Mandy Katz

Communications Director

As the Center for Mason Legacies' first communications director, since 2023 I have been helping advance and publicize its teaching and scholarship. I am a writer, editor and communications specialist with particular expertise in museum content and non-fiction book-editing.

I first encountered CML as a master's student in the "Black Lives Next Door" course co-taught, in spring 2023, by CML Associate Director Wendi Manuel-Scott and Director George Oberle. That led to a stint as graduate research assistant on their study of housing inequality and racial exclusion in Fairfax County. I continue to assist with this research (and a book to come from University of Virginia Press) in my current role, also overseeing the Center's website and other projects.

Outside my work at Mason, I have edited books including a history, Sharp Flashes of Lightning Come from Black Clouds: The Life of Josiah Henson, about the man whose life inspired the iconic "Uncle Tom" of Stowe's novel. From 2011 to 2018, I served as the first communications manager for Tudor Place Historic House & Garden, the onetime home of Martha Washington descendants in the capital's Georgetown neighborhood.

My freelance work has included features in the New York Times on diet culture, treadmill desks, and career changers who swap life as "a suit” for life in a track suit. My articles for Moment Magazine included an in-depth look at Einstein's Jewish life. I have been a walking-tour guide in D.C., where I live, in keeping with my interest in the early capital and twentieth-century urbanism. Before all that, having studied Mandarin and Chinese history as an undergraduate, I spent a year in China in the 1980s as a freelance journalist.

Selected Publications

Fade to White: Ilda and the Right to Remain - Omeka web exhibit (completed for HIST 535, Black Lives Next Door - spring 2023).

Grants and Fellowships

Evelyn Pugh Memorial Graduate Endowed Fellowship in History and Art History (2023).

2024 Virginia Forum "Best Graduate Student Paper," for Ilda, Fade to White web exhibit.

Education

Master of Arts in History, George Mason University, 2023.

Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies, Yale University, 1985.

Recent Presentations

2024 Virginia Forum - "Geographies of Inequity in Northern Virginia," panel moderated by Dr. Krystyn R. Moon, University of Mary Washington (April 5, 2024).