Information for:
CHSS Connection - March 31, 2008
College Convocation Speakers To Address Human Rights
Human rights has been an enduring and powerful presence in the news in recent months, despite the country's preoccupation with the presidential election. On Thursday May 15, 2008, the convocation address at the undergraduate ceremony for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences will bring the human rights discussion to the Patriot Center. Before over 2,000 graduating students and their families, Dr. Haleh Esfandiari and her husband, Dr. Shaul Bakhash will share their remarkable story of her 2007 detainment in Iran and his efforts to secure her release. Read More >>
Dean's Challenge Award Winner George Fachner
At age 20, George Fachner enrolled in community college. He went on to complete a bachelor’s degree from Baruch College in New York. Today he is a master’s candidate in Mason’s Justice, Law, and Crime Policy program and was a 2007 recipient of the Dean’s Challenge Award, a fellowship of $2,000. Fachner, who dropped out of high school at age 17, is now actively planning to pursue a doctoral degree. Read More >>
Russian Students Compete for Gold
The Russian Studies program at George Mason hosted the Virginia State Olympiada of Spoken Russian on Friday April 4. This is the third year that Mason has been selected to host this regional Olympiada, a secondary school program sponsored by the American Councils for International Education. Students of Russian from several high schools in Northern Virginia participate in the Olympiada to demonstrate their proficiency in spoken Russian. Read More >>
View faculty, staff and student activities: In the Media | Awards | Publications
Alex Tabarrok (Economics)
Tabarrok published an op-ed in the New York Times. Read More >>
Danny Collier (IT Director, CHSS Dean's Office)
Collier weighs the work-life balance of fatherhood with a commute from D.C. in the April edition of Northern Virginia magazine in the "Commuter of the Month" profile.
Mark Katz (Public and International Affairs)
Katz gave a lecture on Russian-Iranian Relations in the Ahmadinejad Era at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars on February 29, 2008. This was reported on both by Eurasianet.org: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav030308a.shtml and by the National Iranian American Council: http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1056&Itemid=2 The paper this lecture was based on will be published later this spring by The Middle East Journal. Read More >>
Michele Greet (Art History)
Greet was awarded the post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC (2008-2009) to begin work on her new book project entitled "Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars."
Roger Mellen (PhD History '07)
Mellen completed his dissertation with Dr. Rosie Zagarri, was awarded Honorable Mention for the Margaret A. Banchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize given by the American Journalism History Association. A presentation will be made at the association's annual meeting in October in Seattle.
The Association of American College and Universities (AAC&U)
The Association of American College and Universities has recognized Mason for its work on electronic portfolios and assessment.
Darren Cambridge, assistant professor of Internet studies and information literacy in New Century College, will coordinate Mason's participation in the project. Read More >>
Cynthia Lum (Administration of Justice)
Lum completed the final stages of Project TIPLINE which will be freely available to law enforcement agencies in April. In this project, she developed a handbook, software, and standard operating procedures for agencies to develop and use an automated system for information collection and analysis to help police agencies quickly receive, standardize, automate, and analyze information provided to them from the public (for example, in a missing persons case or community-oriented problem-solving project). Information on Project TIPLINE can be obtained from the Project's website. Read More >>
Rebecca Erbelding
Erbelding, a History Ph.D. candidate, is profiled in an article titled "Picturing Auschwitz" in the March 17, 2008 New Yorker) concerning her work as an archivist at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum downtown, and a newly discovered album of photographs taken at Auschwitz in 1944.
Irmgard Wagner (Modern and Classical Languages)
Wagner published an essay, "Tony Schumacher, Jugendschriftstellerin aus Ludwigsburg, Zeugin bewegter Zeiten," in a volume on 18th- to 20th-century women writers from the Ludwigsburg area. Irmgard's essay portrays the children's literature writer Tony Schumacher (1848-1931) as a witness of the eventful times in which she lived and wrote.
Mark Katz (Public and International Affairs)
Katz has published extensively during the 2007-08 academic year on Russian foreign policy:
"Assertive but Alone", The World Today, November 2007
"Russia and Qatar," Middle East Review of International Affairs, December 2007:
http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue4/pdf/1.pdf
"Russia and Algeria: Partners or Competitors?" Middle East Policy, Winter 2007
"The Emerging Saudi-Russian Partnership," Mideast Monitor, January-March 2008:
http://www.mideastmonitor.org/issues/0801/0801_4.htm
On a much lighter note, Katz published an op-ed piece entitled, "Putin Saved My Career" in The Moscow Times on February 22, 2008: [http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2008/02/22/006.html]
The piece led him to be interviewed by Lisa Mullins on The World (a co-production of the BBC, Public Radio International, and WGBH-Boston) on February 27, 2008:
Listen to the interview. [http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/16291]
For complete details on all of Katz's latest work visit www.marknkatz.com