Patricia Okker | |
---|---|
President of the New College of Florida | |
Interim | |
In office July 2021 –January 2023 | |
Preceded by | Donal O'Shea |
Succeeded by | Bradley Thiessen (interim) |
Personal details | |
Alma mater | Allegheny College University of Georgia University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
Scientific career | |
Fields | American literature |
Institutions | University of Missouri |
Thesis | Feminizing the voice of literary authority :Sarah J. Hale's editorship of the Ladies' Magazine and Godey's Lady's Book (1990) |
Patricia Ann Okker was named president of New College of Florida in 2021. She was previously a professor of English at the University of Missouri,where she focused her studies on American literature.
Okker has a B.A. from Allegheny College [1] and an M.A. from the University of Georgia. [2] Okker earned her Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. [1] Okker started as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri in 1990,and was promoted to full professor in 2004. From 2005 until 2011 she served as chair of the English department,and from 2017 until 2021 Okker served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri. [3]
In July 2021 Okker became president of New College of Florida, [3] a position she held until 2023 when Governor Ron DeSantis announced that he would replace Okker as college president with Richard Corcoran. [4]
Okker is known for her work in the field of American literature,where she specializes in the history of periodicals. While considering topics for her Ph.D. dissertation she became interested in women who had edited magazines,which led to her Ph.D. dissertation on Sarah Josepha Hale [5] [6] who was known for her work on women's magazines. [7]
In 2003 Okker received the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence from the University of Missouri. [1]
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale was an American writer, activist, and editor of Godey's Lady's Book. She was the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Hale famously campaigned for the creation of the American holiday known as Thanksgiving, and for the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument.
Fanshawe is a novel written by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was his first published work, which he published anonymously in 1828.
Eliza Anderson Godefroy is believed to be the first woman to edit a general-interest magazine in the United States. At age 26, from 1806 to 1807, she served as the founder and editor of a Baltimore publication called The Observer.
Caroline M. Sawyer was a 19th-century American poet, writer, and editor. Her writings ranged through a wide variety of themes. Born in 1812, in Massachusetts, she began composing verse at an early age, but published little till after her marriage. Thereafter, she wrote much for various reviews and other miscellanies, besides several volumes of tales, sketches, and essays. She also made numerous translations from German literature, in prose and verse, in which she evinced an appreciation of the original. Sawyer's poems were numerous, sufficient for several volumes, though they were not published as a collection.
Susanne Vandegrift Moore was an American editor and publisher. During the period of 1889–97, she was the editor and owner of the weekly, St. Louis Life. She was friends with Kate Chopin. Susanne Moore died in 1926.
Frances Elizabeth Fryatt was an American author and specialist in household applied arts. She served as editor-in-chief of The Lady's World after its establishment in 1886, and was twice elected president of the Ladies' Art Association of New York.
Clara Christiana Morgan Chapin was a British-born American woman suffragist, temperance worker, and editor.
Mary A. Miller was an American editor and publisher of missionary periodicals. She was also the author of History of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Protestant Church, 1896. Miller's name appeared as missionary editor of the woman's department in the Methodist Recorder, published in Pittsburgh, and since 1885, as editor and publisher at the Woman's Missionary Record, organ of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Protestant Church. She was the first editor of the Woman's Missionary Record, serving in that role for ten years. Miller served as corresponding secretary of the society for six years, represented the society in a number of the annual conferences of the church, in two general conferences, and in 1888, was a delegate to the World's Missionary Conference in London, England. Miller died in 1925.
Louise Reed Stowell was an American scientist, microscopist, author, and editor. She was the University of Michigan's first woman teacher (1877–89), and the first woman appointed on District of Columbia Public Schools. She also served on the Board for the Girls' Reform School for District of Columbia. Stowell died in 1932.
Eva Griffith Thompson was an American newspaper editor who conducted the Indiana Times, the Indiana Messenger, and the News, of Indiana, Pennsylvania. First married and widowed while quite young during the American Civil War, she finished her education at the Steubenville Female Seminary before teaching for many years in Indiana County schools, and serving as the county's deputy superintendent of schools. She was affiliated with the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) movement and was embraced by the Grand Army of the Republic, her second husband having been a member of the organization. Thompson served as president of the Presbyterian Home Missionary Society. She died in 1925.
Henrietta Skelton was a 19th-century German-born Canadian-American social reformer, writer, organizer, and lecturer in the German Spanish, and English languages. She was the superintendent of the German work for the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (NWCTU), and president of the State Union of Idaho, In that capacity, she traveled all over the United States, lecturing in English and German, and leaving behind her local unions of well-organized women. Skelton's name was known by thousands of German citizens of the United States as one of the most dedicated workers in the temperance movement. For a time, she edited the temperance paper known as Der Bahnbrecher, besides writing several books published in the English language, including The Man-Trap (Toronto), a temperance story; Clara Burton (Cincinnati), a story for girls; and The Christmas Tree (Cincinnati), a description of domestic life in Germany. Skelton died in 1900.
Mary Traffarn Whitney was an American minister and editor, as well as a social reformer, philanthropist and lecturer. She was one of the early Universalist women ministers, later changing her association to that of the Unitarian church. Whitney was the author of Honor between men and women (1896), FamilyCulture, the Science of Human Life (1897), Present Tendencies in Racial Improvement (1897), Hymns of Peace (1915), and Problems for seniors by a senior (1932).
Angelina Virginia Winkler was an American journalist, editor, magazine publisher. She specialized in literary criticism of Southern literature.
Marion Marsh Todd was an American author, lawyer and political economist. After her husband died in 1880, Todd ran for state attorney general with the Greenback Labor Party and joined the Knights of Labor General Assembly. She also authored political and romantic books including Prof. Goldwin Smith and His Satellites in Congress,Railways of Europe and America and Protective Tariff Delusions
Martha Violet Ball was a 19th-century American educator, philanthropist, activist, writer, and editor. Ball and her sister, Lucy, undertook the work of opening a school for young African American girls in the West End of Boston. In the same year, 1833, she assisted in the organization of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, of which she and Lucy held leadership roles. Her work among unfortunate women and girls led to the formation of the New England Female Moral Reform Society, with which she was from its beginning connected as Secretary and Manager. For twenty-five years, she was joint-editor of its organ, the Home Guardian, and was also affiliated in its department, "The Children's Fireside". She was a constituent member of the Ladies' Baptist Bethel Society, first as its Secretary and for thirty years its President. Ball was the first President of the Woman's Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen Lands, and a charter member of the New England Woman's Press Association. She was the author of several small, popular books.
Nettie Leila Michel was an American business woman, author, and magazine editor of the long nineteenth century. Michel was the first woman commercial traveler in the U.S. and early in life traveled through Michigan for the N. K. Fairbank Company, of Chicago. She later gave up traveling and became the first editor of a strictly literary magazine, being associated with Charles Wells Moulton in Buffalo, New York, on The Magazine of Poetry, and with Mary Livermore in literary work.
Mary Agnes Dalrymple Bishop was an American journalist, newspaper editor, and newspaper publisher. She was an accomplished linguist, and throughout her life, continued to study languages with various teachers.
South Atlantic was an American magazine published from 1877 to 1882. It was edited by Carrie Jenkins Harris. It started in Wilmington, North Carolina, and then moved to Baltimore.
Rosa Kershaw Walker was an American author, journalist, and newspaper editor of the long nineteenth century. She was one of the best-known literary women in St. Louis, Missouri, and a pioneer woman journalist of that city.
Bella Zilfa Spencer was an English-born American novelist and early editor of the Saturday Evening Post, She was the first wife of future US Senator George Eliphaz Spencer.