Welcome Back Letter August 2024
Hello everyone, and welcome back! The summer is always too short, but we’re excited to be back with the humanities community at George Mason. As I take over the role of director of the CHR, I want to thank Alison Landsberg for her defining leadership of the CHR (and for continuing on as a member of the Steering Committee). I’m looking forward to working with all of you as the CHR builds on the foundation that has been laid in its inaugural period and continues its work of supporting, highlighting, and advancing humanities scholarship at George Mason.
As you know, the CHR hosts a cohort of fellows (faculty and doctoral students) each semester and highlights an annual theme, culminating in the annual symposium in the spring semester. This year’s theme is “humanity and its others” and this year’s fellows (for fall and spring) are introduced here. In addition to the annual symposium, there will be research presentations from our summer 2024 fellows and our fall and spring fellows throughout the year, as well as book launches to discuss and highlight new publications by George Mason scholars, and other programming and events (often in collaboration with others on campus) focusing on issues in research and scholarship in the humanities (more on these events below and in each newsletter).
If you have ideas or suggestions about something you’d like to see or help organize at the CHR, please feel free to contact me (ayadav@gmu.edu) or the associate director, Catherine Olien (colien@gmu.edu). Let me also take this opportunity to welcome and introduce our current Steering Committee and the External Advisory Board for the CHR. The core funding for the CHR comes from George Mason’s office for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact, under vice president Andre Marshall, and from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, under dean Ann Ardis, and we’re thankful to them for their continued support of the CHR.
We look forward to seeing you at our talks, roundtables, panel discussions, research presentations, book launches and reading and writing groups! Please explore our website (https://chr.gmu.edu) and read on for more information about our events and opportunities.
Take care,
Alok Yadav
Associate Professor
English Department
Director, Center for Humanities Research (CHR)
August 16, 2024