Disciplinary Interests: New Technologies
Patricia E. O'Connor
Modern Language Association, International Society of Language and Social Psychology, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Educators for Community Engagement
Patricia E. O'Connor, Ph.D., holds her doctorate in sociolinguistics. At Georgetown University she is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. O'Connor was a member of the Visible Knowledge Project from 2000-2005. She is a former Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Social Justice, and former Associate Director of the Georgetown University Writing Program. For over 20 years she directed GU Prison Outreach Programs. She also has served as faculty advisor for GU students' Demeter Educational Project for Women in Substance Abuse Recovery from 1995-2006. In December 2004 O’Connor was named a Mitsubishi Unsung Heroine for her work in substance abuse treatment centers and prisons.Currently, Dr. O’Connor is researching life stories of those in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, interviewing those in treatment centers about their experiences of addiction and about their hopes for recovery.
O’Connor has been Co-Director of the Georgetown University Service Learning Institute and founding member and chair of the national service faculty Educators for Community Engagement (formerly the Invisible College). Her research on narratives of prisoners explores the language of violence and speakers' claims about those acts. This research directly stems from her 20+ years of teaching and service in the District of Columbia's area prisons and jails. Her publications appear in the Journal of African American Men, Pragmatics, Tex , Discourse &Society, Pre/Text and in several edited volumes. Her book on prison discourse, Speaking of Crime: Narratives of Prisoners (2000), is available from University of Nebraska Press. O'Connor is also co-author of Literacy Behind Prison Walls (1992).
On Georgetown’s campus, O'Connor teaches courses in "Theory and Practice of Writing," "Prison Literature," "Narrative Discourse," “Narratives of Violence,” “Working Class Literature,” “Appalachian literature,” “Persuasive Writing,” and first-year English courses in “Critical Methods: Narratology.” She has also taught for Georgetown at its new School of Foreign Service in Qatar (2005-06, 2008).
