Center for Humanities Research

A window into the region’s past and present

Sarah Holland — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 13:40:42 +0000

A window into the region’s past and present Sarah Holland Wed, 09/27/2023 - 09:40

Funded by the Office of the Provost, a project called “IndigenoUS Northern Virginia” brings together an interdisciplinary approach to increase knowledge and discussion of indigeneity, present and past in our region, created with the Center for Humanities Research (CHR) and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), under the leadership of principle investigator Gabrielle Tayac, associate professor of history. During a three-week summer institute, students traveled around Northern Virginia, meeting with different communities and tribal members to learn about their role in the foundation and growth of Northern Virginia.

CHR is one of Mason’s five transdisciplinary research centers for advanced study. It was created in 2020 with support from the Provost’s Office and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS).

Students participate in circulo, led by Juan Pacheco. Photo provided.

Public administration major Nardi Soto Cordova registered for the summer institute because she has Indigenous ancestry, Quechua, and wanted to learn more “After meeting Quechua and Aymara people, I realized that traditions I've been involved with my whole life are, in fact, indigenous practices.”

As the university works to build communities and bring a sense of belonging for everyone, Tayac believes that bringing together Mason students and local tribal members and leaders will create sustainable connections across the community and region with indigenous communities.

Art history graduate student Sean Simmons, one of 12 summer students, described the “Circulo” led by Mason alum Juan Pacheco, coordinator of the East Coast chapter of Barrios Unidos. “I've never been in a learning environment that was simultaneously so welcoming and impactful,” he said.

Using public history methodologies and indigenous ways of knowing and being, the institute brings experiential and immersive learning to the understanding of the topics.

“It’s not just looking at old histories and understandings of the land that we live on and with, but also the living, vibrant communities that have continued, and looking at how our understandings of self in an intellectual community like Mason are intertwined,” said Tayac. “Knowing the people changes how you understand and share the history.”

Students shared meals, listened to stories, visited sacred sites, and engaged in traditions both on and off campus with local indigenous communities. On the summer solstice, the students meditated in the new garden beside Horizon Hall on ��AV's Fairfax Campus, led by visiting Andean Indigenous leaders.

Tayac and Director of CHR Alison Landsberg debrief with their students. Photo provided.

Domi Hannon, an Honors College student majoring in foreign languages, as well as a student leader of Mason’s Native American and Indigenous Alliance (NAIA), said understanding the indigenous landscape requires looking to the past in order to move forward.

The CHR hopes that the success of this institute will lead to future funding for public humanities projects. “Our methodology is based in what can we learn from communities, and what can we give back to communities,” explained Catherine Olien, project manager for IndigenoUS Northern Virginia and associate director of CHR. “Projects like this allow faculty, staff, students, and the community to learn from each other and grow together.”

Learn more about IndigenoUs

In This Story

Gabrielle A. Tayac

Topics

Students

Center for Humanities Research

Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media

Indigenous Peoples

Office of the Provost

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Rachel Jones

Wasiq Muhammad Muhammad Ali — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 20:33:20 +0000

Rachel Jones Wasiq Muhammad… Wed, 12/01/2021 - 15:33

Chair
Associate Professor

Contact Information

Email: rjones23@gmu.edu
Phone: 703.993.4328
Mail Stop: Honors College, MSN 1F4
Campus: Fairfax
Office: Horizon Hall 6269

Biography

Professor Jones received her B.A. in Philosophy and German from St. John's College, Oxford University, and her MA and PhD in Philosophy and Literature from the University of Warwick. Her teaching and research interests include key thinkers and themes in continental and feminist philosophy (such as Kant, Nietzsche, Lyotard, and Irigaray; self and body, the sublime, sexual difference). She is interested in working with art and literature to explore philosophical questions and in the intersection of feminist philosophy with perspectives from queer theory, transnational feminisms, critical philosophies of race, and decolonial theory. Her current research takes Kant's essays on the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 as a prompt for re-interrogating human beings' relations to materiality, natality, and difference. Dr. Jones is a member of the Executive Committees for the Luce Irigaray Circle and for philoSOPHIA .She currently serves as a 'Member at Large' for the International Association for Environmental Philosophy (IAEP).

Selected Publications

‘Thinking Otherwise with Irigaray and Maximin,’ in Thinking: A Philosophical History, eds D. Whistler and Y. Vassilopoulou (Routledge, 2021), pp.236-250.

'Dissonance, Resistance, and Perspectival Pedagogies,' in Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom, eds Ada S. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson (University of Alberta Press, 2020), pp.117-134.

'Kant, Hegel and Irigaray: From Chemism to the Elemental,' in Kant and the Continental Tradition: Sensibility, Nature and Religion (in memoriam: Gary Banham), Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, eds Sorin Baiasu and Alberto Vanzo (Routledge, 2020), pp. 146-170.

'Philosophical Métissage and the Decolonization of Difference: Luce Irigaray, Daniel Maximin, and the Elemental Sublime,' Special Issue of Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, 5:2, 2018; 139-156.

'The Anthropocene and Elemental Multiplicity,' co-authored with Emily Parker, English Language Notes, Special Issue: Environmental Trajectories, Vol. 55. 1/2, Fall 2017; 61-69.

‘Active Matter and Vital Materiality: Between Irigaray and Bennett’, Special Issue of Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology on 'Irigaray and Ecofeminism', Vol. 46.2, 2015; 156-172.

‘Re-Reading Diotima: Resources for a Relational Pedagogy’, Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education: ‘Re-imagining Relationships in Education: Ethics, Politics and Practices’, ed. M. Griffiths et al, Vol 48 Issue 2, 2014; 183-201.

‘On the Value of Not Knowing: Wonder, Beginning Again, and Letting Be’, in On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, E. Fischer and R. Fortnum, eds. (London: Black Dog Publishing, September 2013).

‘Lyotard and Irigaray on Eros, Infancy and Birth: the Dissymmetrical Horizons of Being Between’, in Jean-François Lyotard: New Encounters, H. Bickis and R. Shields, eds. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).

‘Adventures in the Abyss: Kant, Irigaray and Earthquakes’, Symposium: Canadian Journal for Continental Philosophy, Volume 17.1, Spring 2013.

‘Irigaray and Lyotard: Birth, Infancy, and Metaphysics’, Hypatia, Vol. 27 Issue 1, Winter 2012.

Luce Irigaray: Towards a Sexuate Philosophy, Key Contemporary Thinkers series (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).

Courses Taught

PHIL 156 - What is Art?

PHIL 329 - Philosophy After Auschwitz

PHIL 336 - Twentieth-Century Continental Thought - Existentialism

PHIL 338 - Philosophy, Race and Gender

PHIL 421 - Philosophy Seminar (Nietzsche)

PHIL 721 - Graduate Seminar: Kant's third Critique; Lyotard and Nancy; Birth, Death, and the Human.

PHIL 730 - Nietzsche and his Readers

WMST 630/PHIL 694 - Feminist Theory Across the Disciplines

HNRS 110 - Research Methods

HNRS 130 - Conceptions of Self

HNRS 240 - Reading the Past: Body Politics – Women and the Political

Talking about racial injustice and restorative action with Black leaders

Colleen Rich — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 22:28:42 +0000

Talking about racial injustice and restorative action with Black leaders Colleen Rich Thu, 04/15/2021 - 18:28

In This Story

Spencer Crew

Stefan Wheelock, Spencer Crew and NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson in conversation during a virtual discussion about historic and current racial injustice.

Derrick Johnson, NAACP president and CEO, and Spencer Crew, former director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and Robinson Professor of U.S. History, spoke about historic and current racial injustices in a virtual discussion hosted by ��AV’s Center for Humanities Research on Wednesday.

Stefan Wheelock, an associate professor in the Department of English, moderated the virtual conversation, which was attended by about 130 people.

“The legacy of slavery persists through the system of segregation and discrimination which came into operation in the years after the Civil War,” Crew said. “Supreme Court rulings—Plessy v Ferguson—supported it and made it legal for decades. These laws or ways of operating severely handicapped the ability of African Americans to create stable lives.”

The process of “repair” will take many years to execute, Crew added, and involves equal access to jobs, housing, education and other things critical to success in society. Fixing these things will begin the process of repairing the decades of harm already done, Crew said.

“History has always been a vehicle for storytelling and for impacting social change,” Crew added.

Johnson, who appeared during the first part of the event, effectively described how the United States' longstanding racial fight over economic power and opportunity both sets the stage for the limited success of Reconstruction-Era legal provisions to procure Blacks' rights in the period following the Civil War and continues to frame the partisan debate on voting-rights legislation today.

“The conversation on racial justice and restorative action between Dr. Spencer Crew and President Derrick Johnson focused, in meaningful ways, the public’s attention on the relationship between the nation’s current trends in power and its history of racism and white supremacy,” said Wheelock.

Crew’s most pivotal exhibition at the museum was the groundbreaking “Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration 1915–1940,” which generated a national discussion about migration, race, and creating historical exhibitions. He also co-curated “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden,” one of the Smithsonian Institution’s most popular exhibitions.

“The idea for the museum goes back 100 years,” said Crew. “However, it did not pick up momentum until the 1980s.” Crew described his proudest moment as unveiling the first exhibition solely focused on African American history, and elevating the story of African Americans to a more prominent role at the Smithsonian.

During the live event Crew was honored and his career celebrated by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences issuing a proclamation and presenting him with the Dean’s Faculty/Staff Award for Civic Excellence.