Faculty & Staff

Education
Ph.D, Rutgers University
M.A., Boston University
B.A., Johns Hopkins University

Courses Taught
EN 101: The Art of Reading
EN 203: Major Writers: American Literature
EN 266: U.S. Literature: Imagining the Nation
EN 366: American Literature to WWI: Dissent
EN 373: Black Lit Matters
EN 388: Asian/Pacific U.S. Literature

Publications

• “Piecing the Crazy-Quilt: Approaches to Teaching Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth.” A Class of Our Own: Teaching the Literature of the Working Class. Eds. Laura Hapke and Lisa Cooper Kirby. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 76-95.
• “‘No Tomorrow in the Man’: Uncovering the Great Depression in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Arizona Quarterly 63.3 (Autumn 2007): 91-117.
• “What Bigger Killed For: Re-Reading Violence Against Women in Native Son.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 43.2 (June 2001): 169-193.
• Selection reprinted in Native Son (Bloom's Guide). Ed., Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 2007

Tammy Henderson is lecturer of Africana studies with a specialty in African-American women’s history and public policy. Prior to joining the UMBC faculty in 2011, she was an instructor in African-American studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, and the academic program coordinator for the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History in Washington, D.C. Dr. Henderson earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park in American studies, along with a certificate in women’s studies. Her teaching and research interests include maternity, race and public policy, black feminist thought, black families, and black popular culture. As a committee member from outside of Loyola, Dr. Henderson provides influential insight into curriculum matters and the latest scholarly activities in the field.

Biography
Sam Klug is an Assistant Teaching Professor in U.S. History. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2020. He is currently working on his first book, The Internal Colony: Race and the American Politics of Global Decolonization, which is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press.  His work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the LBJ Presidential Library, the Rockefeller Archive Center, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. His writing has appeared in Diplomatic History, the Journal of the History of International Law, Politico Magazine, the Boston Review, Dissent, and other venues.

Areas of Specialization
African American History; 20th Century U.S. History; The U.S. in the World; Colonialism and Decolonization; Intellectual History

Oghenetoja Okoh received her B.A. at the University of Minnesota and earned her Ph.D. from New York University. She taught at the University of Akron before coming to Loyola. The working title of her current book manuscript—Contesting from the Margins: Minority Identity and Citizenship in Nigeria, 1928-1960—reflects her current research agenda. She teaches 20th century African and African diaspora history, with expertise on questions of ethnicity, gender, and citizenship.

Stephen Park is an Assistant Professor of English who specializes in American Literature. He is the author of The Pan American Imagination: Contested Visions of the Hemisphere in Twentieth-Century Literature. Dr. Park regularly offers courses in the AAAS Minor, including "US & Caribbean Literature" and "Race, Law, and American Literature." He is also Faculty Director of Community-Engaged Learning and Scholarship at CCSJ.

Rodney L. Parker, Ph.D., is the acting chief equity and inclusion officer (formerly assistant dean of undergraduate and graduate studies) and an affiliate faculty member of theology. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University; a Master of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Duke University; and a Master of Science in Pastoral Counseling and a doctorate in Counselor Education and Supervision from Loyola University Maryland. He joined the Loyola community in 2002 and served for two and a half years as an assistant director in the Center for Community, Service, and Justice, formerly known as the Center for Values and Services. In 2005, he assumed the role of director of ALANA Services and continued to lead the expansion of this office and role until July 2019 when he assumed the role of assistant dean.

Education:
Ph.D., Howard University
M.A., Howard University
B.A., The Pennsylvania State University

Areas of Specialization:
19th and 20th Century African American Literature and Culture
Hip Hop Studies
Black Geographies
Black Popular Culture Studies
Film Theory and Criticism

Education

• Ph.D. Princeton University, Politics
• M.A. Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences, Columbia University

Education
Ph.D., Cornell University

Research Interests
African American literature
The Black Arts Movement, editing, print culture, publishing

Dr. H. Lovell Smith received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park. His publications include articles in such journals as Research in Community Sociology, Advances in Medical Sociology, and Journal of Black Studies. He is currently an assistant professor in the sociology department at Loyola.

Research Interests
African American Religious Thought
Theology and Ethics of Hospitality
Theology and Ethics of Patience
Theological Interpretations of Scripture

Recent Publications
"Who is in the Chair or Which Student Knows What?" in A Pedagogical Festschrift" for Gene Gallagher and Patricia Killen (Bloomsbury: 2023).
“The Significane of Victorian Virtues for African American Moral Formation" in Theological Interpretation of Scripture as Spiritual Formation edited by Ryan A. Brandt and John Frederick (Brill 2022).
“What is Theology" in Paradoxum: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Faith and Inquiry (2022). https://paradoxumjournal.com/about/what-is-theology/

Grants and Awards
Outstanding Messina Faculty Award (2023-2024)
The Project on Lived Theology Grant (2018)

Research Interests

• Systematic Theology
• Christian Mysticism
• Black Church Studies
• Comparative Theology (African Traditional Religions)
• Ecotheology and Environmental Justice
• Law and Religion

Grants and Awards

• Dissertation Fellowship, Forum for Theological Exploration, 2022
• Honorable Mention for Dissertation Fellowship, Ford Foundation, 2022
• Doctoral Fellowship, Forum for Theological Exploration, 2020
• Doctoral Fellowship, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, 2019
• Doctoral Fellowship, Louisville Institute, 2019