Honors College

Rosemarie Zagarri is a historian specializing in Early American history. She has published four books and numerous articles in leading scholarly journals. Professor Zagarri has received many research fellowships and awards, including the Outstanding Article Prize from the Southeastern Eighteenth-Century Studies Association. She has served on several editorial boards and was a member of the Advisory Board for the Museum for Statue of Liberty in NYC. In 2010, she was elected President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) and in 2013 was named a University Professor by GMU Board of Visitors.

Mark Rudnicki is a teacher who is the recipient of two Kosciuszko Foundation Research Fellowships. He has spoken at conferences on the intersection of philosophy and literature in the works of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Mark is also the advisor for Mason’s Music Productions Club and is currently working on a research project called Witkacy: Archaeology of Influence. He has several publications related to Witkiewicz.

Mason is launching a six-part YouTube series titled “Our Future, Transformed: Mason Spotlights the World’s Grand Challenges” and hosted by President Washington

Dr. Forbes teaches Honors 122, Reading the Arts. She trained as a Romanticist and scholar of poetry and is currently a fiction writer.

HNRS 130: The Politics of Language is an Honors College course at Mason that explores the relationship between language and power structures in society. Taught by Anna Habib, the course covers topics such as linguistic discrimination, inclusive and antiracist language, and linguistic erasure. Students lead discussions and have a range of choices for their final projects. The goal of the class is to increase awareness of implicit biases related to linguistic identity and practices.

Gwendolyne Fields’ life has been defined by a connection to natural landscapes across the world. Growing up outside of the U.S., Fields developed an awareness of how global issues like climate change impacted environmental degradation and species decline in multiple countries.

For Honors College student Rakibul Alam, creative writing was his gateway to advocacy. In 2021, when he was a senior at Westfield High School, he wrote a spur-of-the-moment poem titled “Utopia” about the struggles of Muslim Americans.

The Honors College welcomes Jeffrey Shen to the Dean's Advisory Board.

Honors College student Emily Synoski, who graduates this month from Mason with a biology degree, has also participated in Georgetown University’s competitive CORE pre-med program, where she and her team pitched an idea to deliver opioid overdose treatment to houseless populations via drones.

Honors College student James Condo has trained in the emerging field of Next System Studies, which involves research into questions of systemic design, change, and movements.