Dr. Barbara Griffin
Associate Dean
College of Arts and Sciences

Phone: (202) 806-6700
Fax: (202) 234-3947
Email: bgriffin@howard.edu

Dr. Barbara Griffin received her Ph.D. in English and American Literature in 1989 from the University of Maryland. In 1970 she received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Morgan State University, and in 1972 she received a Master of Arts Degree in English and American Literature from the same institution. From 1970 to 1973, she served as a teaching fellow at Morgan State University. In this capacity, she taught Humanities and Rhetoric and Composition as well as chaired the committee charged with revising the humanities curriculum in the English Department. In 1974, Dr. Griffin taught at Bay College of Maryland... read more

Dr. Rudolph Hock
Chair

Phone: (202) 806-6725
Fax: (202) 806-5224
Email: rhock@howard.edu

Department of Classics

The Department of Classics is by nature interdisciplinary and cross-cultural, covering as it does roughly 3000 years of the history of 3 highly significant civilizations and cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. The Department offers courses in (a) Greek, Latin and Egyptian Hieroglyphs at all levels, and (b) English courses in all aspects of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquity; e.g. history, literature, philosophy. mythology, art, archaeology, slavery, women, law, and rhetoric. Currently, majors and minors are offered in the ancient languages (Greek, Latin) and in Classical Civilization.

Dr. Hock earned his doctorate in Classics from the Johns Hopkins University, and has been a faculty member for over ten years. His research interests include the Roman historian Livy, freedom and slavery in the ancient mediterranean, and questions about the way current ideas and ideologies influence the reconstruction of the past. He is currently working on a source-book on comparative slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Dr. Eleanor Traylor
Chair

Phone: (202) 806-6730
Fax: (202) 806-6708
Email: etraylor@howard.edu

Department of English

Whether you're considering law, medicine, advertising, teaching, or journalism, a background in English can offer you a good foundation for a future career. Majoring in English, you gain strong critical reading, analytical thinking, focused research, and precise writing skills. Our new curriculum is designed to be comprehensive, integrated, intensive, and interesting to all English majors. The core courses you'll take will enable you to fulfill requirements for state teaching accreditation, graduate work in the humanities, and admission to a wide variety of professional schools. You'll choose from an array of specialized writing courses, including intermediate and advanced exposition and argumentation, technical writing, legal writing, business and professional writing, and creative writing.

Eleanor W. Traylor, Graduate Professor of English and Chairman of the Department of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University, is an acclaimed scholar and critic in African-American literature and criticism. Dr. Traylor obtained a B.A. from Spelman College; an M.A. from Atlanta University; and a Ph.D. from Catholic University, where she pursued her interests in African-American literature and mythology concentrating this focus in a dissertation on Richard Wright. She later received a Merrill Scholarship to the Stuttgarter Hochschule in West Germany and a research fellowship to study at the Institute of African Studies in Ghana and Nigeria. More recently, Dr. Traylor has traveled to South Africa, Paris, Brazil, Jamaica, Martinique, Jerusalem, Switzerland, Germany, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands to address scholarly forums. Her work has appeared in the form of chapter essays, biographies, articles, and papers on such challenging African-American writers as Larry Neal, Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Margaret Walker, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Richard Wright.

Dr. James Davis
Chair

Phone: (202) 806-6758
Email: jdavis@howard.edu

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures

The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures offers major and minor programs in French, German, Spanish, Russian and an undergraduate program leading to secondary teacher education certification in French and Spanish. In addition to the major and minor programs, the department offers a four-semester language sequence in Arabic, Japanese, Swahili, and Portuguese. Other languages may be offered upon sufficient demand through the department's Critical Languages Program. A unique feature of all undergraduate programs and courses is the incorporation, where applicable and possible, of content related to African American and African contributions to the historical and sociocultural development of world cultures.

James J. Davis, chair and professor of Spanish and Foreign Language Education, earned the B.A. in Spanish and English Education at Virginia State University, the M.A. in Spanish Language and Literature at the Ohio State University, and the Ph.D. in Foreign Language Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also holds a certificate in Hispanic Studies from the University of Madrid. As a Fulbright scholar, he earned a certificate in Brazilian Studies and Portuguese from the Instituto Alumni in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Davis’ research interests are African Americans and foreign language learning , the history of Black education, and the manifestations of Blackness in the literature of the Dominican Republic. His publications have appeared in... read more

Dr. Patrick Goodin
Chair

Phone: (202) 806-6811
Fax: (202) 518-3347
Email: pgoodin@howard.edu

Department of Philosophy

A major in philosophy broadens the mind and widens your horizon. It enables you to deal with the fundamental questions of existence by giving you the tools of critical thinking. Philosophy graduates have pursued and are pursuing degrees at the graduate level and in professional schools in fields such as law, mathematics and medicine.

Dr. Goodin currently serves as Chair of the Philosophy Department. His areas of teaching and research are Ancient Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Africana Thought and the History of Philosophy. He is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Minors Program in Caribbean Studies, and is a member of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Dr. Goodin is also the Book Review Editor of the journal Philosophia Africana.