Featured Speaker: Patrick Conner

Patrick Conner is the Eberly College Centennial Professor in the Humanities and a professor of English at West Virginia University. As Director of the WVU Press from 1999 to 2008, he established best procedures for university presses in acquiring titles and marketing books which had not been pursued heretofore by the WVU Press and was responsible for creating unique imprints in both Appalachian and Medieval studies to bring greater recognition to WVU’s research mission, particularly as it impacted Appalachian culture. Conner has been a long-term supporter of open access ETDs, and he is experienced in publishing ETDs as commercial monographs, as well.

He acquired Shirley Burns open access history doctoral dissertation, and assigned appropriate editors to bring it into the now popular book Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal on Southern West Virginia Communities, which has been of immense value to persons concerned with approaches to the conjunction of mining and the environment. His own scholarship embraces early medieval studies and humanities computing. Conner won awards for his development of the Beowulf Workstation, and he founded ANSAXNET, perhaps the earliest discussion group dedicated to early medieval literary subjects. Conner knows what English professors, playwrights, and poets do when they understand computers and take them seriously in their professions.