Reading Groups/Working Groups
At the CHR, we believe that knowledge production in the humanities is a communal effort.
To support that venture, the Center fosters, supports, and provides space for topical and thematic Reading Groups, Working Groups, Workshops, and Writing Groups for faculty, graduate students and staff. Each group considers a particular theme or question of central importance to the humanities. As such, these groups serve as spaces for transdisciplinary exchange.
- The current active groups reflect areas of particular research strength at Mason. We love to see this list and research interests evolve. Some groups meet for a year and wrap up or "retire." Others have been going for five or more years!
- If you are interested in starting a new reading or working group, reach out to us at chr@gmu.edu!
- You can join a group at any time by contacting the group coordinator.
- The CHR provides support to all groups to host external speakers and/or organize campus-wide events that aim to create and share new knowledge with a broader audience.
- To view upcoming meeting dates, please visit our events calendar.
Working Groups
CHR Landscape Futures Working Group
More information coming soon! Contact chr@gmu.edu if interested in joining.
Reading Groups
CHR Performance Studies Reading Group
This reading group on Performance Studies explores the theoretical, methodological, and cultural dimensions of performance as a critical practice. We will engage with a range of topics, from theatrical and artistic performances to the performative aspects of “identity,” politics, and everyday life. Gathering three times a semester, we aim to facilitate challenging yet constructive conversations that deepen our understanding of performance and its political implications. This group hopes to foster interdisciplinary engagement and dialogue, providing a space for faculty, staff, and graduate students at all levels of familiarity with Performance Studies to explore new approaches and methodologies.
Fall 2025 dates listed on events calendar.
Müge Yuce: myuce@gmu.edu
CHR Queer Studies Reading Group
We are a group of George Mason scholars with broad interests in queer studies, queer theory, and related methodologies. Under the umbrella of the Center for Humanities Research, we gather three times a semester to discuss selected works of queer scholarship. The meetings are meant to be open forums for discussion, debate, and exposure to new ideas and methodologies.
Kathleen N. O'Neil: koneal4@gmu.edu.
CHR Space, Place, and Cities Reading Group
We are a group of scholars at Mason interested in theories of space and place and how they impinge on studies of race, class, caste, power, gender, sexuality, cities, globalization, transnationalism, and more. In the past we’ve read theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Marc Auge, alongside empirical studies on topics such as race and aesthetics in D.C., space and mobility in Palestine, and cross-border infrastructures in the Balkans. Going forward, we will continue to read across disciplines under the wide umbrella of the humanities, sharing insights, ideas, and recommendations of group members. We are also now linked to CSSR’s Urban Research Hub which is co-hosting this group. We will be meeting once a month on Zoom, starting in September 2023, in what will be an open forum to discuss, debate, and learn from each other and what we’re reading.
FALL 2025 schedule TBA
Rashmi Sadana: rsadana@gmu.edu.
CHR Memory and Difficult Pasts Reading Group
This reading group on memory and difficult pasts takes up the theoretical, methodological, historical and narratological challenges of remembering, commemorating, and attending to in the present, historical atrocity. We gather three times a semester to discuss selected readings. This group is a forum to discuss both published works, and the work-in-progress of members of the reading group. The meetings are meant to be open forums for discussion, debate, and exposure to new ideas and methodologies.
Fall 2025 dates listed on events calendar.
Luma Mousa: lmousa@gmu.edu.
CHR Environmental Justice Reading Group
We are an interdisciplinary group of scholars who meet monthly to discuss readings related to environmental justice and injustice. We interpret "environmental justice" broadly, including not only scholarship that self-identifies with this term, but also work that is more generally concerned with society, culture, environment, and power.
We select topics and readings based on the interests of the active participants. In the past, we have critically evaluated the theories of “justice” mobilized by EJ scholars and social movements; the political economy of environmental issues, land reform, and climate change; theories of sovereignty and environmental injustice; and the epistemological claims made by EJ scholars and organizers.
The group is open to all faculty, staff, and graduate students regardless of their level of familiarity with these themes. We facilitate challenging and, most importantly, constructive conversation and frequently collaborate with other CHR reading groups to select shared readings.
FINAL Fall 2025 dates coming soon
September * TBA
Selections from Ted Hamilton (2022) Beyond Fossil Law: Climate, Courts, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future (critical legal studies).
Shared selection: "Introduction" and "Chapter 2 - Law at the Origins of the Climate Crisis"
Additional selection for ambitious readers: "Chapter 4 - Climate Legal Activism"
October 22, 1:30-2:20 pm
Selections from Alyssa Battistoni (2025) Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature (critical political economy, political theory). Available online from the University Libraries.
Shared selection: "Introduction" and "Chapter 1 Theory of the Free Gift"
Additional selection for ambitious readers: "Chapter 6 Planet Making: Nature as Capital"
November 19, 1:30-2:30 pm
Selections from Maron E. Greenleaf (2024) Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (cultural anthropology). Available online from the University Libraries (hint: use University Press Library Open link)
Shared selection: "Introduction," "Chapter 1 Carbon Boom," and "Chapter 4 Beneficiaries and Forest Citizenship"
Additional selection for ambitious readers: "Chapter 5 The Urban Forest"
Richard Todd Stafford: rstaffo2@gmu.edu
CHR Capitalism Reading Group
This reading group is a small cohort of progressive scholars committed to advancing our understanding of capitalism. Capitalism plays an undeniably central role in shaping our modern world, so we seek to continuously explore its mechanisms, implications, and alternatives. Understanding capitalism through interdisciplinary inquiry and from a multiplicity of perspectives is crucial in equipping ourselves to critically analyze the dynamics of power, inequality, and innovation that pervade society. We read time-honored classics and new works on political economy, history and theory, labor and commodity relations, as well as colonial, cultural, environmental, and racial capitalism.
Fall 2025 dates listed on events calendar.
Kylie Erfani: kmusolf@gmu.edu.
CHR Visual Culture Studies Reading Group
The Visual Culture Studies reading group is a collective of people interested in exploring classic and cutting-edge texts in visual media cultures. The texts we share speak to core debates in the humanities, and reflect a range of critical and theoretical perspectives, historical eras, and geographical foci including particular intersections with related scholarly fields like photography, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, affect theory, gender and sexuality studies, spectatorship etc. The group meets monthly in an online setting. We invite your keen participation in these informal scholarly exchanges. We also welcome suggestions from group members about readings we could discuss.
Fall 2025 dates listed on events calendar.
All the meetings will be virtual and at 1 PM.
Aparna Shastr: ashastr@gmu.edu or Collin Hawley: chawley4@gmu.edu.
Retired Groups
*contact chr@gmu.edu if you'd like to re-launch one of these groups!
CHR Shifting Cultural Landscapes in Northern Virginia Working Group
This group aims to promote community voices, many of which have been excluded from the story Northern Virginia tells about itself, to re-narrate the story of this complex region. Through oral histories and community-based archival research, carried out collaboratively with community partners, this project weaves together a new narrative about Northern Virginia, one that includes the many voices of those who live here, and who have —in different ways, and at different moments— stirred and challenged the historic forces of alienation, dispossession, and displacement.
CHR Music & Society Reading Group
This reading group explores approaches to the study of popular music from multiple disciplines, including history, cultural studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and sociology. Avoiding technical, formal analysis, we nevertheless seek to examine the ways musical elements produce meaning and inform identities and movements. We are interested in approaches that engage popular music from around the world to illuminate broader social and political questions. We aim to gather three times a semester to discuss readings of interest to the group.
Matt Karush: mkarush@gmu.edu
CHR Indigenous Ways of Knowing Reading Group
This reading group explores indigenous forms of knowing and knowledge-sharing with the goal of broadening—and sometimes challenging—typical Western approaches. We will meet three times a semester to examine works on indigeneity and knowledge-sharing by both Native and non-Native authors. The goal of this reading group is to reflect on our own scholarship and seek a different perspective on scholarly work, as well as how knowledge is counted and categorized here at George Mason University.
CHR Critical Race Theory Reading Group
The CHR Critical Race Theory Group welcomes students, faculty, administrators, and staff from across the university for meaningful, interdisciplinary exchanges on Critical Race Theory and related topics that our members suggest, including racial capitalism, Black Studies, Black radicalism, linguistic racism, race, gender, and labor, and more. Our monthly meetings are a space for learning, sharing, critiquing, and thinking out loud about our interconnected histories and the world around us.
CHR Digital Humanities Reading Group
We are a group of George Mason scholars interested in the theory, methodologies, and practices of the digital humanities writ large. From assigning wikipedia entries in class to designing a multi-year research project, the digital humanities is a big tent that encourages new ways of doing humanities research, teaching, and outreach. We will meet once a month to explore digital humanities theories, methods, and projects and discuss teaching and research.
CHR Postcolonial/Decolonization Reading Group
The Postcolonial/Decolonization Reading Group sees itself as a community of scholars interested in engaging in conversation on topics pertaining to the history of colonialism, the work of decolonization, forms of empire, imperialism, and neo-colonial experiences. We hope to look at the theoretical, political, economic, and cultural intersections within postcolonial theory and decolonization movements found in texts, media, and the arts and how to apply that knowledge to teaching, scholarship and activism.
CHR Slavery Studies Reading Group
We are a group of George Mason faculty and students interested in discussing recent publications about slavery from the perspective of diverse disciplines in the humanities. The reading group meets about once a month and focuses on a variety of topics, including cultural transfers, resistance, effective emancipation, contemporary systems of slavery, and the local and global legacies of coerced migrations.