Department of History and Art History

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Art history students learn how to mount an exhibition

Shayla Brown — Wed, 01 May 2024 17:07:44 +0000

Art history students learn how to mount an exhibition Shayla Brown Wed, 05/01/2024 - 13:07

��AV students taking Art History 495/595 Curating an Exhibition worked together to take an exhibit of South African art from conception to completion this spring.

Students putting the exhibition up at the Gillespie Gallery in the Art and Design Building. Photo provided.

The class of undergraduate, graduate students, and professional artists were split into four groups: research, installation, design, and marketing/outreach, and worked with a faculty member from Mason Exhibitions to co-curate Faces and Figures: Identity through Printmaking in South Africa, which ran from March 24 to April 19 in Gillespie Gallery of the Art and Design Building on George Mason’s Fairfax Campus.

The artwork in the exhibit was from student and professional artists associated with Artist Proof Studio in South Africa. The course was taught by LaNitra Berger, an associate professor of history and art history and director of African and African American Studies Program.

“It's such an honor that we get to work with real artists from South Africa,” said art history graduate student and chief curator of the exhibition Irena Jansen, who is from Croatia. “I was really struck by the connection that it makes across countries. It spoke of my time growing up in the communist country, but here it speaks in their context.”

Chief curator, Irena Jansen. Photo provided.

Senior art history major Esther Perez-Rosales was in charge of the installation group.

“I printed small versions of the artwork and made an initial draft of what the curatorial flow would be like, which was really fun to do,” said Perez-Rosales. “It was really good to kickstart the process because it taught me a lot about curatorial work and how different aspects of it can make or break the vision.”

The themes of migration, family and community, and gender roles were emphasized using theme texts mounted alongside the artwork.

“We felt that identity was the overarching theme as the artists try to figure out who they are personally,” said Jansen.

George Mason graduate student Nicola Macdonald, who is from Durban, South Africa, was part of the research team.

“Being a part of the culture and from contemporary South Africa, I knew I could bring that to the table, so when we divided into groups, I [wanted] to be in the research group to bring this historical background to aid in putting the exhibition together,” said Macdonald, who worked with family members throughout the creative process to ensure authenticity to the South African culture.

“We got to choose most of the works that were shipped to us,” said Jansen. “Some of the works that arrived were a little bit of a surprise, but that was a great challenge for us because that's what happens in real world sometimes.”

The students hope to do more work with Artist Proof Studio in the future and potentially reinstall the exhibition at Mason Exhibitions Arlington, said Jansen.

“Our goal was to highlight South African art as elevated and sophisticated, and I hope we’ve done that,” Jansen said.

Students from the course, Mason Exhibition faculty members, and Professor Berger (far right). Photo provided.

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LaNitra M. Berger, PhD

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Lincoln expert Gerleman named Fulbright scholar

Colleen Rich — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:03:28 +0000

Lincoln expert Gerleman named Fulbright scholar Colleen Rich Tue, 04/02/2024 - 11:03

David J. Gerleman, adjunct faculty in the Department of History and Art History at ��AV, has been selected as a recipient of a 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar Award. He will teach two courses at the University of Debrecen, one of Hungary's most prestigious higher education institutions.

David J. Gerleman. Photo provided

Gerleman, an Abraham Lincoln expert and 19^th-century American historian specializing in the Civil War era, served for a decade as an editor for The Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project. One of the nation’s most prolific discoverers of unknown Lincoln documents, he has appeared on multiple media outlets discussing Lincoln and Civil War topics.

“We tend to think of Lincoln as an insular American historic figure when he actually has global relevance," Gerleman said. "I also hope to convey to non-American audiences why his image still looms so large in our national consciousness and why U.S. election cycles are never complete without politicians of all stripes seeking to ‘get right with Lincoln.’"

Gerleman developed two courses he will teach at the University of Debrecen—Abraham Lincoln in American History and Memory, and U.S. Diplomatic History, 1776–1920—during his time at Mason. The Lincoln course will utilize his original document research similar to that highlighted in his recent Washington Post article, which established a previously unknown link between Abraham Lincoln and President Biden and sparked global attention.

Péter Csató, chair of the University of Debrecen’s North American Department, is looking forward to hosting Gerleman. “His expertise in 19th-century American history will contribute significantly to our students’ in-depth knowledge and understanding of this highly important period of U.S. history, and historian colleagues in the department would also benefit greatly from discussions and consultations with him. We are all thrilled to work with him.”

The Fulbright Program, the flagship international academic exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, has fostered mutual understanding between the United States and other countries since 1946. The program provides awards to approximately 8,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals each year from the United States and 160 countries.

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A ghostly education: Living and learning folklore through Mason's legends and lore

Sarah Holland — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 19:38:44 +0000

A ghostly education: Living and learning folklore through Mason's legends and lore Sarah Holland Thu, 10/26/2023 - 15:38

It was a dark and stormy night. Students gathered beneath the golden streetlamps of Mason Pond, the ground littered with leaves.

Students decorate the George Mason IV statue. Photo by Sarah Holland/Office of University Branding.

"They say the ghost of the dead will beckon you into the pond," says the storyteller, as the crowd "oohs" in excitement.

The hosts are members of Mason’s Folklore Roundtable—a student-run organization for folklore students and enthusiasts--and this was their second annual Campus Legends and Lore Walking Tour on Halloween Eve.

"I love ghost tours, because they let you explore an area and get to know its history," said Sarah Thompson, history major and Honors College student. Thompson was one of 40 participants for this year's event. "I'm excited to get to do this one at Mason."

The tour started at The Hub and took a winding route around the Fairfax Campus to hear about local and Mason-specific folklore. The bridge through the forests between The Hub and the Aquatic and Fitness Center leads to a discussion of the infamous Bunnyman Bridge of Clifton, Virginia; a visit to the Johnson Center parlays into the telling of the folktale of Old Man Johnson—a ghost said to follow Mason’s rowing team.

As the tour highlighted, Mason boasts multiple traditions and folk beliefs, such as annual bench painting and the supposed haunting of Mason Pond. The statue of George Mason IV has its own veritable library of folkloric associations: rubbing the toes for good luck, taking a photo with George at graduation, or avoiding stepping on the plaque for fear of not graduating.

At one of the most diverse public universities in the nation, these traditions help bring the campus community together with a shared sense of Mason identity.

“Part of folklore’s function is to connect people to space and place,” said Ang DiNardo, the current president of the Folklore Roundtable and a graduate student in the folklore program. “Mason folklore allows students to feel connected to the campus and part of the community. You see someone rubbing George’s toe for luck, and it makes you feel connected to that person, even if you don’t know them.”

The tour is also a unique opportunity for Mason students to learn about folklore as an academic discipline. Along the tour, folklore students explain basic terminology used in the field and discuss theories of folklore development and its impact. Tour guests walk away knowing the difference between a “legend” and a “myth,” while also being a little more wary of nighttime excursions to Mason Pond for fear of vengeful spirits.

Mason's Department of English in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences offers the only master’s level folklore program in the Mid-Atlantic region and is home to the Journal of American Folklore, the flagship journal of the American Folklore Society.

"Everyone has folklore, even if they don't know that's what it is," said Alice Christensen, anthropology major and member of Folklore Roundtable's leadership team. "It's valuable to have a name to put to what you do in your daily life."

Partway through the 2023 tour, participants got to participate in one of Mason’s many traditions: decorating George himself on Wilkins Plaza. To gather together and engage with folklore is to keep the traditions and practices alive, and to help the community thrive. “It’s folklore in action,” said DiNardo.

George, draped in a ghostly sheet and decorated with the tales and traditions described on the tour, will hopefully be the only ghost we see this Halloween.

Study the tales and traditions of Mason and more

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Mason Egyptologist featured on Netflix docuseries

Colleen Rich — Wed, 31 May 2023 14:33:14 +0000

Mason Egyptologist featured on Netflix docuseries Colleen Rich Wed, 05/31/2023 - 10:33

��AV Egyptologist Jacquelyn Williamson is the author of Nefertiti’s Sun Temple: A New Cult Complex at Tell el-Amarna, part of Brill’s Harvard Egyptology Series. She is involved in the ongoing archaeological investigation of Kom el-Nana at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt, the site of a sun temple associated with Queen Nefertiti. She teaches ancient art and archaeology in Mason’s Department of History and Art History. Currently you can see her in episodes of the new Netflix historical docuseries Queen Cleopatra. We recently sat down with her to talk about women and power in ancient Egypt.

Jacquelyn Williamson. Photo provided

How did you get involved with the Netflix series?

They reached out to me well over a year ago when they were still in the original planning stages. I think they were reaching out to several scholars. I'm not a specialist on Cleopatra, but I am a specialist on women and power in ancient Egypt. I've also done a little bit of work on the misinterpretation of Cleopatra in the modern day, which is basically based on Shakespeare's play, which is in turn based on anti-Egypt propaganda created by ancient Rome.

Could you expand on that?

Sure. Our modern perception of Cleopatra as this seductress is quite inaccurate. A lot of my work on Cleopatra is about what the ancient Romans did. They wanted to devalue Antony and Cleopatra for very specific political reasons, and they created “fake news” about them in order to promote their political agenda. Cleopatra was a human being, like you and I, she deserves the dignity of being represented as accurately as possible in the same way that you and I do.

Did you have to travel for the documentary?

I wasn’t involved in the planning of the production in any way. I was mainly a “talking head” and answered questions on camera. The American talking heads were shot at production studio up in Brooklyn, New York, which was convenient for me. Having it in Brooklyn made it a lot easier to fit to my academic schedule. This is a very elaborate and well-funded production. They paid for transportation and the hotel—and they actually had a makeup person on set.

I've been the talking head on a couple different documentaries before on ancient Egypt. For those, I was on site in Egypt, and that's just a small [production] group, just cameraman and maybe the onsite producer. [Queen Cleopatra] involved several cameras and a producer who was asking the questions for me to respond to. I had no input or influence on the casting choices, or on the drama/reenactment portions of the show. In fact, except for knowing the names of a few of the other academics they interviewed, I wasn't involved in any other aspects of the production. The series was not what I hoped, but then drama-documentaries almost never can live up to an academic’s dream as they always involve some creative license. Real history is often so wild and weird it is not helped by melodrama or modern political insertions.

Jacquelyn Williamson on site in Egypt. Photo provided

Have you been back to Egypt since the pandemic?

Actually I have—I led a tour of Egypt with a Smithsonian Journeys group, but I haven't been able to get back to my archaeological site, which is the sun temple of Nefertiti. Leading a tour is very brief, about two weeks. To have real time on the archaeological site, I need at least three weeks, which is hard with my academic schedule.

What are you working on now?

I'm still compiling information for another book on Nefertiti’s sun temple at Kom el-Nana. In addition, I'm also working on a book project with my colleague Dr. Mariam Ayad [of the American University of Cairo] on women in Ancient Egypt. It's primarily a discussion of the misinterpretation of evidence about women in antiquity and the ways that we allow our modern assumptions and biases to kind of get in the way of analyzing that information. We have a tendency take women's stories and make them into things they're not. That does women an enormous disservice, which has been the fate of Cleopatra for 2,000 years. I am not sure whether this new documentary exactly helped advance the general knowledge of the real Cleopatra, but hopefully it made a few people curious enough to research her on their own.

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Mason professor examines how a Chicago police chief shaped Irish music in America

Colleen Rich — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 12:30:41 +0000

Mason professor examines how a Chicago police chief shaped Irish music in America Colleen Rich Thu, 03/16/2023 - 08:30

In his book, The Beat Cop: Chicago's Chief O'Neill and the Creation of Irish Music (University of Chicago Press, May 2022), ��AV history professor Michael O’Malley recounts the life of Irish immigrant and Chicago chief of police Francis O’Neill and his influence on Irish music.

Michael O'Malley. Photo by Frances O'Malley

What inspired you to write this book?

O’Neill’s life was an amazing contrast between footloose freedom—he wandered the world as an itinerant sailor, he herded sheep for a while in California—and state authority. Chicago was a very violent place. As a police officer he had to stop other people from exercising certain legal and illegal freedoms. As chief of police he had to manage staff, compile statistics, issue annual reports, and handle the media. In 1900, he was on the cutting edge of modern industrial life. But then he was obsessed with folk music. There were immigrants from every county of Ireland in Chicago, and he was relentless in collecting and cataloging the tunes they played. He used his police authority to accomplish it. The combination of policing an industrial city and collecting the music of rural people was fascinating.

Was there anything in your research that surprised you?

The way Chicago operated on personal favors and cronyism. I knew this, but actually documenting it was startling. O’Neill was a talented and capable guy but was frustrated that he never got a promotion without a team of allies—alderman, judges, businessmen—who could momentarily outbid some other guy’s team. He wanted there to be a basis in merit, but the alderman’s pal got the jobs.

What is your favorite Irish song and why?

O’Neill mostly collected tunes, not songs—instrumental dance tunes with no lyrics. The tunes don’t have standard names. As a music collector, O’Neill would find the same tune with half a dozen names, or no name at all. And like a lot of folk music, Irish music is weird—both happy and sad at the same time, kind of wild feeling. My favorite might be a jig called “The Pipe on the Hob.” If I had to pick a song with lyrics, it might be “The Kerry Dances,” even though it’s very sentimental.

What are you working on now?

In 1884, the state of Virginia declared two of my ancestors—one born in Donegal, Ireland—to be Black people. I’m working on why, [as] part of a book on the relationship between genealogy and history. Millions of people find their most meaningful connection to the past through family history, and I’m exploring how the tools of genealogy have shifted over time, from local lore to government records to DNA.

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NEH grant supports historian’s work to reveal hidden history

Colleen Rich — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 19:49:27 +0000

NEH grant supports historian’s work to reveal hidden history Colleen Rich Thu, 02/09/2023 - 14:49

��AV historian Yevette Richards Jordan focuses her research lens on African American history, with an emphasis on racist violence from the 1920s through the 1940s. For the past several years, however, her work has led her to uncover a hidden history of racial violence that struck her own family, and the trauma of that violence that continues today.

Yevette Richards Jordan. Photo provided

“I’ve been researching racist violence in northern Louisiana for probably about a good six years,” said Richards, an associate professor in the Department of History and Art History of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. “I became interested in it through stories that I’d heard from my family about lynchings that had occurred—and one particular lynching I could find no evidence of for years and years. It was a very violent incident in which a 13-year-old girl named Carrie Lee, but called Blossom, and a 22-year-old mother, named Mary, were killed, and their own mother Lizzie was shot, and their sister-in-law Emma was shot.

“Years later I found references to this violent event and the victims were listed as ‘unknown,’ ‘unidentified.’ I knew the backstory and I could connect this backstory to these names and these unnamed persons.”

With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Richards will continue to pursue the details of this hidden narrative. Her project, Between Piney Woods and Cotton Fields: Tracing Racist Violence through Family Networks of Northern Louisiana, received $60,000 in funding, part of the NEH’s August 2022 announcement of grants that will support humanities projects nationwide. In his announcement, National Humanities Alliance executive director Stephen Kidd stressed the importance of the projects being funded. “We are immensely proud of the NEH’s impact across the U.S. and will continue advocating for increased federal support for future grants in 2023 and beyond,” he said.

Richards’s work illustrates this impact. Her project examines multigenerational family networks in early 20th-century Louisiana, and their connection to broader racial dynamics and power structures in the United States. The research cuts close to home.

W. C. Williams lynching memorial column at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Photo provided

“There are two lynching events: the Taylor sisters, and then W.C. Williams,” said Richards. “And I’m not directly related to W. C. Williams, but I have cousins who are related to him. So I am also able to see how Black families are interconnected. Black families who are the victims are interconnected.”

The Williams incident was well known, she said. “His lynching in 1938 represented the last mass daytime lynching in Louisiana, and thousands of people came out to view his body.”

She had a more difficult time learning about the Taylor sisters. “I found that I’m related to them through my mother’s side—her grandmother,” she said. “I first learned about the Taylor sisters through my cousins, the Caldwell cousins, who told me that their father’s first wife had been lynched. No one ever mentioned it, and it was just a vague memory for many of my other older cousins. But these particular Caldwell cousins told me that their father would talk about his first wife, Mary, usually around Christmas, and talk about what happened. But there were few details about the Taylor sisters that they knew beyond this immediate violent event.”

Richards’s search for information has been hampered by the age of many of the people who knew the truth about the Taylors and Williams, but also by their concern for safety. “Some people never spoke to me,” she said. “They’re elderly, in their 80s and 90s, and they would say a little bit but then they would avoid me. I tried to be sensitive to the fact that they’re still living there, and even though they’ve outlived many of the people who were perpetrators, they realize that their descendants still live there, and the fear was so great at the time that this violence happened, it still carries over with them.”

Richards has also found a relatedness among the perpetrators of the violence. “As I researched the incidents, I came to see that many of the white family members were interconnected; they were connected to each other as cousins,” she said. “Looking at the white family networks, I also began to see the connections that they had with state power. And with the police and judges. And many of them were Klan leaders, as well, leaders of the 1920s Klan. This evidence helped me to understand how this violence could remain so submerged and hidden.”

Despite the obstacles in tracing the lives of the Taylor sisters, W. C. Williams, and the people who have sought to erase those memories, Richards perseveres in bringing the stories to light. "I’ve already developed, with my graduate students, a course on race and lynching,” she said. “That course has helped me in my background research into this area. Once this book is written, it will be included in that course.”

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She thought her dissertation would lead to a PhD. Now it's informing U.S. law

Colleen Rich — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 21:27:38 +0000

She thought her dissertation would lead to a PhD. Now it's informing U.S. law Colleen Rich Tue, 01/24/2023 - 16:27

Three decades ago, Rosemarie Zagarri never imagined her research on 18th-century electoral politics would become urgently relevant to the preservation of democracy in 21st-century America.

University Professor Rosemarie Zagarri. Photo provided

Zagarri, University Professor in the Department of History and Art History in ��AV’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, researched state constitutions for her dissertation at Yale University and then published “The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850” in 1987.

“I examined political representation during the era of the American Revolution, with a great deal of attention to the federal Constitutional Convention, congressional apportionment, the first federal election laws, and the role of state constitutions in the federal system,” Zagarri said. “Although this scholarship is now more than 30 years old, it has not been superseded by recent work.”

The Independent State Legislature Theory, or ISLT, originated in the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore after the disputed 2000 election, when Chief Justice Williams Rehnquist wrote a concurring opinion that formed the seed of what would become the ISLT. The theory, if implemented, would overturn centuries of precedent and would free state legislatures from oversight by state courts, potentially enabling them to pass harsh voter suppression laws and extremely gerrymandered electoral maps.

The theory might also provide political cover for state legislatures to overturn the results of presidential elections.

Former President Trump and his adherents tried to use the independent state legislature theory to challenge the results of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court declined the arguments of ISLT in 2020. However, in their dissents, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch all endorsed it.

“With the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Brennan Center for Justice at [New York University] Law School realized it was just a matter of time before the ISLT would come before the Supreme Court,” Zagarri said. “The center asked me to write a scholarly article tracing the theory of American constitutionalism, the understanding of the role of state legislatures at the Constitutional Convention, and practices in the state governments at the time of the Founding regarding federal election laws.”

Her latest research, “The Historian’s Case Against the Independent State Legislature Theory,” will be published in March by the Boston College Law Review and is available here. It was the top article download for 2022 in the field of election law.

Zagarri was a co-author and signatory on an amicus or “friend-of the court" brief, signed by other historians of the Founding era, in the Supreme Court case of Moore v. Harper. This case involves the role of the state courts in a gerrymandering issue. The plaintiffs—in this case, officials from North Carolina—made the ISLT the center of their case. Using this theory, North Carolina officials rejected the authority of the North Carolina state supreme court to vacate what it held to be an unconstitutional redistricting scheme created by the North Carolina legislature, in violation of that state's constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case on Dec. 7, 2022. A decision is expected in June 2023.

“The decision in this case will impact the state of American democracy,” Zagarri said. “Although the issues involved in this case may seem obscure to the general public, they cut to the very heart of what it means to live under a constitutional system of government, guided by the separation of powers, and subject to the division of authority between the state and federal governments.”

She added, “A ruling that supports the ISLT would mark a radical departure in American government, overturning more than 250 years of precedent in the way Americans have conducted their federal elections.”

For more on the independent state legislator theory, see this article from the Brennan Center: www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/independent-state-legislature-theory-explained

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Mason dedicates an on-campus historic Virginia site

Colleen Rich — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 17:29:34 +0000

Mason dedicates an on-campus historic Virginia site Colleen Rich Mon, 10/10/2022 - 13:29

Learn more about the history of the redoubt and Farr’s Cross Roads

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New exhibit highlights Broadside images

Colleen Rich — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 18:03:32 +0000

New exhibit highlights Broadside images Colleen Rich Thu, 04/28/2022 - 14:03

The Horizon Hall exhibit runs through December 2022. Photo provided

Take a look back at ��AV in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, with a showcase of photos captured by student photographers working for Broadside, Mason's student newspaper from 1969 to 2014, in a new exhibit on the lower level of Horizon Hall.

The exhibit, Past, Present, Future: Mason’s Core Remains Constant, is curated by Mason graduate student Melissa Cannarozzi, who is the production coordinator and digital collections manager at Mason’s Office of University Branding. Cannarozzi, who is working on a master of arts in history with a concentration in applied digital history, designed the installation as part of an internship class.

Divided into six categories—Growth, Diversity, Engagement, Opportunity, Student Life, and Traditions, the exhibit, which runs through December 2022, illustrates student life at Mason both then and now.

The benches adjacent to the exhibit are made from the trees that needed to be taken down for the construction of Horizon Hall. Photo provided

The opening reception is planned for May 12, from 4 to 6 p.m., and will feature a talk by special guest speaker Robert Vay, a Mason alum and archivist at ��AV Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center.

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