Remembering Dr. Alan Merten

There was a buzz around George Mason University’s Fairfax Campus on Monday, April 15, 1996. The Mason community was about to meet the university’s new president-elect in a press conference later that afternoon. Dr. Alan Merten, Mason’s fifth president, was set to officially assume the presidency on July 1, and Continue Reading

The Federal Theatre Project: The Collection That Started It All

In 1974 George Mason University faculty members Lorraine Brown and John O’Connor discovered the archives of the Federal Theater Project (FTP) in an aircraft hangar near Baltimore, Maryland after a lengthy search. Included were scripts for over 800 plays and radio programs, official FTP photographs, 1930s-era silk-screened posters, hand drawn Continue Reading

“Showing Us Our Own Face”: Performing Arts and the Human Experience

Performance is a uniquely human quality. Humans – the only creatures on earth able to conceptualize realities other than the present one – over the millennia have followed the urge to present these realities to each other in a multitude of ways. This need to witness and empathize with the Continue Reading

Marchives Madness

Guess what!?   Special Collections Research Center is trying something new! We are so excited to be finishing up our new exhibition of staff picks. For the first time, we have created an online exhibition that follows along with our physical one and would love for people to interact. This Continue Reading

Recently Digitized Collections – Part 2

Continued from Part 1. Edith McChesney Ker papers – C0077 This collection was processed by Special Collections Research Center Staff. The inventory was added by Brittney Falter. A portion of this collection was digitized by Digitization Intern for the Fall 2018 Semester Andrew Morrison. “An avid photographer of wildlife and Continue Reading