The Sway | June 2025

When I reflect on my time at Howard University, my mind lingers on different spaces that my memory associates with my HU journey.  As a graduate student, the opportunities for campus-wide exploration are scant, and you instead spend most of your time in a handful of buildings. As an English PhD student, these were Founders Library, the Graduate School building, and Locke Hall. Meetings with committee members, teaching assignments, and coursework were all concentrated around these buildings. Yet, one space stands above all others in my memory: Locke Hall, Room 100, the Howard University writing center. At Howard, funded English PhD students often spend a lot of time in the writing center because our research assistantship. When I talk to former and present writing center tutors at other universities, they often describe their work in their writing centers as a chore. Like so many other aspects of the HU graduate student experience, Howard is different. Read more...

Conducting archival research in Guinea, West Africa during the summer of 2023 was a profoundly enriching experience. Motivated by President Kwame Nkrumah’s 1958 convening of the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana, my research explored the transnational dimensions of radical thought and praxis it inspired. My dissertation, A History of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) 1968-1998: A Pivotal Moment in Black Internationalism examines how the shared vision of radical pan-Africanism of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Guinean President Sékou Touré and Trinidadian-born Black Power advocate Kwame Ture, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, led to the founding the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP)—one of the most significant transnational, political formations of the twentieth century. Read more...

Graduates | Class of 2025

Jean Abeck Doctor of Philosophy
Vyctoria Blake Master of Arts
Darryl Smith Doctor of Philosophy
Eke Agbai Master of Science
Josephine Agbakpe-Kafui Master of Science
Tiffany Davidson Master of Science
Kholeigh Foster Master of Science
Christine Frederick Master of Science

Peter Gansallo Master of Science
Naiya Jackson Master of Science
Robert James Master of Science
Juliet Kuruvilla Master of Science
Cierra Larke Master of Science
Ajeune Lynch Master of Science
Donnell Raby, Sr. Master of Science
Kerneka Waldron Master of Science
RayShawn Williams Master of Science
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Dr. Carole Boyce Davies, professor and English Department Chair, presented a symposium titled Black Left Feminist Praxis and African Diaspora Theorizing: The Scholarship of Carole Boyce Davies was held at the  Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University as a recognition of her Professor Emerita status and close to 20 years service to the university. 

Alum Jasmine M. Ellis just founded Willow x Arch - a global movement that centers and uplifts Black women and girls through storytelling, while preserving their narratives and history in media and entertainment. The network cultivates community among women and girls from Black communities by empowering and encouraging them to occupy space unapologetically—across podcasts, television, advertising, and every form of storytelling imaginable. Read more...

A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation's most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Toni Morrison herself requested that Dr. Dana Williams be the one to tell this story, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Read more...
 

In moments of political and economic uncertainty, it is logical to ask hard questions about the future—about the value of our institutions, our voices, and our investments. In the Graduate School at Howard, we want to be unequivocal. We believe deeply in the enduring power of graduate education. Graduate study is so much more than a path to personal and professional growth. It is that, indeed. But it is also critical engine for innovation and a hub for justice and resilience work for those of us who understand and who are committed to that agenda. Our classrooms and research labs, more now than ever, must be the spaces where ideas are tested, leadership is cultivated, and thoughtful responses to complex challenges are forged. This has been and will continue to be the lived mission of our graduate programs.  Read more...