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 George Mason's Office of University Branding).
Congratulations to Edward Maibach, Distinguished University Professor and director of the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C), for receiving $302,000 from the Energy Foundation for “EF Core Support CY25.” The project aims to advance climate and health communication, advocacy, and education through nationally recognized programs, including 4C’s audience, the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health communication efforts, and state networks. The work aligns with state and national plans to address climate and health by building physician leadership, promoting science-based policies, and empowering frontline communities with tools and resources.
Shout out to Marion Dobbins, doctoral student in the Department of History, on decades of research and oral histories covering Northern Virginia's Fairfax County for her forthcoming book, The Lost Black Communities of Merrifield, The Pines and Williamstown. The book, due in June from the History Press, narrates the displacement and erasure of three Black communities in Northern Virginia among which she was raised.
Congratulations to Center for Mason Legacies (CML) scholars, Wendi Manuel-Scott, professor of integrative studies and history; George D. Oberle III, associate professor of history and University Libraries' history librarian; and Benedict Carton, associate professor of integrative studies and a member of CML's founding faculty. Their articles are featured in the February 2025 volume of American Nineteenth Century History. Carton and Oberle III's co-authored article examines how our university, though far newer, shares "an association with slavery” with schools like Yale, tracing previously unnoted strains of white supremacist thought that informed its twentieth-century formation and culture. Manuel-Scott's article describes how the center's origins and novel pedagogy model the application of ideological frameworks and pedagogical practices that resist replicating exclusion.
Center for Mason Legacies Director George D. Oberle III, associate professor of the Department of History and Art History and history librarian for the University Libraries, has authored the introduction to the Fairfax County Clerk of Court's newly reissued booklet, The Washington Wills. This is the first time the court has tapped a professional historian for commentary on the probated wills of George and Martha Washington, considered treasures of the court's Historic Records Center. Congratulations!
The Stillhouse Press book, Sad Grownups by Amy Stuber, is on the long list for the PEN America Robert Bingham Award for Debut Short Story Collection. The PEN America awards are among the major literary awards and have been called by Vanity Fair "the Oscars of literary America." The short story collection was edited by alumna Rebecca Burke, MFA '21.
Congratulations to Helon Ngalabak, professor in the Department of English, upon receiving a $45,000 grant from the Institute of International Education, Inc. on behalf of the Open Society Foundations. This travel grant will support Ngalabak’s continued research for his travel narrative that tells a history of the Niger River and the riparian communities that live on its banks.
Thomas Stratmann, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics, received $15,000 from the University of Pittsburgh for his project “Governing Deep Difference during Times of Crisis: Modus Vivendi, Polycentrism, and Institutional Diversity Part 2.” Stratmann aims to shed light on the enduring role of cultural backgrounds in shaping political behavior and assess how the U.S. campaign finance system aids the peaceful coexistence of diverse political preferences in a multicultural society. His project investigates deep cultural determinants of political participation in the United States. Congratulations!
April 04, 2025