​I have an M.A. in Eastern Classics from St. John’s College in Santa Fe and an M.A. in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis -- two campuses of one college and two graduate programs in Great Books, one of the East and the other of the West.  These two graduate programs complement each other in a way that is unique in American higher education.  As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy, history, and literature at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.  Since my time at St. John’s, where I studied Greek and Sanskrit, I’ve studied Greek and Latin at a number of other places, taught high school history and English for five years and college writing and English for seventeen years, at seven colleges and universities in Maryland and Pennsylvania, including two HBCUs, two community colleges, and four state universities.  I’m particularly interested in how writing and reading as forms of speaking and doing converge with the idea of human freedom, especially in ancient Greek poetry, history, and philosophy, in Shakespeare, and in American (esp. African-American) writing.  As the first in my family to go to college, I always hope for students that they might come to see how knowing themselves better through reading and writing and talking and listening can help them become better friends with themselves and each other.​