About

Advancing Humanities and Humanities-related Research across the University 

The CHR supports the humanities and humanities-related research of faculty and doctoral students across the university in the form of semester-long residential fellowships during which fellows are released from their teaching. We also offer competitive summer research grants, open to all 9-month full-time faculty. Regularly occurring research presentations, book talks, panel discussions, reading groups, and workshops—including offerings designed specifically for undergraduates—aim to create a rich and vibrant intellectual environment on campus. The CHR aims to invigorate the research of faculty and students and increase the visibility of Mason’s humanities research both on campus and beyond. 

Fostering Intellectual Collaboration and Community 

Much of the work undertaken by scholars in the humanities is solitary: faculty members write single-authored journal articles and monographs, and graduate students write dissertations. And yet, humanities research thrives when scholars speak to one another about their work. The CHR thus aims to promote a particular version of intellectual collaboration premised on the idea that intellectual exchange and debate, across disciplinary boundaries, is crucial for knowledge production. These collective exchanges, we believe, fertilize and enrich individual research projects.  

Toward this end, the intellectual life of the CHR each semester is built around the residential fellowship program, and the research projects of the fellows. By enabling faculty and doctoral students to pursue their own independent research projects, while in regular, intellectual discussion and debate with others working on thematically related projects, the Center has become a site of transdisciplinary intellectual collaboration; faculty and students think collectively even as they pursue individual projects.  

While the fellows form the intellectual nucleus of the CHR, all others in the Mason community are welcome not only to join these discussions, but also to present research publicly, participate in Reading and Working Groups, suggest ideas for programming, and attend all CHR events.