Faculty Bio

Mary T. Howard

Professor of Sociology/Anthropology

Education

B.A., Ohio Dominican College
M.A., Ph.D., Michigan State University

About

Mary Howard’s special areas of interests include psychological and medical anthropology, which stem from 16 years of work in mental and medical health care settings. This includes five years of research and work in East Africa, which was the basis of her 1997 co-authored book, Hunger and Shame: Poverty and Child Malnutrition on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

She has completed a manuscript called Home, which details four years of her life managing a group home for people with mental and physical disabilities. Since coming to Ohio Wesleyan in 1985, Howard has been involved with problems of poverty in Columbus, Ohio, and has filmed two documentaries, Cloud People and Outreach, which examine the city’s response to homelessness. She has also finished a feature length draft of a film called Outsiders, which tells the stories of hundreds of Columbus citizens who survive outside in their cars, under highway overpasses, and in tent and shanty communities near downtown.

Howard has lived for extended periods in Taiwan, China, Afghanistan, South Africa, India, and Bolivia. She has led student trips to Haiti, Dominican Republic, India, and Mexico, and has traveled in Europe, Pakistan, Nepal, Brazil, Peru, and throughout the African continent. These experiences have enhanced her cross-cultural comparisons in the classroom and have inspired many students’ career interests in public health and international development work.

Honors / Awards

Publications / Presentations

• Howard, Mary. “Swept Out.” Studio 35 Cinema and Drafthouse. Columbus, Ohio. 1 Jan. 2009.
• “Hunger and Shame: Poverty and Child Malnutrition on Mt. Kilimanjaro” (1997)
• “Cloud” (documentary)

Winner of the 1991 Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for Encouragement of Teachers