By Emily Yaghmour

"Scholars often work in isolation," said Dean Daniele Struppa of the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) in an interview last fall. "Their work may be better known to a colleague on the other side of the world than to faculty in their own universities. It is difficult to overcome this isolation and realize the talent in our midst." That's why Struppa decided last year to create an annual Celebration of Scholarship--to give Mason faculty an opportunity to recognize scholarly achievement among themselves.

In addition to recognizing the scholarship of faculty members, Struppa decided this celebration should also recognize students, so this year the college sponsored an essay contest in which undergraduates were invited to submit essays on the "significance of the liberal arts in their education and lives." In addition to a cash prize of $300 and recognition at the awards dinner on April 21, Struppa has good-naturedly offered up his parking space for the entire month of April to the essay winner. "Let the dean walk for a change!" says Struppa.

Carol Mattusch, History and Art History, who was last year's recipient of the Award for Scholarship, presents a lecture on April 14 at B orders in Fairfax on her book, The Victorious Youth, copies of which she will sign at the event. The book is one in a series of books called Getty Museum Studies on Art, each of which discusses an object in the Getty Museum collection.

On April 21, at an awards dinner in the Johnson Center Multipurpose Room, CAS presents Lois E. Horton, Sociology and Anthropology, with the second annual Arts and Sciences Award for Scholarship. Following the dinner, Horton presents a lecture titled "Braided Narratives: African Americans in the Creation of American History and Culture" at 7:30 p.m. in the Johnson Center Cinema. Dee Ann Holisky, associate dean for academic programs in CAS, writes, "Dr. Horton's recent book, In Hope of Liberty, is, according to one evaluator, 'the best and most comprehensive look we have of life in the Northern colonies and states for African Americans in the 18th and 19th centur[ies].' This work," continues Holisky, "is original scholarship of the highest quality, highly praised by her peers, and, at the same time, a fascinating, well-written narrative of lives of real people."

"It's an unusual thing to be honored by your colleagues for your work," says Horton. "Usually you gain recognition outside of the university, so it's a very special award." Horton cowrote the book, which was published in 1996 by Oxford University Press, with her husband James Oliver Horton, a social historian at George Washington University. "We tried very hard to make this book very readable and accessible to a broad public," but also "respectable in terms of scholarship. . . . That's the reason primarily that we tried to build different biographies through the book. We tell the story of people--ordinary people, most of them--who illustrate major points that we want to make."

According to a news release issued by Oxford University Press, "James and Lois Horton introduce us to a rich cast of characters. There are familiar historical figures. . . . And there are the countless men and women who struggl ed to lead their daily lives with courage and dignity: Zilpha Elaw, a visionary revivalist who preached before crowds of thousands; David James Peck, the first black to graduate from an American medical school in 1848; and Nancy Prince, at 18 the effective head of a scattered household of four siblings, each boarded in different homes."

The Hortons, who spent almost 15 years researching and writing the book, began their research by examining documents such as census records. "We coded and put on the computer about 40,000 individual cases from manuscript censuses in the 19th century, so that gave us a base of information about the different communities we were looking at," says Horton. They pieced together people's stories from many sources, including archaeological evidence and newspaper accounts. "It was quite a detective job," she says.

Horton says that although "it was challenging to try to understand the whole story from the perspective of people who generally have very little voice in history," she found writing the book very satisfying because "you get a sense of things we know about in American history, but from a different angle." A faculty committee selected Horton as the winner for the Arts and Sciences Award for Scholarship from a list of nominees. According to an announcement, the awardee must be "someone whose work during the past three years has played an important role in the advancement of his or her discipline and is on a theme of interest to a broad audience."

In the Johnson Center Multipurpose Room, a display featuring CAS faculty members' recently published books and articles opens for viewing at 5 p.m. The display also includes a computer that links to websites of a scholarly nature created by CAS faculty members.

For more information or to RSVP for the awards dinner, please send e-mail to artsandsciences@gmu.edu or call x33421.