About the Special Collections Research Center

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) in George Mason University Libraries serves the scholarly community and beyond. While our services are used mainly by students and faculty, we are open to the public for research or for personal interest. The SCRC staff is dedicated to preserving, organizing, and collecting various objects, books, and manuscripts. Members […]

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Melancholy, Phrensie, and Madnesse, Oh My!

In the 1600’s, Robert Burton wrote Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, to describe illnesses such as “phrensie,” “madnesse,” and lycanthropia or “wolfe madnesse.” Melancholy was defined by Burton as an illness that “goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, feare, griefe, passion, perturbation of the mid, any matter of care, discontent, or thought […]

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Where Are You Really From?: Exploring Ideas About Asian-American Identities

Frank H. Wu, associate professor at the Howard University School of Law, wrote Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. In this book, he discussed stereotypes towards Asian-Americans, racial identity, and experiences of Asian-Americans in the United States. Through his analysis of race, he demonstrated how ideas about race are used to separate groups of people, damaging community […]

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Amateur Radio, Pat Hawker, and World War II

Amateur radio, also known as HAM radio, is a hobby that allows people to communicate non-commercially with each other by creating personal radio stations. Amateur radio began around 1890 and began picking up interest in the early 1900’s. Radio communication has been used by the government and military for intercepting communications from other countries. During and […]

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