Honors Program
This semester we are providing HNRS 110 students with two different kinds of opportunities to learn about research in fields of their interest, Faculty Research Conversations and Departmental Lectures (listed below).
Additional resources, including the Research Log, can be found on the Resources page.
This list of department lectures is updated as the Honors program receives the information. Over the course of the semester, Honors 110 students are required to attend at least two on-campus professional lectures. (These may be on any day of the week.) You will be required to do a brief written assignment in response to each of these
Most of the lectures will be listed below by area of interest, but certain events like the Fall for the Book Festival (see Various at the bottom of this page) will provide lectures from a range of fields. Of particular interest to all Honors 110 students may be "Supernatural Stories in American Indian Culture: Encounters with 'The Little People'" by Dr. Tom Mould of Elon University on Tuesday 25 September 2007, 7:30pm, in the Grand Tier of the Center for the Arts.
Astronomy
The Department of Physics and Astronomy hosts
lectures by researchers from Mason and from neighboring
instutions on Thursdays, 11 AM - noon (except where
noted), in Room 301, Research I (except where otherwise
noted). For more detailed information, visit the Fall
2007 seminar schedule.
Biology
The Bioinformatics Colloquium meets Tuesdays at 4:30 pm in the Verizon Auditorium in the Occoquan Building, on the Prince William Campus unless otherwise specified. A Special Presentation with Erich Jarvis, Associate Professor of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center will be presented by the Health Professions Advising Office and the Undergraduate Faculty Apprenticeship Program on Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 8 pm in the Harris Theatre.
Chemistry
Graduate seminars for CHEM 690 will be held
at 4:30 p.m. each Thursday. The specific meeting room
for each seminar is listed along with the speaker information
for each date. Changes in topic, location or date will
be announced at the previous seminar and posted at
the Chemistry Department office in Science & Tech
I, Room 343. For more information see the list of Graduate
Seminars (should be updated for Fall 2007 soon).
Economics
The Economics Department offers five different
series for workshops, lectures, and brown bag seminars,
and many of them meet weekly throughout the semester.
Check the
events page for the department for links to various
schedules.
Engineering
Graduate Seminars page will be updated for Fall
2007—samples of past seminars can be seen on
the seminar
web resource. The schedule includes MS Scholarly
Paper Presentations, MS and PhD Thesis Presentations,
ECE Departmental Seminars, and Outside Speakers, all
of which are are color-coded by category.
English
Each year the English Department hosts the annual
Fall for the Book Festival, a six-day celebration of
literature, learning and all types of books and storytelling—from
literary fiction to mystery and thrillers to folk tales,
from poetry and plays to children's books, and across
a diverse range of nonfiction: history, memoir, politics
and more. Students with other areas of interest
besides English may want to check the event
schedule for relevant lecures as well. For
those interested in English and literature, ENGL 325
lectures take place on Wednesdays, 5:55-7:10 pm, with
lectures on various topics by English Department faculty,
and those interested in creative writing can check
out the Visiting Writers series. These events should
be updated for Fall 2007 on the English News
and Events page.
The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program hosts a schedule of readings by visiting writers each semester:
[Fiction] James Houston: Thursday, Sept. 27, 7:30pm, Grand Tier III, Concert Hall
James D. Houston is the author of eight novels, including his newest work, Bird of Another Heaven, published by Alfred Knopf in March 2007. His recent Snow Mountain Passage, described in The Washington Post as "a dignified, powerful narrative of our shared American destiny," was cited by The Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Times as one of the Year's Best Books. His often anthologized stories and essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, GQ, Ploughshares, The Utne Reader, The Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, Honolulu, Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, and Zyzzyva (The Last Word: west coast writers and artists).
[Fiction] Peter Ho Davies: Monday, Nov. 12, JC Cinema
Peter Ho Davies’ work has appeared in a variety of magazines and newspapers, and his short fiction is widely anthologized, including selections for Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998 and Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996 and 2001. His own first published collection of short stories was The Ugliest House in the World (1998), which contains tales set in Malaysia, South Africa and Patagonia. This collection won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. His second collection, Equal Love, was published in 2000. In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. His first novel, The Welsh Girl, set in a Welsh village during the second world war, was published earlier this year.
[Nonfiction] Bich Nguyen: Thursday, Sept. 27, 7:30pm, JC Gold Room
Bich Nguyen’s first book was Stealing Buddha's Dinner (Viking Penguin, February 2007). It received the PEN/Jerard Award from the PEN American Center. Her work has also appeared in publications such as Gourmet magazine; Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing up in America; and Watermark: Vietnamese American Poetry and Prose. She has also coedited three anthologies: 30/30: Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years (Penguin Academic); Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye (Longman); and The Contemporary American Short Story (Longman). She is currently working on a novel, Short Girls.
[Nonfiction] Michael Martone: Thursday, Nov. 14, 7:30pm, JC Gold Room
Michael Martone is a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. Martone is the author of five books of short fiction including Seeing Eye published in September of 1995 by Zoland Books as well as Pensées: The Thoughts of Dan Quayle (Broad Ripple Press, 1994), Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List (Indiana University Press, 1990), Safety Patrol (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), and Alive and Dead in Indiana (Alfred A. Knopf, 1984). He has edited two collections of essays about the Midwest: A Place of Sense: Essays in Search of the Midwest and Townships: Pieces of the Midwest (University of Iowa Press, 1988 and 1992). He edits Story County Books, and his newest book, The Flatness and Other Landscapes (University of Georgia Press, 2000), a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998. His next book, Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, is forthcoming.
[Poetry] Claudia Rankine: Wednesday, Sept. 26, 6:00pm, Harris Theater
Claudia Rankine is the author of four collections of poetry, including Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (Graywolf 2004), PLOT (2001); The End of the Alphabet (1998); and Nothing in Nature is Private (1995), which received the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. She is co-editor of American Women Poets in the Twenty-First Century (Wesleyan University Press). Her work has been published in numerous journals including Boston Review, TriQuarterly, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. Her poetry is also included in several anthologies, including Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present, Best American Poetry 2001, Giant Step: African American Writing at the Crossroads of the Century, and The Garden Thrives: Twentieth Century African-American Poetry.
[Poetry] James Longenbach: Wednesday, Nov. 7, 7:30pm, JC Gold RoomJames Longenbach published his first book—Modernist Poetics of History—at the age of 27, and to date he has written five influential works of scholarship and persuasion. Longenbach's three collections of poetry Threshold (University of Chicago Press, 1998), Fleet River (University of Chicago Press, 2003), and Draft of a Letter (University of Chicago Press, 2007) reveal his unerring command of sound and line. He is a Professor of English at the University of Rochester.
Folklore
Supernatural Stories
in American Indian Culture: Encounters with "The
Little People" by Dr. Tom Mould of Elon
University on Tuesday 25 September 2007, 7:30pm,
in the Grand Tier of the Center for the Arts.
Government and International
Politics
Dean’s Special Guest Lecture
Tuesday, November 6, 2007 | 5:30-7:00 | Dewberry Hall
Lt. General Bernard Trainor USMC (Ret.)
The co-author of the bestselling COBRA
II, the inside story
of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, will address the
origins and consequences of the war’s assumptions and policies.
History
Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to attend the
first Vision
Series lecture of the season on Monday, September 24,
8:00 p.m., at the
Center for the Arts, Concert Hall. Roger Wilkins, Robinson
Professor,
History and American Culture, will present “Racial Equality
in America:
Will the Struggle Ever End? The Supreme Court’s Desegregation
Decisions
in Relation to American History.” A reception will follow
the lecture.
Free tickets can be reserved at http://www.gmu.edu/cfa/vision.
Dean’s Special
Guest Lecture
Tuesday, November 6, 2007 | 5:30-7:00 | Dewberry Hall
Lt. General Bernard Trainor USMC (Ret.)
The co-author of the bestselling COBRA II, the inside
story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, will
address the origins and consequences of the war’s assumptions and policies.
Philosphy
The Philosophy Club meetings are open to anyone and at times
feature a faculty lecture. Check the Philosophy
Club web site for updates to the event schedule.
Physics
The Department of Physics and Astronomy hosts
lectures by researchers from Mason and from neighboring
instutions on Thursdays, 11 AM - noon (except where
noted), in Room 301, Research I (except where otherwise
noted). For more detailed information, visit the Fall
2007 seminar schedule.
Psychology
The Human Factors/Applied Cognition Program hosts
brown bag lectures most Wednesdays at noon. Arch
Lab is comprised of a group of faculty and students
who work on both basic and applied research topics
in the cognitive sciences. Basic research topics include
visual perception, attention, cognitive control, and
language processing. Applied topics include aviation,
transportation, and human-computer interaction.
Industrial/Organizational Psychology lists is brown bag lectures at: http://www.gmu.edu/org/iopsa/stufac.htm.
Applied Developmental Psychology is concerned with enhancing developmental processes and preventing developmental disorders in individuals and families across the life span. It uses the knowledge base and methodologies of developmental science to assist the development of individuals who vary in cultural and ethnic background, economic and social opportunity, physical, social, emotional, and cognitive abilities, and conditions of living. The ADP brown bags are listed at: http://adp.gmu.edu/. The department plans to update this soon.
* The Krasnow Institute seeks to expand understanding of mind, brain, and intelligence by conducting research at the intersection of the separate fields of cognitive psychology, neurobiology, and the computer-driven study of artificial intelligence and complex adaptive systems. These separate disciplines increasingly overlap and promise progressively deeper insight into human thought processes. The Institute also examines how new insights from cognitive science research can be applied for human benefit in the areas of mental health, neurological disease, education, and computer design. Each Monday afternoon during the academic year, the Krasnow Institute hosts a seminar at 4:00 p.m. at which an invited guest speaker gives a presentation on a topic in the cognitive sciences. Presentations are finished by 5:00 p.m. and a discussion period follows. All are welcome.
* The George Mason University Vision Series sheds light on the real world research that takes place every day on George Mason’s distributed campus. A chance to share the frontiers of creativity from practitioners across a broad spectrum of work, the series inspires creative discussion throughout the student body, among faculty and staff, and the wider reaches of the community. This year’s lineup includes eight lectures by top researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines like History, Public Policy, Law, Diversity Studies, Medicine, Visual Cultural and Chinese Studies, and the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.
These free events are held on Mason’s Fairfax campus in the comfortable and accessible Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Each lecture is followed by an informal reception with the speaker.
* Each year, the six-day Fall for the Book Festival celebrates literature, learning and all types of books and storytelling—from literary fiction to mystery and thrillers to folk tales, from poetry and plays to children's books, and across a diverse range of nonfiction: history, memoir, politics and more. All events are free and open to the public. The schedule is subject to change. Check back often for additional events and participants. Check with your Honors 110 Professor about which Fall for the Book events are appropriate for learning about research.