The Mason Spirit

Mason history professor Alison Landsberg doesn’t see films and television as an escape. She believes they can be rich historical sources, offering a window onto the social, political, cultural, and economic landscapes of their historical moment. In her latest book, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (Columbia University Press, 2015), she looks at how these “texts” provoke historical thinking.

Continue Reading Engaging the Past: A Conversation with History Professor Alison Landsberg

Set in the tranquil beauty of Mason Neck on the Potomac River, Mason’s new Point of View Campus will provide an ideal retreat location that promotes peace and reconciliation, as well as a site for faculty-led research and hands-on student practice of conflict resolution methods.

Continue Reading A Peaceful Retreat

The Campaign for George Mason University salutes Mason’s unparalleled rise to prominence and defines the institution’s future through a $500 million philanthropic campaign.

Continue Reading Faster Farther

The cyber threats to safety and privacy have never been greater, and George Mason University is once again at the forefront, working on research that matters.

Continue Reading Keeping Our Heads in the Cloud

For more than 30 years, people have traveled to George Mason University from conflicted areas around the world looking for answers—and finding them.

Continue Reading Giving Peace a Real Chance

Like her fellow graduates, Erica Cohen, MEd Special Education ’15, was excited to attend her George Mason University convocation this spring. Unlike them, Cohen attended from 250 miles away, with the help of a four-foot-tall robot. For the past two years, Cohen had been part of a cohort of Fairfax County (Virginia) teachers working on…

Continue Reading Take Me to My Diploma

The thing Mason graduate student Xiaoyun Wu misses most about her native China is the food. It’s “one of my biggest challenges,” says the 23-year-old, who came to the United States two years ago to pursue a master’s degree.

Continue Reading Patriot Profile: Xiaoyun Wu

Nicole Lynn Lewis, MPP ’06, knows what it feels like to juggle life as a teen parent and college student. Even more than help with tuition, as an undergrad, she needed someone to lift her spirits when she had a midterm to take after staying up all night with a teething baby.

Continue Reading Championing Teen Moms

Job: Digital Collections and Exhibitions Archivist Bob Vay, BA History ’92, came to Mason in August 1985 as a physical education major. When he graduated in 1992, he took a position with the National Archives in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. “Then I found this job in December 1993,” he said during a conversation in…

Continue Reading Meet the Mason Nation: Robert Vay

The students invading Lot L on a Friday last April to take spins on the carnival rides (a record attendance), snack on funnel cake (so bad, so good) and listen to live bands, including headliner Jesse McCartney, may have had little idea they were continuing a tradition that began 50 years ago on the Fairfax Campus.

Continue Reading 50 Years of Mason Day: Tug-o-War, Bands, and a Greased Pig