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Read the latest information on Mason's 2020 Winter Graduation ceremony, as well as CHSS events to celebrate our graduates!

In spring 2020, Mills Kelly, history professor and interim director, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, received word that he had been selected to receive the 2019 Gutenberg Teaching Award. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s ceremony was held virtually in mid-October.

All 2020 graduates, from spring, summer, and fall, are invited to participate in George Mason University’s 2020 Winter Graduation on Thursday, December 17, at 2:00 pm, on GMU-TV. Following the ceremony, CHSS graduates are invited to join the college for its own festivities.

College faculty members Sabine Doebel, Department of Psychology, and Kelly Schrum, Higher Education Program and Department of History and Art History, are among nine Mason faculty who received collaborative research grants.

With this summer’s Tokyo Olympics on hold, Mason Olympic scholar Chris Elzey examines the Games as an athletic, cultural, and political event as part of Mason's Access to Excellence podcast. Elzey is a faculty member in the Department of History and Art History and the director of the sport and American culture minor.

The Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) has launched a new digital archive entitled American Jewish Life. This project is a more particular collecting site linked to the center's larger Pandemic Religion project. The new site is the fruit of a partnership formed with six Jewish archives and institutions: the Capital Jewish Museum (opening in DC in 2022), Yeshiva University, Hebrew Theological College, the Breman Museum, the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, and the Houston Jewish History Archive at Rice University.

The Office of the Provost has announced the recipients of its Curriculum Impact Grants for 2020-21. Of eighteen interdisciplinary projects submitted, four of those funded include CHSS faculty in their teams.

University Libraries and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences are pleased to announce the newly established Center for Mason Legacies, dedicated to engaging student researchers in studying the past and present influences of the university’s namesake.

Students in ARTH 495/599 Curating an Exhibit successfully created an online resource shared with the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, displaying ragamala paintings.

Wendi N. Manuel-Scott, a professor the School of Integrative Studies and the Department of History and Art History, discussed the importance of Juneteenth as a political, civic demonstration of Black freedom.

College faculty members Kelly Schrum (Higher Education Program), Jessica Otis, and Nate Sleeter (both, History and Art History) have received a digital extension grant from ACLS to expand the World History Commons digital resource project.

JOHN WINTERS, who received his M.A. in History from Mason in 2013, will receive his Ph.D. from the City University of New York (Graduate Center) in June 2020.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences celebrates its graduates in the Class of 2020 with a message from Dean Ann Ardis, a musical tribute from the Green Machine, and more.

In recognition of his career-spanning work in the scholarship of teaching and learning, Mills Kelly, history professor and interim executive director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, has been awarded the Gutenberg Teaching Award.

Kailea Swartz, who will graduate in May 2020 with a history B.A., has earned admission—and full tuition scholarships—to three different law schools: Temple University, Villanova University, and Rutgers University.

Mounir Alafrangy, BA History '10, is no stranger work in an isolated environment, after a forty-five-day experiment as an analog astronaut with NASA's Human Exploration Research Analog Mission XX. His experience informs anyone working remotely. Photo courtesy of NASA.

In a New York Times article about Vermont’s Rokeby Museum, Spencer Crews, Robinson Professor of American, African American, Public History, notes the importance of embracing differing views.

George Mason University is committed to protecting the health of its community. Its resources include up-to-date plans and procedures, identification of student health services clinics, and attention to its study-abroad programs.

TO BE RESCHEDULED ONLINE. A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch witnesses in an experiential and non-didactic sense a critical moment in geological history — bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species’ breadth and impact.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) invites full-time Mason faculty to apply for a faculty fellow position at the Center for the Fall 2020 semester.

In 2017, five undergraduate students received an OSCAR grant for a summer research project. Today, their research is transforming Wilkins Plaza.

Beginning with a deed book in the Campbell County, Va, courthouse, Bobbi Bowman's curiosity, diligence, and research skills have led her to piece together a remarkable family history.

Katie Hemphill (BA, History & English, 2006; MA, History, 2008) is currently an assistant professor of history at the University of Arizona. Her book, Bawdy City: Commercial Sex and Regulation in Baltimore, 1790-1915, is forthcoming in hardcover in February 2020 from Cambridge University Press. The Kindle version is available now. We checked in with Prof. Hemphill to learn more about her teaching and research.

In a video on the China Global Television Network, Kevin Matthews, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discusses Brexit and the impact that it will have on the United Kingdom's relationship with Europe and the United States.

Michael O'Malley, Matthew Karush, and Michele Greet have been awarded a total of $235,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In celebration of its 25th year, the Cultural Studies PhD Program at George Mason University will be presenting a symposium examining the cultural, political, and economic impact of Amazon.

As Mason's Center for History and New Media moves into its next quarter century, it continues to harness new technology to build upon its success and find new ways to democratize history.

The job market for humanities PhDs has been tough for decades, and it’s not getting any better. In part for that reason, a landmark 2011 American Historical Association report urged its members to think more broadly about employment options for History PhDs—not all of whom could or should become academics—and to adapt their curricula accordingly.

The Asia Dialogue site includes an article by Gerrit van der Wees, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, discussing the outlook for January's presidential and legislative elections in Taiwan.

A professor of medieval literature offers some time-honored study tips from the world of medieval education.

History professor Cynthia Kierner discusses Inventing Disaster: The Culture of Calamity from the Jamestown Colony to the Johnstown Flood, which explores how early American responses to natural and man-made calamities shape our societal reactions today.

Art history graduate student Paul Albert was part of a Mason team that took part in the National Gallery of Art's first datathon. The team used data science to measure the popularity of artists in the NGA's collections.

In a Washington Post article about Germany's attitudes on conversion therapy, history professor Samuel Clowes Huneke discusses LGBTQ history in East and West Germany.

The Department of History and Art History welcomed two new tenure-track faculty members this Fall.

With Good Reason, a radio program produced by Virginia Humanities, featured History professor Jennifer Ritterhouse discussing Sarah Patton Boyle, a 20th century Virginian who made a transition from segregationist to active desegregationist in the 1950s.

Department of History and Art History faculty member Kevin Matthews contributes to a Time website piece on the historical accuracy of the Downton Abbey movie released September 20.

Wendi Manuel-Scott, faculty member in the Department of History and Art History, School of Integrative Studies, African and African and African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Cultural Studies, discussed the complicated legacy of George Mason IV with radio station WRVA.

Mason’s Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for two projects: DataScribe and Digital Methods for Military History.

The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University are pleased to announce that Mills Kelly has been named the new executive director of RRCHNM. This year RRCHNM is celebrating its twenty-fifth year, and Kelly has been a part of the Center for eighteen of those years. He joined the department and CHNM in 2001 to work with Roy Rosenzweig, the founder of CHNM.

Sean Sweeney, Chief Security Advisor for the Americas in Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Solutions Group, is this year's recipient of the Department of History and Art History's Outstanding Alum Award.

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.

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.

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."

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.