Conflict between Pan-Africanism and International Labor During the Cold War."

Teachinghistory.org, directed by Kelly Schrum, Associate Professor, has released a free poster: "How Do You Piece Together the History of the Civil War?"

The MPublishing division of the University of Michigan Library has released the open-access version of Hacking the Academy, edited by Dan Cohen, Associate Professor of History and Tom Scheinfeldt, Research Assistant Professor of History.

The Iranian Studies Group, a student organization focused on Iran-related research in the humanities and social sciences, returns to Mason for its second official semester with a series of lectures and presentations.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Thomas Dodman will be joining the History faculty in the fall of 2011.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Angela Ho will be joining the Art History faculty in the fall of 2011.

George Mason University's history courses study the past from all angles. Sign up to learn about the rich, detailed evolution of worldwide art and music. Study the history of the United States, North America, and the world through a variety of lenses and perspectives.

Carol C. Mattusch, Mathy Professor of Art History, has published a scholarly edition of Johann Joachim Winckelmann's Letter and Report on the Discoveries at Herculaneum, originally published in German in 1762 and 1764. Mattusch translated the documents and offers an introduction and commentary.

History professors Suzanne Smith and Rosemarie Zagarri have been named Distinguished Lecturers by the Organization of American Historians.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Deborah Kaplan describes her exploration of the papers left by her late husband, Roy Rosenzweig, a long time member of the Department of History and Art History.

The Washington City Paper quotes Professor Zachary Schrag, an expert in the history of the Washington Metro, in a story about debates over smart growth.

Max Liebermann and International Modernism: An Artist's Career from Empire to Third Reich, coedited by Marion Deshmukh, contributes to the recent wave of scholarly literature that works to recover artist Max Libermann's role and oeuvre in the narratives of modern art after the Nazi's attempt to obliterate his work. Deshmukh is the Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History at Mason. Her publications include works and exhibition catalog essays on Max Liebermann, German academies and art unions, Berlin’s National Gallery of Art since 1945 and on East German painters since 1990.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences hosted 33 exemplary undergraduate student research projects at the 2011 Undergraduate Research Symposium on Tuesday, April 19, in the Johnson Center. Learn more about the symposium and view a video.

The Center for History and New Media in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences dedicates the center to its founder, Roy Rosenzweig.

Steven Barnes, associate professor of history and director of the Center for Eurasian Studies, has published Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society.

Dr. Kathy McGill, an adjunct professor in U.S. history, has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Bachelor of Individualized Study (BIS) Faculty Mentor Award.

Marion Deshmukh, Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History, was one of eight faculty members at George Mason University to be honored at an April 11 reception for the 2011 Teaching Excellence awards, hosted by the Provost’s Office and the Center for Teaching Excellence at Mason.

Christopher Hamner, assistant professor of history, has published Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776–1945.

In "You Are What you Drink? Tequila, Maguey, and Mexican Identity," Joan Bristol recounts the story of the origins of distilling local liquor to discuss identity and socio-cultural politics in Mexico and its relevance today.

Human rights writer and activist Marjorie Agosín, professor of Spanish at Wellesley College, will headline a symposium on Monday, March 28. Agosin will talk about the role of art in human rights activism in Latin America. Panelists include: Michele Greet, Art History; Jo-Marie Burt, Public and International Affairs; Debra Shutika, English; and Margaret Yocom, English.

At a Feb. 24 ceremony, five talented student-athletes from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences were among 12 recognized for their outstanding academic achievements.

Dan Cohen, associate professor of history and art history at George Mason University and the director of the Center for History and New Media, has been awarded the 2011 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology by the Library & Information Technology Association, a division of the American Library Association.

In the next Vision Series lecture on Monday, Feb. 28, Spencer Crew, Robinson Professor of American, African-American and Public History, will discuss one of his areas of expertise, the Underground Railroad, and debunk some of the myths surrounding this movement.