If an academic center's buttons could burst, CML's would pop with pride over the scholarly achievements and, now, graduation laurels racked up by two of our most active undergraduates, Shemika Curvey and Andrew Snowman. Every semester, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHSS) recognizes outstanding graduating students nominated by their departments for academic achievement and contributions to their respective fields. Though ours is a research center, rather than an academic department, and therefore not in a position to recommend awards, two of this term's twenty-two outstanding undergraduates call CML central to their scholarly growth.
Andrew Snowman
The research skills I obtained from the Mason Family Account Book class have been paramount to my ability to produce history. The combined graduate and undergraduate student atmosphere fostered the scholarly environment that I sought.
When a CHSS interviewer asked Andrew, a history major, which course in that field had the greatest impact on him, he named CML's Mason Family Account Book study in archival and digital history, taught by Prof. Cynthia Kierner, a CML affiliate, and Associate Prof. George Oberle, CML's director. He also noted opportunities CML provided to present his continually expanding research—on White policing of Black bodies in Fairfax County from the early 1800s to the late twentieth century—as part of a panel at the 2025 Virginia Forum conference and at the the center's own annual symposium, which awarded him the annual Andy Smith Prize. His work on the subject for the History 499 capstone course was selected from among all sections of the course as Best Senior Seminar Paper.
Also through CML, Andrew interned at the Fairfax County Circuit Court Historic Records Center during his senior year. A first-generation college student, Andrew transferred to George Mason University in Fall 2022 from Eastern Maine Community College. He accompanied his studies for the bachelor's in history (concentration: public history) with minors in Spanish as well as ancient history and Mediterranean archaeology. Andrew plans to return to campus in fall to study for a master’s degree in history.
Shemika Curvey
My first semester at George Mason I took a history course, Black Lives Next Door, that shaped the rest of my undergraduate experience... Through this course and the associated research project, I discovered a love for research, history, and storytelling I never knew was possible.
Shemika calls "Black Lives Next Door," the first course created entirely through CML, formative to her undergraduate experience and says it was a course with CML Associate Director and Wendi Manuel-Scott, professor of integrative studies, "Critical Race Studies," that had the greatest impact for her. Shemika's research interests, in Black history, identity, and resistance, led her to create the online exhibit, Partus Sequitur Ventrum: That Which is Born Follows the Womb, for which she received CML's 2023 Andy Smith Prize and on which she presented at the Virginia Forum the following spring. Partnering with CML graduate student Annabelle Spencer and in collaboration with community historians and the historic Balch library, Shemika produced a content-rich online StoryMap on Black social and economic contributions in Loudoun County. which she also publicly presented.
At CML's February 2025 Annual Symposium, Shemika shared yet another product of her digital and archival scholarship. “What’s in a Name? Bethia Fairfax and Sarah Ambrose: Free Women of Color in 19th Century Fairfax County, Virginia,” began as a study into how a Black family acquired the name Fairfax but evolved into a broader exploration of the use of names as a form of Black power and resistance to slavery and suppression.
A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Shemika is already on track toward a master's degree in integrative studies as she continues in the university's bachelor’s-to-accelerated master’s degree program.
May 16, 2025