Lanitra Berger

Background

About Lanitra Berger

I am a senior international education professional committed to equity and access for underrepresented students. Currently, I am the senior director of fellowships in the Office of Undergraduate Education at George Mason University. In this role, I have helped students secure more than $2 million in external fellowship funds. I have helped students win more than 50 nationally competitive awards such as the Fulbright, Truman, Critical Language Scholarship, Boren Awards, Udall, and Pickering. In 2018, I developed and taught the first Honors College summer study abroad course: Monuments, Museums, and Memory in South Africa. This course visited Cape Town and Johannesburg and examined how South Africans were confronting the question of what to do with public monuments and memorials in the post-apartheid era. The course approached the question from Afrocentric, social justice, and critical race theory perspectives. From 2005-2010, I was the chief of staff and director of leadership and international programs for the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), an education association in Washington, D.C. that focuses on creating equal opportunity in higher education. At NAFEO, I specialized in internationalizing historically black college campuses. Since 2004, I have been a freelance contributor to the American Prospect online magazine, where I have written book reviews and short articles. I have published book reviews in academic journals as well, and I am interested in contributing reviews and essays to other publications. As an art historian, my research focus is on art of the African diaspora. My book,"Irma Stern and the Racial Paradox of South African Modern Art: Audacities of Color," was published by Bloomsbury Academic in December 2020. I am associate director of the African and African American Studies Program and affiliate faculty in the History and Art History Departments at George Mason University, where I teach classes on African art and museum exhibition curating. I currently serve as NAFSA President and Chair of the Board of Directors. Specialties: Higher education, social justice, arts and culture, race and ethnicity, gender studies, international politics