Dr. Joy Kennedy-O'Neill

Assistant Professor of English

I grew up in Sweeny, Texas and began my studies here at Brazosport College.  I also studied in San Marcos, Texas; Canterbury, England; and Indiana, Pennsylvania.  Much of my non-studying time was actually spent underground.  For over ten years I explored and mapped caves in the Texas Hill Country with members of the Texas Speleological Society – very exciting!  I have taught for Austin Community College and Texas Lutheran University.  Currently I teach English Composition I and II, Creative Writing, and Nature Writing.

Ph.D Literature & Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
M.A. English Literature, Texas State University
B.A. English, Texas State University

Ÿ The Sacred and Sublime: Caves in American Literature.  Dissertation.

Ÿ “What We Leave Behind.”  What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest.  Forward by Kathleen Dean Moore. University of Texas Press, 2007.   

Ÿ “The Edge of the World: Feminist Geography and Literature.”  Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 2004.

Ÿ “‘Sympathy between man and nature’: J.M. Synge and Riders to the Sea”  ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 2004. To be reprinted in Murmurs that Come out of the Earth: The Best Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts, a Collection, 2008.

Ÿ “Artistry of Hunger: Desire and Appetite in Desert Solitaire.”  Western American Literature, 2004.

Ÿ “King Lear as the Green Man.”  The Explicator, 2002.

Ÿ “Shadow Gods.”  New Nature Writers of the Southwest: The Junction Anthology  Texas Tech University Press: release date Fall 2008.  Foreword by Bill McKibben.

The Writers’ League of Texas Fellowship for Creative Nonfiction

The Charles Oliver Memorial Award for Fiction

The William E. Bard Book Award for Children’s Fiction

The Chuck Steinem Award for Leadership in a Texas Caving Organization