All News

Dr. Linda Seligmann, Professor Emerita in Anthropology, has been appointed by Governor Ralph Northam to a three-year term to the Virginia Humanities Foundation Board. The Virginia Humanities Board of Directors, made up of individuals who are passionate about the humanities, oversees organizational policy and programming. The board members are broadly representative of the citizens of the Commonwealth and its various civic, ethnic, and minority group interests.

Dr. John Dale received an Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). He will be working with his colleague, Nobuhiro Aizawa at Kyushu University from early November 2021 through January 2022. The title of the research project is "Re-Working Japan’s Automated Warehouses: Cobotics, Social Autonomy, and Human Rights."

Maria Valdovinos Olson was selected as a recipient of the 2021 CHSS Dean’s Challenge Scholarship Award. The Dean’s Challenge Scholarship Award was established in 2007 to acknowledge exceptional graduate students who have excelled while making academically-challenging choices.

“While they represent a small fraction of our 2021 graduating class, our PhD graduates are a signature element of CHSS’s contributions to Mason as an R1,” said CHSS Dean Ann Ardis. "“Please join me in a shout-out congratulations to our newest colleagues in the global community of scholars, our 2021 PhD graduates."

George Mason University’s Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) is committed to publicly engaged social science research that can promote social justice, inform equitable social policy, and foster university-community collaborations. Housed within the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, the CSSR builds on a long tradition of social science research for the public good. At its center are thematic research hubs focused on quantitative, qualitative, community-engaged research and program evaluation. During the virtual open house, we will introduce CSSR initiatives & projects, our research capabilities & newly formed research hubs, and engage dialogue for bridge building for university researchers and community organizations.

Jamie Clark discusses issues surrounding handling the remains of people from marginalized groups.

On Wednesday, April 21st, 2021, hundreds of leading policymakers, innovators, community organizers, and academics came together to take up the challenge of preparing our society for a transition to a system that provides the best outcomes for all. "The Next System and the Academy: Systemic Crises, Movements, and Change in the 2020s," featured keynote speaker U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (2nd CD, WI), Kali Akuno (Cooperation Jackson), Dr. Gar Alperovitz (Democracy Collaborative), Dr. Amy Best (George Mason University), Dr. Diane Fujino (UC Santa Barbara), Peter Knowlton (UE General President, retired), Dr. Ben Manski (George Mason University), and Mike Strode (U.S. Solidarity Economy Network).

"To borrow from Lev Tolstoy, ‘What then must society do?’ Or to paraphrase Gar Alperovitz, ‘system change is coming; what kind of system do we want and how do we get there?’ These are the questions at the center of next system studies.” 

Join University Career Services for a series of informative panels and workshops as part of Nonprofit Careers Week. Learn more about opportunities for students and alumni of all majors.

Qualtrics offers you the opportunity to register for one or multiple of their free live training webinars to help you become more proficient with Qualtrics.

Provost Mark Ginsberg has announced plans for in-person events to recognize graduation the week of May 10, 2021. Students must pre-register for the planned Patriot Procession and Mini Ceremonies by April 16.

U.S. News & World Reports’ latest rankings for graduate programs include high marks for the graduate programs in criminology, law and society, as well as history, economics, sociology, and English.

The Office of the Provost has announced the appointment of Shannon Davis, sociology professor and director of the sociology doctoral program, as associate dean for faculty and academic affairs at  George Mason University’s Korea campus.

Explore a sample of the events, near and far, that are available to celebrate and learn more about Black history.

Read the latest information on Mason's 2020 Winter Graduation ceremony, as well as CHSS events to celebrate our graduates!

All 2020 graduates, from spring, summer, and fall, are invited to participate in George Mason University’s 2020 Winter Graduation on Thursday, December 17, at 2:00 pm, on GMU-TV. Following the ceremony, CHSS graduates are invited to join the college for its own festivities.

More than 140 students are enrolled in an online anthropology class that “looks at the cultures where zombies and related folklore about the undead come from, and examines zombies from an ethnohistorical, medical anthropology, and anthropology of religion perspectives.”

The Office of the Provost has announced the recipients of its Curriculum Impact Grants for 2020-21. Of eighteen interdisciplinary projects submitted, four of those funded include CHSS faculty in their teams.

Drawing from recollections of growing up in a segregated community, anthropology professor Rashmi Sadana writes, in The Wire, of the shared responsibility for all Americans to protest for the rights of Black people.

In a Truthout article on the perils of educational austerity programs arising as a response to COVID-19 funding cuts, Marisa Allison, a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, discusses her work to protect contingent faculty and the students they serve.

Amaka Okechukwu's To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions has been selected for the Society for the Study of Social Problems 2020 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award from the Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities.

On the With Good Reason Radio program, James Witte, sociology professor and director of the Institute for Immigration Research, and Marissa Kiss, a graduate research assistant with IIR, discussed foreign-born players in Major League Baseball and how their numbers link to U.S. immigration policy.

Assistant professor of sociology Amaka Okechukwu has been named a 2020 Career Enhancement Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, one of 32 faculty members from across the nation to receive the award.

The long-out-of-print book, “The Politics of Annexation”, exploring Richmond’s annexation of Chesterfield County in 1970 is available for download.

On Equal Pay Day, Angela Hattery, professor and director, Women and Gender Studies, and Shannon Davis, Faculty Senate Chair, professor and director of graduate student programs in sociology, comment on the implications of pay disparity.

George Mason University is committed to protecting the health of its community. Its resources include up-to-date plans and procedures, identification of student health services clinics, and attention to its study-abroad programs.

Think you know a lot about immigration? Take this quiz and find out!

CHSS alumnae Chadra Pittman, BA Anthropology '95, and Candice Ferreira, BA Communication '92, found a bond of lasting friendship at Mason that was celebrated on ABC's Good Morning America.

Sociology alum, Sara Moore (2013) and her sociology students at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts partner with local elementary schools on food justice in their community.

The segment Myanmar begins at 30:40: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/december-11-2019-pbs-newshour-full-episode

Ritual and Pluralism: Religious Variations on Socialist Death Rituals in Urban China

PhD alum Erin Stephens is a co-curator of Pen, Lens & Soul: The Story of The Beautiful Project, a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

To mark the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, Mason Korea co-hosted an international symposium. College faculty members Lester Kurtz, Robert Matz, and Hyunyoung Cho took part.

John Dale, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, is a 2019-20 Wilson Center International Fellow. The prestigious fellowship offers a nine-month residential program where scholars research and write while interacting with policymakers throughout the Washington, DC, region.

Rashmi Sadana, whose study of the Dehli Metro was the subject of award-winning research, comments on the impact of the system.

Levi Mitzen's, a 2019 anthropology/sociology double major who begins work on his sociology master's degree this fall, conducted summer research that considers graffiti as a political - not criminal - act. (Image by @marcusspiske via unsplash.com.)

Mason anthropology professor Rashmi Sadana has been working for nearly ten years on chronicling the new Metro in Delhi, India and its impact on the city and its people. Her work has recently been funded with three prestigious research awards.

These firsthand accounts were collected as part of George Mason University sociology professor’s Dae Young Kim’s undergraduate sociology classes.

You can hear and congratulate award winner Angela Hattery at the DC Sociological Society Annual Banquet this Thursday, May 23, 6 pm, at Busboys & Poets (14th & V). She’ll be a panelist discussing Sociology and the #MeToo Movement. For more info and to register, go to https://www.dcsociologicalsociety.org/events.html. But please act fast!

In Spring 2019 the IIR hosted three excellent events featuring top experts and researchers. Videos from all three events are now available at iir.gmu.edu/about/iir-events.

Sociology major Charlotte Woodward made history this month as the first student with Down syndrome to be inducted into the discipline of sociology honors society, Alpha Kappa Delta. As an advocate for disability rights, Charlotte is putting her sociology to good use. We are very proud of her and all our hardworking and smart sociology students!

We are proud to have you as our newest members of sociology and anthropology honor societies.

Jay Lee will be presenting his research on "Arab representation in post-9/11 Hollywood media" at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR).

Claire will be studying Polish at the University of Pittsburgh's Slavic, Eastern European and Near Eastern Summer Language Institute to support her dissertation research.

The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) is holding its 2019 General Elections. Voting will begin on February 15, 2019, and the poll will close on March 15, 2019. Prof. John Dale is one of two candidates on the ballot for President-Elect this year. If you are a member of the SSSP, please vote. If you are not a member of the SSSP, but are interested in becoming a member, visit https://www.sssp1.org/ . (And then vote!) This year’s annual meeting will be held in New York City, August 9-11.

While immigrants comprise 13 percent of the U.S. population, they make up only 11 percent of all teachers. This paper and infographic provide a statistical and demographic portrait of immigrant teachers in the United States and highlight differences between native- and foreign-born teachers as well as between postsecondary and non-postsecondary teachers.

This new report notes that in 2018, none of the American winners were foreign-born individuals who immigrated permanently to the United States. But the United States did play an important role in their formation; nine of the twelve 2018 Nobel Laureates were either students, teachers, or research fellows at U.S. institutions of higher education at some point in their lives.

By studying isotopes found in excavated animal bones, professor Nawa Sugiyama determined the concept of zoos is not as modern as we think.

Immigration and the 2018 Midterm Elections Wednesday, November 28, 2018 5-7pm Johnson Center, Meeting Room F, 3rd Floor The results of the 2018 midterm elections are in, and there will likely be important consequences for immigration policy. Come hear expert panelists and policymakers discuss their predictions for immigration in 2019 and beyond.

Maria Valdovinos is the recipient of the 2018 Stanford Lyman Dissertation Scholarship

Congressman Lewis was a headline speaker at the annual college-supported four-day festival, which brought to campus and other nearby locales over 150 writers.

George Mason’s Department of Communication and the Insight Committee host the annual communication forum, Pathways to your Future, on Tuesday Oct. 23, 2018. The venue is Dewberry Hall in the Johnson Center on Mason’s Fairfax campus. Sports broadcaster, Lindsay Czarniak, gives the keynote address. All students are welcome to attend.

Immigrants in our communities thrive when they are given the opportunity to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. In this free webinar, learn what local leaders can do to include immigrants' interests, safeguard their families, and ensure they can contribute to their fullest potential.

Tues 10/10 Johnson Center Cinema 7:30pm: Tamer El Said will present and discuss his film about Khalid (Khalid Abdalla), a 35-year-old filmmaker in Cairo, 2009, struggling to make a film that captures the soul of his city while facing loss in his own life. Free and open to the public.

Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact.

Department of Sociology and Anthropology is offering undergrad study abroad program in Spring 2019

Foreign-born scientists are a critical part of the nation’s scientific community. At the Galileo's Science Cafe series, IIR Director James Witte and Program Coordinator Michele Waslin will detail some of these contributions to date, as well as potential contributions that New American scientists may make in the future.

When the Supreme Court upheld President Trump's travel ban, Mason PhD student Ismail Nooraddini said he remembers thinking, "This doesn't make sense." Not only because his research showed how well immigrants from the banned countries have done in the United States, but because "someone was calling into question all of my father's hard work."

Sociology PhD student and IIR graduate research assistant Ismail Nooraddini's story has been published on George Mason University's primary news site.

Sociology professor Shannon Davis has been named as the recipient of the 2018 Kathleen S. Lowney Mentoring Award by the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Photo: Evan Cantwell/Creative Services/George Mason University.

Earl Smith, PhD was awarded the Lifetime Research Award from the College Sports Research Institute (CSRI) at their annual meetings in Columbia, SC, in April 2018.

At its degree celebrations, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences sends off its doctors, masters, and bachelors with an enthusiastic salute.

Manjusha Nair’s book, Undervalued Dissent: Informal Workers’ Politics in India, has received an Honorable Mention from the Global Division of Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Congratulations on achieving your hard-earned doctoral degree. SOAN faculty and staff are extremely proud of you.

A sociology alumna's research explores the power behind an American classic. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Angela Hattery, director of Mason’s Women and Gender Studies Program, is the 2018 recipient of the United Bank Presidential Medal for Faculty Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion. The college is grateful to her work on behalf of all of Mason’s students.

Bioarchaeologist Haagen Klaus was quoted in National Geographic (and Newsweek) accounts of anthropological evidence of what may be the world's largest ancient mass child sacrifice.

Jason Smith, PhD candidate in sociology, has co-authored an article in Ethnic & Racial Studies examining Latina/os and the racialization of the media policy using the 2011 Comcast/NBCU merger as a case study.

Angela Hattery, director of the women and gender studies program, and sociology professor Earl Smith are taking part in the Virginia Festival of the Book, which takes place from March 21-25, 2018. They will be discussing their book, Policing Black Bodies, at two events in Charlottesville, Va.

When Having Sex is a Requirement for Being Considered ‘A Real Man’

Curriculum impact grants, designed to encourage innovative programs with interdisciplinary, cross-unit curriculum, offer students new ways to consider some of the most critical issues facing our society. College faculty are involved with eleven of the newly funded programs.

Sociology doctoral student Carrie Hutnick has received the 2018 Spirit of King Faculty Award for her work as an instructor with Mason's Social Action and Integrative Learning program. She is among several CHSS students, alumni, and faculty members recognized.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology's March colloquium features speaker Torben Rick, Curator of North American Archaeology and Chair in the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He will discuss ecological changes to the Chesapeake Bay since the arrival of humans 12,000 years ago.

As the presidential administration stresses the importance of merit-based immigration, James Witte, director of the Institute for Immigration Research, explains that the United States has an immigration system that is already based upon a combination of merit and family considerations

Anthropology professor Nawa Sugiyama invites students to work with her at a historic UNESCO-protected site at the pyramids of Teotihuacan in Mexico, continuing her career-long research of ancient animals.

"Is it safe to assume that we would like a future that has more justice? That we want a better relationship with the planet? How about more interdependence between human beings?"

The Well Library houses the research, scholarship and creative works of Mason's faculty, staff, and alumni that are contained within the books they have published. On December 5, the work of Robert Matz and Jason Smith joins the collection.

Erin McSherry, Academic Advisor for Sociology, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Religious studies is this year’s recipient of the Spirit of Academic Advising Award. Congratulations Erin!

Students learn first-hand about the skills that translate from the sociology classroom into the workplace.

9/11 6pm: Almost Sunrise follows two Iraq veterans, tormented by depression for years after they returned home, as they embark on an extraordinary journey, a 2,700 mile walk across the country from Wisconsin to California, in order to reflect on their haunting experiences of war and to save themselves.

First-generation students are finding personal and professional fulfillment in the humanities and social sciences.

Amy Best, faculty member and director, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, talks about the attributes of effective mentors in an Alexandria Gazette Packet article on the WISE mentoring program at Northern Virginia Community College.

Congratulations to sociology undergrad, Kayla Peterson, for being selected as a 2017 Virginia Victory Fellow. Kayla will spend her summer working for the Virginia Democrats campaign.

The mood in EagleBank Arena was lively on May 18 and 19, as the College of Humanities and Social Sciences held its degree celebration ceremonies. Congratulations again to all of our graduates! We are pleased to welcome you to an impressive community of alumni, made only stronger by the class of 2017.

Undergraduate student and communications support specialist Lizzy Portaluppi recognized for her outstanding performance to the IIR and Mason.

Her years of fieldwork in Borneo made anthropology professor Anne Schiller a natural to consult on the fictionalized account of an actual gold mining scandal on the Pacific island. Her contributions ensured the indigenous people were portrayed accurately and respectfully.

The Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR) took over the Center for Performing Arts on Tuesday, May 9, 2017 for their 6th Annual Celebration of Student Scholarship. The college is pleased to congratulate professor Julie E. Owen, and students from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Leila Martinez-Bentley, and Chrysanthi Violaris who were among this year's award recipients.

Dr. Seligmann's grant is for her project on “Women and Quinoa Foodways: Making Soup and Super-Food in the Peruvian Andean Highlands.”

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is pleased to announce the May 2017 degree celebrations will be led by two outstanding alumni: chief historian for the White House Historical Association, Edward Lengel, and Lt. Col. Suzanne Devlin, a former acting chief of police for the Fairfax County Police Department and the current supervisor of safety and security for Loudoun County Public Schools.

Hilarie K. Huley, a MA student in Anthropology at George Mason University, was awarded the prestigious Cockburn Student Research Prize at the 44th Annual North American Meeting of the Paleopathology Association.

Research by Mason anthropology faculty and students was represented in 17 separate presentations at the 2017 annual meetings of the Paleopathology Association (PPA) and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA).

Maria Valdovinos, doctoral student in Sociology wins the research award from Interdisciplinary Curriculum Collaborative.

Department of Sociology and Anthropology is proud of Dr. Blackmon’s achievement.

The Sociology and Anthropology Department celebrates the 2017 AKD and Alpha Lampda honor society awardees and inductees.

University of Virginia President Theresa A. Sullivan will be speaking at Mason as part of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology's 2017 Colloquium, on the values of relational teaching.

At the SSS meeting in Greenville, SC March 29-April 1, 2017, the department was represented by undergraduate students Selena Chaivaranon, Sarah Wagner, Laurel Robinson, and Jordan Wicht (all pictured here), graduate students Marisa Allison, Emily McDonald, and Melissa Gouge, and faculty member Shannon Davis.

Hansel Aguilar currently works at the DC Office of Police complaints and is also working on research on the migration of unaccompanied minors.

For his efforts to help his fellow graduate students’ voices be heard and amplified at Mason, Christian Suero has been named a 2017 Spirit of King awardee by George Mason’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Multicultural Education.

Mason's Institute for Immigration Research was out in front of the conversation for the immigrant strike on February 16th.

Rachael and Lauren Agnello—sisters from Pittsburgh and both students in the college--said their parents always encouraged them to learn the way they saw best. What was best, the sisters decided, was to get out of the country, experience other cultures and learn new languages.

Mason’s Institute for Immigration Research offers information, context, and facts to counter misperceptions about immigrants’ contributions to the economy of the United States and about the American Muslim population in particular.

Students, faculty, staff, and community members discussed the issues in the standing-room only event last week.

The Washington Post cites IIR's 2014 study on immigrants in pharmaceutical labor force with Dr. Justin Lowry.

Congratulations to Jason Smith, Maria Valdovinos, and Felicia Garland-Jackson for being awarded Alpha Kappa Delta Student Research Travel Grants to attend the Eastern Sociological Society's annual conference this month in Philadelphia. Students interested in applying for research travel grants or graduate students research paper awards in the future should connect to akd@lemoyne.edu.

Blasé's MA Thesis explores freak shows and how people's attitudes toward physical abnormality changed with the advent of medical knowledge.

Joanna Ten-Kate is a sociology major and an intern in a research group in the federal government. She is graduating this semester and moving to London to start a MS program in public policy at the London School of Economics.

Panelists Dr. Toni-Michelle Travis, Dr. Peter Stearns, and Mr. Abdallah Hendawy will discuss the implications of the inauguration on international students and the world on Thursday, February 2, 2017 from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. in Dewberry Hall.

Dr. Anne Schiller has recently published Commercianti a Firenze. Identità e Cambiamento nel Quartiere di San Lorenzo (Carocci Editore 2016) based upon anthropological fieldwork that she conducted in Florence from 2005-2016.

Dr. Haagen D. Klaus has co-edited with Dr. Melissa S. Murphy a recently published book, Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed: Toward a Global Bioarchaeology of Contact and Colonialism.

SOAN held the inaugural SOCI 485 Research Symposium on Wednesday, December 14, 2016.

Anthropology and cultural studies professor Roger Lancaster wrote in the Washington Post about the real (and not new) dangers of fabricated news stories.

The need for local immigration data to mobilize populations, access funding and urge policy change has never been greater. Register now for this free webinar.

Anthropology professor Justin Lowry is using a 3D printer in Mason's Innovation Lab to produce prints of ancient footprints preserved in volcanic ash in a suburb of Managua, Nicaragua.

Jason A. Smith, PhD candidate in sociology, posted a piece on the sociological blog Sociological Images regarding the inequity that communities of color may face in the on-going AT&T and Time Warner deal.

This semester, classes in the Department of History and Art History have examined issues raised in the presidential election from a variety of contexts. Prior Election Day, the public was invited to join in!

He will focus on the museum's collections to bring a consideration of the materiality of warfare to his “War and Culture” course, and develop ways to train students to use the museum’s collections for the course and later research.

It's unusual for one's curiosity to lead to a great discovery, but that was exactly what happened to Mason BA history alumna and now MA in Anthropology graduate student, Lisa Struckmeyer.

Wendi Manuel-Scott will moderate a dialogue with thought leaders Laurie Robinson, Earl Smith, Rita Chi-Ying Chung and Shirley Ginwright on policing and crimes against people of color, including current issues and the national climate, for this semester's President's Freedom and Learning Forum.

She will begin co-editing the journal from January 2017.

The lack of a census is a great obstacle in conclusive research on the issues of Karachi, James C Witte, the director of the Centre for Social Science Research, George Mason University, USA, said on Tuesday.

In a partnership between Mason and the University of Karachi, James Witte, director, Center for Social Science Research and the Institute for Immigration Research, trained doctoral students from Karachi in statistical survey techniques to promote empirically based research in policy-making. The conference marked the culmination of a three-year project between the two universities.

Bradley W. Williams, a sociology PhD student, has recently been appointed as one of six graduate editors for The Southern Sociologist, the publication of the Southern Sociological Society.

Fall for the Book brings writers, readers, and scholars together like no other event in the region. In its eighteenth year, Fall for the Book is a weeklong literary festival with events taking place on Mason's Fairfax campus and at other venues across the region between September 25 and September 30.

In a Washington Post article, Robinson Professor of Public Affairs Steven Pearlstein describes the challenge of convincing incoming students' parents of the value of liberal arts education. The college's senior associate dean Robert Matz contributes, leading the effort to promote humanities and social sciences degrees.

Six George Mason University anthropology students who studied with bioarchaeologist Haagen Klaus got more than they bargained for when they came to coastal Peru to examine skeletal remains at several ancient sites.

Sociologists Angela Hattery and Earl Smith are a dynamic researching duo. Together they have written a number of books, including their most recent title, Gender, Power and Violence.

Her Excellency Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, wife of the President of Nigeria, and a delegation were invited to George Mason by SOAN’s Visiting Scholar Sylvester Okere and Professor Lester Kurtz. The purpose of the visit was to highlight the First Lady’s initiative, Future Assured, to promote women and children’s health in Nigeria and to look for ways in which the Mason community can collaborate with their work.

Educational inequality. Social innovation. Public relations. Human rights. These courses, offered in fall 2016, will expand your view on real issues that affect the world around us. No matter what your major, your awareness of any of these big issues will bring new perspective to your education. Learn more!

A number of our graduate students are traveling to Seattle next week to present their research at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP).

Last week, Her Excellency Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, wife of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, visited George Mason University at the invitation of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, along with the Office of Global Strategy, Office of Admissions, and the College of Health and Human Services.

Working on Prof. Nawa Sugiyama's project on rulership, Stanley describes his summer at the Plaza de Las Calumnas excavation site in Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Harvey, who will complete her Masters' in Anthropology in Fall 2016, has accepted a position as a Research Associate at the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Truth Initiative.

In this issue of the Mason SPIRIT, the college's senior associate Dean, Robert Matz, takes a look at some misconceptions about getting a liberal arts degree and how the degree meets up with what employers are looking for in a challenging job market.

Amy Best, faculty member and chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, contributed tops on equitably planning (and surviving) a family vacation with the Connection Newspapers site.

The Global Affairs program and the Department of Philosophy are teaming up to offer a unique opportunity for their undergraduate students. The inaugural cohort of the Global Health Fellows will spend its fall semester at the Arlington campus focusing on the realities of today’s global health challenges and the resources offered from a humanities and social sciences perspective.

New findings from the Institute of Immigration Research. Sociology professor, Jim Witte, is the director of the Institute for Immigration.

Jason A. Smith, PhD candidate in sociology, is a co-editor of a new book entitled, Race and Contention in Twenty-first Century U.S. Media (Routledge).

Prof Schiller details how she involved student researchers in her ethnographic fieldwork in Florence in a related blog post.

The group is spending part of the summer at a field lab in the Andes in Peru.

Sociology PhD Candidate, Marisa Allison, will be a featured speaker at The Atlantic Live's 2016 Education Summit.

In Fall 2016 poet and scholar Vivek Narayanan to teach course on The Ramayana, the South Asian epic of love, war, and statecraft.

Chrysanthi Violaris won in the category of "Best Overall Research and Scholarship in Poster Presentation," while Ethan Murdock won for "Outstanding Poster Presentation."

The eighth annual Undergraduate Research Symposium showcased the work of 91 students from across the college, 12 students in oral presentations and 79 poster presentations.

Sociology MA student Christian Rafael Suero is elected the 2016-2017 President of Mason's Graduate and Professional Student Association (GAPSA).

The Archaeological Sciences lab provides training and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students interested in archaeological or physical anthropological research, particularly those interested in utilizing zooarchaeological and isotopic methods

This course assesses several types of culture change, both American and international, in an interdisciplinary context, drawing from psychology, sociology, business, conflict analysis, and history.

The Sociology and Anthropology Department congratulates sociology major Monique Deleon on winning the prestigious Dean's Challenge Scholarship.

In Fall 2016 poet and scholar Vivek Narayanan to teach course on The Ramayana, the South Asian epic of love, war, and statecraft.

Being a Fulbright Scholar means forging relationships abroad. For Anne Schiller, it also means studying relationships among people who decide to move to new lands.

"The skills that anthropologists wield are sought after by cutting-edge development organizations, design companies, and consulting firms. Technology giants such as Google and Apple hire ethnographers, while Microsoft and Intel have in-house anthropologists and sociologists to gain a better understanding of their consumers."

History, business, psychology, sociology, and conflict analysis all contribute to an understanding of cultural shifts: their meaning and significance, how they happen, and how people can affect change in their own lives.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology congratulates Dr. Perry Threlfall for being recognized with an Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence Award by Mason's Center for Teaching Excellence.

Sociology Ph.D. candidate, Marisa Allison, has been selected to serve on the American Sociological Association's Contingent Faculty Task Force.

George Mason students, including archaeology major Bryan Dalton, joined others on a dig in Chiquilistagua, Nicaragua, led by Dr. Justin Lowry, and unexpectedly became involved in the re-excavation of the Acahualinca Museum, which had been recently flooded by heavy tropical rains.

The Year of the Humanities and The Pittsburgh Consortium for Adoption Studies invited Dr. Seligmann to give a talk at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Institute for Immigration Research (IIR) hosted Tom Gjelten, correspondent for National Public Radio and author of A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story, at the April colloquium. Mr. Gjelten shared his insights on how the landscape of America has changed over the past fifty years with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, as told through the experiences of families in one suburban county in Virginia.

Professor Johanna Bockman is collaborating on a public sociology project with her colleagues at Empower DC, Syphax Gardens Public Housing, and the University of the District of Columbia. They are studying public housing perceptions among private housing residents in Southwest DC.

CHSS scholars Lisa Breglia (Global Affairs), Shannon Davis (Sociology) and Angie Hattery (Women and Gender Studies) presented their posters at the Provost’s annual multidisciplinary research symposium on Friday, February 12th.

Kandahar Journals explores a photojournalist's firsthand account of his psychological state while covering a war.

Jason A. Smith, PhD candidate in sociology, participated in a roundtable discussion at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute in Washington, DC on January 29.

SOAN is delighted to welcome Professor Nawa Sugiyama to the department and to Mason.

The MCAT now includes material from SOCI 101. Take SOCI 101, an upper-division course in Social Problems or Social Inequality, and along the way get a minor in sociology.

The conference looks at the questions of how well-being should inform the field of public sociology, and how public sociology should inform a concept of well-being. By doing so, the conference aims to expand the notion of well-being to an application within everyday societal structures.

Erin M. Stephens, sociology PhD student, was recently featured on NBCNEWS for her work with The Beautiful Project's #dearblackgirl campaign. According to NBCNEWS, "The campaign was the brainchild of Stephens, who said she was inspired by a book entitled Letters to a Young Activist."

Starting 2015, you will be tested on material from Sociology 101 as part of the exam.

Jason Smith, PhD student in Mason's sociology program, has joined the editorial board of Social Problems, the journal of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

The grant was awarded for his project on "Social identity and reproduction of communal cosmology among Late/Final Jomon period foragers: biodistance and demographic analysis of ritual tooth extraction practices on the Atsumi peninsula."

John G. Dale and David Kyle, "Smart Transitions? Foreign Investment, Disruptive Technology, and Democratic Reform in Myanmar," FROM BURMA TO MYANMAR: CRITICAL TRANSITIONS, Social Research Volume 82, No. 1 (Summer 2015).

SOAN sociologists have excitedly made their way to Chicago to attend the American Sociological Association meetings.

Daniel Temple, a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, earned a PhD in biological anthropology with a minor in anatomy. He studies the effects of stress that humans encounter at early ages, with significant results for the subjects' later lives, and has worked with skeletal and dental remains from Japan, Siberia, Alaska, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona. In this article, he describes the phenomenon and how it is used to learn about ancient cultures.

Saturday, October 3, at 2 p.m., The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, will host the panel, “The Cities We Live In: New Writings from South Asia” as part of Fall for the Book. Moderator Leeya Mehta will speak with authors Kavita Daiya, Tula Goenke, and Rashmi Sadana about their ongoing projects and research.

Forbes highlights Professor Klaus's work on third known example of ovarian teratoma found in ancient skeletal remains from 16th Century Peru.

Sociology Prof. Bockman discussed notions of world order during #ScholarFest at the Library of Congress.

Sociology PhD student Marisa Allison has won the Robert Dentler Award for Outstanding Student Achievement from the American Sociological Association's Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology.

Professor Seligmann will become editor-in-chief of the journal from January 2016. Congratulations to her!

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology congratulates Professor Davis on having been elected Vice President of the Southern Sociological Society.

Justin Lowry, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has been awarded the Center for Public Anthropology's Franz Boas Global Citizenship Award for effectively encouraging his students to address real-world anthropological issues in the center's Community Action Project and elsewhere.

“Sociology must be active and deliberate in staking its claim of public relevance..."

Sofia Losada and Alex Hardee each studied abroad in Florence in Winter and Spring 2015. See their e-postcards from abroad by clicking the headline.

Lorena Hillon, who earned her M.A. degree in Sociology last semester, has been accepted into the internship program at the OAS. She will be in the employment section of the Department of Social Inclusion. Congratulations!

He has been funded for a bioarchaeological study of the dawn and evolution of Andean complex societies as seen at the monumental ritual center of Ventarrón on the north coast of Peru.

Sociology major Colby Fleming has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to teach in the city of Pazardzhik (Пазарджик), the 14th largest city in Bulgaria.

Congratulations to Emily Harvey and Hilary K. Huley for winning in the categories of Outstanding Oral Presentation and Outstanding Poster Presentation, respectively, at the 2015 CHSS Undergraduate Research Symposium!

Two SOAN faculty members -- Mark Jacobs and Rashmi Sadana -- have been awarded grants from the Center for Global Studies.

SOAN received the National Student Employment Week Spirit Award in the banner competition for creative expression of appreciation for our student workers, Shaza Syeda and Remaz Abdelgader.

As a Fulbright-CON IL SUD awardee in 2016, Prof. Schiller will launch a new research project on "Expatriates and Community Building in Southern Italy." She will conduct research on the choices, experiences, and adaptive strategies of individuals transitioning from tourist to expatriate in the dynamic southern Italian region of Puglia.

Beverly Auman, who will graduate with her BA in Anthropology this semester, has been accepted into the MA program in Anthropology and Education at Teachers College at Columbia University and has received a Margaret Mead Fellowship. Congrats, Beverly!

George Mason University was well represented at this year’s SSS meeting. The program committee was co-chaired by Mason Sociology professor Dr. Shannon Davis, and many Mason students and faculty filled the program.

SOAN congratulates Professor Hughes Rinker for being a finalist for the Teaching Excellence Award and recognized for exceptional teaching and her commitment to teaching-related activities by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

SOAN congratulates Sociology Professor Karen Rosenblum for being selected as the 2015 recipient for the David King Teaching Award given by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Congratulations to Abdallah Hendaway, a first year PhD Student in our Sociology Program, who has just published a very interesting news article and analysis that provides insight into the recent conflict in the Sinai and Egyptian and French diplomacy in The Diplomatic Courier.

Sociology major Colby Fleming talks about his current research project, which emerged from his sociological research methods course.

Congratulations to Katie Kerstetter, Erin Stephens and Carol Petty who have been awarded 2015 summer research fellowships.

Sociology undergraduate and graduate students filled the audience, as well as the leadership, of Mason's Adjunct Dignity Day.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology Alumni Newsletter has arrived! Read about what alumni, students, and faculty have been up to.

This year's Honor Award of the State Department's mission on Egypt 2014- 2015 was presented to Abdallah Hendawy for his consistent outstanding political performance in reporting on the unfolding events in Egypt that was key to informing mission Egypt and Washington.

For the past three years, Susan Crate, faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has been working with the American Anthropological Association's Global Climate Change Task Force. The task force's final report, released in late January, looks at the issues of climate change from an anthropological perspective.

The graduate student newsletter organized by Mason's Graduate Student Sociology Association and the Public Sociology Association has arrived!

Channel 7 news interviewed sociology PhD student Olivia Blackmon after she was told to stop breastfeeding at the Chinquapin Park Recreation Center & Aquatics Facility in Alexandria. Blackmon speaks about women's rights and the culture of our society.

Mason sociologists have long been involved in the DC Sociological Society. This year and next, Professor Johanna Bockman is the DCSS President and is a great supporter of The Sociologist, a popular magazine bringing public sociology to all DC-area sociologists.

Haagen Klaus studies the ancient and mysterious remains of societies along Peru’s northern coastal areas. A recent project has seen him racing against the clock in the modern-day town of Olmos to rescue skeletons from a looming construction project and the scathing rains of El Niño. Here, Klaus picks up his story beginning the morning after a torrential rainstorm.

Sociology PhD students Marisa Allison, Randy Lynn, and Vicki Hoverman conducted a comprehensive survey of contingent faculty and summarized their findings in the "Indispensable but Invisible" report featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Science Careers.

Sociology professor Les Kurtz is working with Alexandra Johnson, an Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities, and Research (OSCAR) research assistant, on "Gods and Bombs," a social history of religion and the rhetoric of violence.

Prof. Rashmi Sadana is on study leave for Spring 2015 in Delhi, India, where she is researching the city's new metro rail system.

Anthropology professor Andrew Bickford is spending 2014-2015 at the Woodrow Wilson Center. His research project is "Skin-In Solutions: Biotechnology, Psychopharmacology, and Armored Life in the United States Military."

The Sociology Program is accepting students into our Honors Program. In the Honors Program, you have the opportunity to work individually with a faculty member on a research project of your choice.

SOAN greatly encourages students to study abroad. Sociology PhD student Carol Petty writes about her experience studying Turkish in Turkey, while on a Critical Language Scholarship.

Our sociology graduate students have accomplished so much.

Sociology majors Colby Fleming, Jane Garfinkel, and MaryAnn Vega have been selected for the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP) for Spring 2015!

Professor David Haines, currently at Mason's Korea campus, was recently a presenter and panel moderator at the annual meeting of the International Association for Asian Pacific Studies, and the organizer and chair of a panel on East Asian diversity policy at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

Biological anthropologist Daniel Temple, a faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has diagnosed one of world’s oldest cases of metastatic cancer, found in the skeletal remains of a man who died in Siberia some 4,000 years ago. The finding enhances understanding of the causes of modern day cancers.

A substantial and diverse group of social scientists and administrators from the university took part in a National Science Foundation workshop designed to explore the contributions that social science research makes to the public policy-making process.

Congratulations to the four Public Anthropology Award Winners at George Mason University -- Nick Gorry, Alysha Rayner, Neena Solanki, and Megan Bishop.

The second in a series on Prof Klaus's research, involving George Mason University undergraduates and others.

Kayla Story has been awarded an internship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. This is a highly competitive internship, and Kayla will work as Prof. Andrew Bickford’s research assistant during his fellowship at the center.

Sociology professor Johanna Bockman is teaching "Post-Soviet Life" this Spring 2015. In this course, we will explore the “fall of communism” and how the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have transformed since 1989.

As for the creepiest things she’s uncovered, Usher says she’s found bodies in European graveyards with crushed skulls and people who’ve been beheaded. She’s also found “double burials” or graves that were reused in societies with limited space.

Interested students are invited to attend this information session outlining the Sociology Master's program, tips for building a successful application, and procedures for applying to both the accelerated and the traditional MA.

I am the new Academic Advisor for Sociology and Anthropology. My passion is working with students as they discover their own unique interests and translate these into fulfilling life and career pathways. I look forward to getting to know you!

Well-known Palestinian activist Bassem al-Tamimi spoke to our "Violence Peace and Conflict" class about his organizing of weekly nonviolent protests of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Lester Kurtz, from Mason's Sociology and Anthropology Department, received the Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contribution to Applied and Clinical Sociology Award from the Association for Applied & Clinical Sociology.

Sociology professor Amy Best is partnering with English professor Lisa Koch to teach a new course titled, "Teens in Film, Fiction, and Ethnography" to be offered Spring 2015.

GMU is now a member of the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) which offers fellowships for dissertation and post-Ph.D. faculty research as well as language fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, and more.

Thomas Vander Ven earned his M.A. in Sociology in 1993 from GMU. Since then, he has become an active author and popular Professor of sociology, specializing in crime and deviance.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology is so glad to welcome our new and returning office staff (from left to right) -- Remaz Abdelgader (student worker). Anna Marie Burcham (Executive Assistant to Department Chair), Farhana Islam (Department Secretary), and Shaza Syeda (returning student worker and website genius). Please feel free to stop by and meet our extraordinary staff.

Read about their bioarchaeological study of a group of ancient skeletons in Dr. Klaus's blog for National Geographic’s Explorer’s Journal.

Prof. Seligmann participated in a conference on “Traders, Markets, and the State in Vietnam,” a section of the “Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia Department” within the Max Planck Institute for Social Ethnology (Halle, Germany).

4th ANNUAL PUBLIC SOCIOLOGY CONFERENCE:
October 18, 2014 at George Mason University, Founder’s Hall, Arlington, VA

SOAN is hosting the DC Sociological Society's Presidential Address by Mason sociology professor Johanna Bockman on Thursday, Sept. 4th at 6:30pm. Her address is titled "Sociology in DC, Sociology of DC: Studying Gentrification."

In this summer's section of Anthropology 399, Special Topics in Anthropology: Introduction to Forensic Anthropology, Professor Haagen Klaus teaches the many ways in which bones and human remains can divulge clues about how their previous owner lived and died.

Volume 5, Pages 1-106 (June 2014) Advances in the Paleopathology of Scurvy: Papers in Honor of Donald J. Ortner Edited by: John J. Crandall and Haagen D. Klaus

Professor Sadana shared her research on the gendered experience of the Delhi Metro at the workshop held in Hong Kong from June 9-13, 2014.

“Between Story-Telling and Critical Analysis: Going Native and Crossing Borders.” Anthropology and Humanism 39(1): 10-17. (2014).

Professor Seligmann will be a commentator at the September 25-26 conference, “Traders in Motion: Networks, Identities, and Contestations in the Vietnamese Marketplace” held at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Leipzig/Halle, Germany.

Her thesis is entitled: Greek Diners: How Greeks Have Kept Traditional and Americanized Greek Foodways Alive in American Diners

Gabriela Galeano is doing field work for her Master’s thesis in anthropology on how the Garifuna people of northern Honduras are encountering and shaping tourism and development there.

This book is an anthology on Fukushima and nuclear power with essays contributed by more than 80 writers, including academics and artists from the United States and Japan as well as evacuees from Fukushima. Prof Takahashi is organizing a book event in Tokyo, which will be held on August 8.

Four faculty members from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences were recognized this year by the university's Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence. We congratulate Eric Anderson, Alan More, Amy Best, and Jeremy Hodgson for their contributions to the excellent instruction of our students.

In her monthly column for the national Indian newspaper DNA, Prof Sadana shows what is at stake in Penguin India's decision to remove Wendy Doniger's book from Indian bookshelves and pulp the remaining copies. Can you really ban a book in the age of the internet? Is this a win for India's cultural right who took Penguin to court over the book?

The conference, held in November 2013, was an interdisciplinary effort to investigate and compare how global flows of capital and goods shape local labor markets in different developing economies.

Excerpted from the article, "How Studying Mummies Could Cure Modern Diseases": "Work from Haagen Klaus, a biological anthropologist at George Mason University, suggests that, contrary to what some experts think, Europeans might have brought a particularly deadly form of TB to the Americas. His preliminary DNA data hints that Peruvian remains dating back to the 10th century—before Spanish explorers arrived—might have been infected with a more benign strain of the TB bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or a different species altogether, Mycobacterium kansasii."

Read the New York Times profile of Intel's resident anthropologist, Genevieve Bell.

Check the catalogs at colleges these days and you will see that you can study theater, act in plays and explore a whole lot more. Turns out, there are some pretty funky courses.

On January 24th, Marisa Allison, Doctoral Student in Sociology, was invited to sit on a Congressional Briefing panel for House Democrats to discuss the working conditions of part-time and contingent faculty in colleges and universities.

Professor John Dale was quoted in National Geographic special series on oil drilling in Burma (Myanmar).

Each year, the Center for a Public Anthropology holds a competition for anthropology students in the United States and Canada, in which the students write persuasively about an anthropological research question. Twenty-five students from George Mason University were recognized for their work.

Mason News recently ran a story about a new anthropology course on... murder!

Contemporary country music artists and the content of their songs have a history of protecting and empowering women. But one of the genre’s most recent chart toppers prompts the question: Is country music at a crossroads in the portrayal of the sex that comprises 60 percent of its radio audience?

The Sociology and Anthropology Department is pleased to announce the dissertation defense of Sara Moore on November 26, 2013. Her dissertation is titled "The Moral Landscape of Modern Motherhood: Ideology, Identity, and the Making of Mothers."

Join us for our conference, which explores inequality and mobility along the borderlands of academia, activism, and policy, this Saturday, October 12th 8:30am to 4:00pm.

The fall issue of "In the Field," the newsletter of the Graduate Student Sociological Association and Public Sociology Association, is now available.

Sociology graduate students and faculty are excitedly heading to the American Sociological Association annual conference taking place in New York City August 10-13, 2013.

Join us for the 3rd Annual Public Sociology Graduate Conference, which will take place on Saturday, October 12, 2013, at George Mason University.

Look at the great things sociologists can do locally...Here is sociology major Joy Tharrington doing great things.

Prof. Bockman is the recipient of the Morris Rosenberg Award and a NEH summer grant.

Professor Jim Witte and Mason PhD candidate Randy Lynn describe the conversations happening on Twitter in regard to immigration reform before and after the Boston bombings.

Professor Susan Trencher, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has won the Center for Public Anthropology's Paul Farmer Global Citizenship Award.

The Sociology and Anthropology Department congratulates Professor Jeff Mantz for receiving the 2013 OSCAR Mentoring Excellence Award.

Niah Grimes, one of our AKD Graduating Senior awardees, will be honored with the OSCAR Student Excellence Award at this year's Celebration of Student Scholarship.

Anthropology Major Gabriela Galeano selected as one of the first recipients of new annual award for Student Excellence!

Professor John Dale has been elected to serve on the Board of Directors of the Society for the Study of Social Problems for a three-year term (2013-2016).

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology announces this year's student award recipients.

The Sociology and Anthropology Department congratulates Professor Jeff Mantz and Professor Shannon Davis for winning this year's George Mason University Award for Teaching Excellence!

Sociology Professor Shannon Davis is visiting Moscow this week to participate in a seminar and collaborate with colleagues at HSE. Here is Professor Davis' special interview with the HSE portal.

The spring issue of "In the Field," the newsletter of the Graduate Student Sociological Association and Public Sociology Association, is now available.

Savanna Hughes, a graduate student in Anthropology at George Mason, presented her current research on Civil War reenactors at the Fort Valley Library Lyceum.

Sociology professor Tony Samara's new edited volume Locating Right to the City in the Global South is now available.

This spring, Professor Kurtz is teaching a new course, Socioeconomics of Happiness: Creating a New Global Economic Paradigm (SOCI 395).

Sociology PhD candidate Katie Kerstetter has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Rural Social Sciences titled "Community-Based Research: Analysis of Outcomes for Learning and Social Change."

Center for Global Studies awards faculty grants to Professor Seligmann and Professor Scimecca.

The newest issue of In the Field, the joint newsletter of the Graduate Student Sociological Association and the Public Sociology Association, is out. In it you will find updates on what some of the graduate students in the Sociology program have been working on, as well as some of their accomplishments.

“He clearly understood … that your treatment of people’s remains has implications for how you treat people in the present. Arguably, you can see a connection between how people of color are treated in everyday life and how it is their remains and sacred spaces are treated.”

The Office of the Provost at George Mason University is pleased to announce the launch of the newly created website of the Office of Graduate Fellowships: http://gradfellows.gmu.edu

Congratulations to Jeff Mantz, who has been selected to be Program Director for the Cultural Anthropology Program at the National Science Foundation. While on leave from George Mason, Dr. Mantz will be overseeing one of the nation's largest sources of funding for faculty and doctoral dissertation research in cultural anthropology.

Sociology professor Shannon Davis has been recognized for her many great achievements! -- Teacher of Distinction, OSCAR Mentor Award, ASA FAD grant, and Promotion to Tenure!

Sociology professor Amy Best is working with sociology PhD student Jeff Johnson on an observation-based program evaluation for a DC mobile market program run by Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Also, Symbolic Interaction just published their co-authored article based on Jeff's MA thesis work.

SOAN welcomes Professor Emir Eteria, Open Society Institute Teaching Fellow from Tbilisi, Georgia.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Rashmi Sadana has joined the Anthropology faculty in SOAN. Her newest project is about the globalization of India’s cities with a focus on notions of the public and public spaces, and the politics of urban design and development.

The Society for the Study of Social Problems has released its Agenda for Social Justice: Solutions 2012. The publication features entries from two of our Sociology PhD program's students - Katie Kerstetter and Jason Smith - as well as one of its MA alumni - John Robinson.

At the Fort Valley Library Lyceum, John Lunsford, a M.A. student in Anthropology at George Mason, discussed his research on individuals’ identity formation and the Internet, with particular attention to online multi-player role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life.

Jim Witte, director of Mason's Institute for Immigration Research, describes the contributions of foreign-born athletes and other professionals in an op-ed piece co-written with Mason PhD candidate Josh Tuttle.

Methods of Family Research by SOAN professor Shannon N. Davis and NC State University professor Theodore N. Greenstein is now available.

New ANTH Professor Rashmi Sandana wrote a series on the Delhi Metro (about urban space and design, governance, inequality, etc) for the Wall St. Journal's India site.

Getting Married Does Not Make You A Better Mother By Perry Threlfall

A record number of students from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University walked across the stage in grand fashion during their convocations on May 17 and 18, 2012. More than 2,500 graduating students were recognized for their efforts in two distinguished ceremonies.

Mason sociologists descended on the DC Sociological Society's Annual Awards Banquet, and Sara B. Moore, SOCI PhD student, came away with the Irene Tauber Best PhD-Level Paper Award.

Andrea Rutan, who was the recipient of this year's Outstanding Graduate Student in Sociology award, also received a best graduate paper award from the International Journal of Zizek Studies.

John Robinson, MA Sociology 2010, was recently awarded a prestigious Ford Fellowship. He is a second year doctoral student at Northwestern University in Sociology.

The Mason Center for Teaching & Faculty Excellence has announced its 2012 Teaching Excellence Awards. The college is extremely pleased and proud to note that a number of its faculty members are among the award winners.

Prof. John Dale was interviewed by Kyaw Zan Tha of Voice of America (Burmese) on April 18th.

SOAN honored its award-winning students at the Outstanding Student Awards Ceremony April 18, 2012.

Congratulations to anthropology graduate students Anne Marie Munson, Melissa Mitchell and Salman Moghadeddi!

SOAN is greatly represented at this year's Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Students are encouraged to participate in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences' 2012 Undergraduate Research Symposium, which takes place Tuesday, May 1, 2012 from 12-4 p.m. in the Johnson Center's Dewberry Hall.

Professor Kurtz was at the United Nations last week working on new approach to make governments accountable not for GDP or economic growth but for the happiness and well-being of its citizens.

Radical History Review has published Professor Bockman's "The Long Road to 1989: Neoclassical Economics, Alternative Socialisms, and the Advent of Neoliberalism" as its lead article.

Congratulations to Leo Pierson, who earned his M.A. in Sociology with us two years ago. Since then he has been very busy.

Congratulations to Randy Salm and Katie Kerstetter! The national office of Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD), the international sociological honor society, awarded travel funding to both Randy and Katie to attend the Eastern Sociological Society meeting in New York.

Check out Sociology Professor John G. Dale's book Free Burma: Transnational Legal Action and Corporate Accountability. Through the experience of the Free Burma movement, Dale demonstrates how social movements create and appropriate legal mechanisms for generating new transnational political opportunities.

The Sociology and Anthropology Department is well known for its public sociology and public anthropology. Professor Bockman's blog is just part of this innovative work.

Yes, you are invited to design a t-shirt unique to the SOAN department, that represents both Sociology and Anthropology!

SOAN welcomes eight sociology students from Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE)! They will be working on a project at Center for Social Science Research (CSSR) and taking classes. In the group, there are five BA students and three MA students: Elizaveta Germ Pavel Gladkov Anna Gosteva Victoria Koshurina Elena Nikitenko Tamara Petrova Sofya Rukhin Irina Vorobeva We are excited to work with these students this year. Welcome!

Americans are more likely to be injured or killed in their own homes by someone they know than anywhere else by anyone else. This course can be applied towards either 1) the Childhood and Youth concentration or 2) the Deviance, Crime, and Social Control concentration in the sociology B.A.

Today’s college students are the first to be “born digital.” This course provides an introduction to the study of digital youth culture, with attention to the globalizing forces at work as young people engage and consume new media and new technology. This course can be applied towards either the Culture concentration or the Childhood/Youth concentration.

ANTHROPOLOGY GUEST SPEAKERS. ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS AND FACULTY WELCOME. All of the talks will be held in The Robeson Room, Johnson Center, 240A, 10-11:30 am.

The MCAT2015 will require that all students have taken Introduction to Sociology (SOCI 101) and Introduction to Psychology prior to taking the exam, as material from both introductory courses will be incorporated into the exam. The MCAT2015 website includes the preview guide which details the new Foundations of Behavior content. Sociology plays a significant role in this new exam component.

For a full spring semester in Moscow and/or St. Petersburg, Mason undergraduate and graduate students can study alongside Russian studies at the Higher School of Economics. A U.S. Department of Education grant covers the cost of international travel and a daily allowance for program participants.

Students at University of South Florida respond to Gov. Rick Scott's assertion that the state of Florida doesn't need any more anthropologists.

Look at all our new sociology courses for spring!

Sociology Professor Johanna Bockman spoke about her new book Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism on C-SPAN Book TV this weekend and at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Thursday.

The University at War by Hugh Gusterson: "Up to the early 1980s, Iraq's educational system was considered one of the best in the Middle East. As a result of its drastic and prolonged decline since then, it is now one of the weakest..."

Sociology Professor Lester R. Kurtz publishes a new edition of his fascinating book about global religions.

Laura Prelle has joined the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at George Mason as an intern to aid with the development of its work in human rights.

Sociology Professor Tony Roshan Samara has a new book, Cape Town After Apartheid: Crime and Governance in the Divided City.

Andrew Bickford, associate professor of anthropology, publishes Fallen Elites.

The Iranian Studies Group, a student organization focused on Iran-related research in the humanities and social sciences, returns to Mason for its second official semester with a series of lectures and presentations.

An article in The Huffington Post about the large-scale interactive survey created through the combined efforts of screen writer and private bank associate Chrisanna Northup, sociologist Dr. Jim Witte of the Center for Social Science Research at George Mason University, and Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a prolific author of books on relationships and sexuality and a regular guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Higher Education Commission (HEC) Conference

We are pleased to announce that Professor Cortney Hughes has joined the Anthropology faculty in SOAN.

Professor Linda J. Seligmann spent a month conducting research in the handicraft and agricultural produce markets in Cusco, Peru. Recipient of a Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund grant, she is looking at how neoliberal economic measures, globalization, and the sharp rise in tourism have affected the livelihoods, political engagement, and cultural and gendered identities of vendors. Seligmann has studied informal market economies in Cusco for twenty years, thus giving her the chance to track these changes over a relatively long period of time. She has noticed some striking changes.

Professor Nancy Hanrahan spent the spring semester, 2011, as a Fulbright scholar in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She taught a graduate seminar in feminist theory in the Department of Sociology and Politics of Pontificia Universidade Catolica, and worked with colleagues at the university to develop curriculum in Women and Gender Studies. She received many invitations to speak about her current research (on cultural criticism in the age of the Internet), and on the history and future prospects of women’s studies academic programs in the US.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences hosted 33 exemplary undergraduate student research projects at the 2011 Undergraduate Research Symposium on Tuesday, April 19, in the Johnson Center. Learn more about the symposium and view a video.

An article by Maciej Bartkowski and Lester Kurtz entitled "Egypt: How to Negotiate the Transition. Lessons from Poland and China" was posted on openDemocracy and is being translated into Arabic.

In Open Democracy, Les Kurtz writes about the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

NPR's Brent Baughman recently attended one session of Anthropology 396: Zombies, taught by professor Jeffrey Mantz. The two sat down for an interview afterward.

Professors Brian Platt of History and Art History and Jeffrey Mantz of Sociology and Anthropology address prospective students and families at the Mason Fall Premiere on Saturday, Nov. 13. The admissions open house features faculty mini-lectures as a way for prospective applicants to take a closer look at studying at Mason.

Anthropology graduate student Aileen Watchko's poster,based on her master’s thesis research, won an award at an October 2010 conference in Amsterdam.

Three College of Humanities and Social Sciences alumni were among this year's Fulbright scholarship winners. Patricia Rivera (BA government and international politics ’03 and MS conflict analysis and resolution ’07), Lauren-Claire Kelley (BA English '10) and Carol Petty (BA sociology '10) will study abroad this academic year.

Andrew Bickford, a professor of anthropology at George Mason University, is featured in The Huffington Post on Sept. 30. His story explores societal and political narratives of combat heroism, and centers on the death of Pat Tillman and the Army's portrayal of him afterward.

Jeffrey Mantz, a faculty member in the sociology and anthropology department, is teaching a course meant to explore the representation of zombies through historical and current media and references. The Mason Spirit wrote a blog entry about the course.

The George Mason University Field House is an on-campus social hub where friends can get together and enjoy organized or quick pickup games of basketball. For John Robinson, MA sociology ’10, it was also a classroom and research facility.

Originally a marketing major, Shana De Jahrling returned to school to pursue a career in counseling with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her internship with the Tragedy Assistant Program for Survivors has allowed her to pursue her passion for counseling and fill a void left by her cousin's tragic death in Afghanistan.

In less than one month, about 2,600 freshmen and 2,300 transfer students will call George Mason University their new home. Hundreds will join the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Nayantara Sheoran, a cultural studies PhD student, recently won a highly competitive Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation. The award will give her up to $15,000 for research in India.

Anthropology graduate student Aileen Watchko was selected to present a poster based on her master’s thesis research at an October 2010 conference in Amsterdam.

Shannyn Snyder, who received her master of arts in interdisciplinary studies with a focus on anthropology and global health in 2010, connects water, health and culture in her research. Snyder works for a local non-profit putting her studies to good work.

Dionne Foster, Sociology '10, was awarded the Dennis-Weathers award at the Black Graduation ceremony held May 6, 2010, on the George Mason University campus. This award recognizes contributions to the Mason community.

Kattey L. Mayrose (Anthropology '12) was awarded the "Best Poster Presentation at the 2010 Undergraduate Research Symposium" for her poster, "Preservation of Vietnamese Business Cultural Beliefs: Ethnographic Survey of Eden Center, Northern Virginia."

Each year, departments and programs present awards to their outstanding students. The college is proud to announce the recipients of these awards for 2009-2010. Congratulations to all the department's students for their outstanding achievements.

Hayley Jackson, a 2009 graduate of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has been awarded the Enhanced Chancellors Fellowship at the City University of New York (CUNY) to fund her doctoral studies. This prestigious fellowship will fully fund Hayley for five years as she works toward her PhD at CUNY. Hayley’s research interests are in the field of urban education, and she is excited to study sociology in New York City.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology is delighted and honored to announce that Professor Mark Jacobs, sociology, has been named the 2010-2011 Williams Lecturer by the Eastern Sociology Society.

Rebecca Mae Gimbel, a 2009 graduate from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, received the National Science Foundation's prestigious GRFP award for her doctoral project.

On Monday April 12 at 2 p.m., Frans BM de Waal, a Dutch-born ethologist/biologist known for his work on the social intelligence of primates, delivers a lecture, "The Age of Empathy: Primate Behavior and Human Society."

John Dale, Assistant Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, cooperates with the State University Higher School of Economics in Russia to join classrooms with innovative technology across oceans for human rights education.

The College of Humanities and Social Sciences is proud to announce the speakers for this year’s convocation ceremonies. Warren Brown, the founder and owner of successful bakery CakeLove and Love Café’, and poet and author Robert Pinsky are the speakers for this year’s convocation ceremonies.

Students looking to add a global component to their education are no longer on their own. In mid-August, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences hired sociology graduate student John Robinson to be the university’s first global programs advisor. In this role, Robinson, also an advisor for the Global Affairs Undergraduate Program, serves as a liaison between students in any major and various global education programs at Mason. Robinson steers students toward different programs based on their interests and needs.

Dr. Karen Rosenblum of George Mason University’s Sociology and Anthropology Department has embarked on many projects as part of a special group called The Diversity Research Group. These projects have put students at the center ground-breaking research and exposed them to experiences outside of the traditional classroom.

Palkovich explores the difficult and complex topic of genocide in a new graduate offering in anthropology spring 2010. She will engage anthropological perspectives on genocide and consider the ways in which anthropologists have (or have not) confronted issues of mass violence.

Karen Secrist’s three-decade career working for George Mason University started just off of Route 50 in Fairfax at what is now known as Paul VI Catholic High School. “There’s only a few of us left that remember those days,” said Dean Jack Censer during a Dec. 2 celebration that honored Secrist as one of the 2009 Mary Roper award-winners.

John Dale, Assistant Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, was quoted on November 6th in the Wall Street Journal and on November 7th by the Agence-France Presse. He was interviewed about the significance of the United States Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell's visit to Burma (Myanmar) last week.

Clemson professor James Witte will leave Clemson to join Mason’s Sociology and Anthropology Department and head the Center for Social Science and Research. CHSS caught up with Witte in a question and answer session, here’s what he had to say.

Eleven undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in WMST 411 or 611 Gender Research Project, chose their own research topics, and used various methodologies to answer their sociological queries. On May 7, those researchers presented their findings and received feedback from professors, students and community members at the Second Annual Gender Research Conference.

In a series of stations -- 31 posters positioned throughout Dewberry Hall -- students presented the findings of their research and welcomed questions and discussion from faculty and students who attended the first annual college Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 14, 2009.

In a weekly series running from now until the election, the Mason Gazette will present the views of expert Mason faculty on various important campaign issues. This week's focus is on immigration policy.

For her community involvement along with her outstanding academic performance in sociology, Theresa Hsieh (BA sociology, '08) was awarded one of the first Dean's Challenge Awards, a scholarship of $2,000.

The finalists for the 2008 Harry S. Truman Scholarship – a prestigious, competitive program that provides $30,000 for graduate study – were recently named. The selection committee endorsed two Mason candidates with majors in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences who showed impressive academic achievements, leadership skills and community involvement.

We asked Haines, Sociology and Anthropology, an immigration expert, for some insight on immigration issues on and off campus.