Welcome to our monthly compilation of good news, gathered from the college's faculty and staff! Would you like to include your own news or a colleague's? Send us your details on the CHSS Brag Points form (which also collects information we can share with Mason's Office of University Branding).
A shout-out of thanks to Mills Kelly, who is finishing a four-year term of service directing the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media this week. Mills has led RRCHNM through a “moment” in higher ed that none of us could have anticipated in summer 2019. His leadership has been instrumental to the continuing success of the center, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Associate Professor of English Samaine Lockwood won a short-term research fellowship from the New York Public Library. The two-week fellowship is to conduct archival research in the Ann Petry Papers at the Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This archival work will advance Lockwood’s current book project Tituba: The History of an American Cultural Figure. Tituba Indian, an enslaved woman of color, was among the first accused of witchcraft in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-93. Playwrights, novelists, and historians have represented Tituba variously as Indigenous, biracial (Black and Indigenous), and Black in their retellings of the Salem story. Lockwood focuses one chapter on how Petry’s portrayal of Tituba in the young adult novel Tituba of Salem Village (1964) constitutes a significant break in the history of the representation of the Salem witchcraft episode.
Emeritus Professor of History Jane Censer has been awarded the Richard Slatten Award, which is given annually to the most outstanding book in Virginia biography. The award recognized Censer’s most recent book, The Princess of Albemarle: Amélie Rives, Author and Celebrity at the Fin de Siècle. Read more about Censer’s book.
Associate Professor of English Tania James celebrated the release of her new book Loot in June. A historical fiction novel set in the 18th century, Loot is a sprawling saga of love, adventure, and a mechanical tiger. Listen to James’ recent interview with NPR.
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Vivek Narayanan's After, an epic 600-page book of poems inspired by a foundational South Asian epic, was reviewed in the June 2, 2023, issue of London's Times Literary Supplement. Calling Narayanan's recent book "imaginatively and intellectually rigorous," the reviewer concludes by saying, "After is as dazzling as it is authoritative." The TLS, founded in 1902, played a key role in modernist literary history and is considered one of "the world's leading journal[s] for literature and ideas." Read the review.
Courtney Wooten, assistant professor in the Department of English, was interviewed about her book Childfree and Happy: Transforming the Rhetoric of Women's Reproductive Choices on the New Books Network podcast. Listen to the interview.
August 11, 2023