Department of Humanities Faculty
Kevin Murphy, PhD
Chair, Department of Humanities
Associate Professor of History
k.murphy@usciences.edu | 215.596.8903
Dr. Murphy received his BA degree from Towson State University and his MA and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park. He teaches a variety of Asian and American subjects. His research interests deal with the intersection of culture. He is working on his third book, a study of the Bataan Death March from the point of view of the Japanese.
Robert Boughner, PhD
Professor of Classics
r.boughn@usciences.edu | 215.596.850
Dr. Boughner earned his PhD and MA from Johns Hopkins University and his BA from Duke University. He teaches various courses in classics, and participates in the Intellectual Heritage Program. Prof. Boughner produced a textbook on Catullus and Horace which has now sold more than 25,000 copies. At present, he continues his study of Catullus, in which he focuses on the cultural context of Catullus’s poems and their impact on modern American poetry.
Michael Brody, MA
Instructor in Art History
Professor Brody holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA from the New School.
Ruth K. Crispin, PhD
Professor of Spanish
r.crispin@usciences.edu | 215.596.8587
Dr. Crispin received a PhD and MLS from Vanderbilt University, an MA from the University of Wisconsin and a BA from Brandeis University. Her main area of interest and expertise is Spanish literature. She has published extensively on the 20th-century Spanish poet Pedro Salinas and is currently concentrating principally on literary translation, both of poetry and of prose. Dr. Crispin has been the recipient of three National Endowment of the Humanities summer fellowships and was a panelist for the awarding of similar NEH grants.
Michael Dockray, MA
Lecturer in English
m.dockra@usciences.edu | 215.596.8907
Mr. Dockray holds two master’s degrees and a BA from West Chester University.
Anne Marie Flanagan, PhD
Associate Professor of English
a.flanag@usciences.edu | 215.895.1132
Dr. Flanagan holds a PhD, MA and BA from Temple University. Her current research concerns the relationship of Henry James’s The Bostonians to anti-suffrage literature. Dr. Flanagan also studies modern British and American literature, film studies, feminist art history, rhetoric and interdisciplinary pedagogy.
Christine Flanagan, MFA
Associate Professor of English
c.flanag@usciences.edu | 215.596.8899
Ms. Flanagan received an MFA from Emerson College and a BA from the University of Rochester. In addition to developing travel-based coursework in the Humanities and courses in creative writing, Professor Flanagan’s teaching and scholarship reflects her varied interests and activities: writing fiction, nonfiction, and drama; scholarship on the short stories of Flannery O’Connor; and research on experiential and service learning.
Paul Halpern, PhD
Professor of Mathematics and Physics
Fellow in Humanities
p.halpern@usciences.edu | 215.596.8913
Dr. Halpern received his doctorate and master’s from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his bachelor’s from Temple University. His research interests are general relativity, cosmology, chaos and complexity, cellular automata, generic algorithms, the history and philosophy of science, and literature, culture and science.
Peter T. Hoffer, PhD
Professor of German
p.hoffer@usciences.edu | 215.596.8905
Dr. Hoffer earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA from Tufts University and a BA from Columbia University.
Laurie G. Kirszner, PhD
Professor Emeritus of English
l.kirszn@usciences.edu | 215.596.8899
Dr. Kirszner holds a PhD from Temple University, an MA from New York University and a BA from Barnard College. She is the coauthor of more than a dozen popular college writing textbooks, including literature anthologies; grammar handbooks; rhetorical, thematic and cross-cultural readers; and developmental writing workbooks. Her best-known text, Patterns for College Writing, has for years been a best-selling reader for college composition.
Robert Manbeck, MA
Distinguished Assistant Professor of English
r.manbec@usciences.edu | 215.596.8904
Mr. Manbeck earned an MA from Temple University and a BA from Allegheny College.
William B. Reinsmith, DA
Professor Emeritus of Humanities
w.reinsm@usciences.edu | 215.596.8903
Dr. Reinsmith holds a DA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MA from Villanova University and a BA from Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary.
Kim Robson, MM
Assistant Professor of Music
Director, musical activities
k.robson@usciences.edu | 215.596.7542
Ms. Robson earned an MM from the New England Conservator of Music and a BS from Allegheny College. She is the founder of the current music program, which includes up to nine different chamber ensembles and two lecture-format classes each semester. Ms. Robson’s research interests include sacred choral performance practice in colonial America, pedagogy in the applied music studio, and outside of class interaction and the student-teacher relationship in music education.
Roy Robson, PhD
Professor of History
r.robson@usciences.edu | 215.596.8525
Dr. Robson received a PhD from Boston College, an MA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA from Allegheny College. He teaches courses on modern Europe, Russia, and world religions. His interdisciplinary teaching includes “Intellectual Heritage: Time” and “Views of the Cosmos.” Dr. Robson writes extensively on Russian history and world religions.
Samuel R. Talcott, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
s.talcott@usciences.edu | 215.596.7129
Dr. Talcott earned an MS and PhD from DePaul University.
David Traxel, PhD
Professor of History
d.traxel@usciences.edu | 215.895.1133
Dr. Traxel earned a PhD and MA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an AB from the University of California, Berkeley.