Pat W O'Connor

Patricia O'Connor's research field is contemporary Spanish drama with special emphasis on the most current trends and works as well as plays by women. In 1975, she inaugurated the Spanish theater journal, Estreno, and served as editor for seventeen years. As a critic and translator, she has brought many plays to the attention of English-speaking readers through such works as Contemporary Spanish Theater: Seven New Plays (1980); Contemporary Spanish Plays: The Social Comedies (1983), Plays of Protest from the Franco Era (1981), Plays of the New Democratic Spain (1992), Antonio Buero Vallejo: Three Masterpieces (2003) and Antonio Buero Vallejo: Four Tragedies of Conscience (2008).

In 1982, one of her more than one hundred articles entitled  "Women Dramatists in Contemporary Spain and the Male‑Dominated Canon" appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and in1988, her Dramaturgas españolas de hoy, the first book ever published on women playwrights in Spain, was followed by Mujeres sobre mujeres: teatro breve español/One-Act Plays by Women about Women(1998), Mito y realidad de una dramaturga española: María Martínez Sierra (2003), Mujeres sobre mujeres en los albores del Siglo XXI / One-Act Plays by Women about Women in the Early Years of the 21st Century(2006), Elena Cánovas y las Yeses: Teatro carcelario, teatro liberador (2009) and Patenting Destiny: A Tale of Two Shoes (Ventanilla de patentes) by Charo González Casas (2011). Shades of Violence with plays by Juana Escabias, The Hooker of a Thusand Nights,  and  Diana de Paco, See you in Heaven...or Maybe Not  marked  in 2015 her twenty-first book.

Professor O'Connor holds a number of honorific titles: she was elected Charles Phelps Taft Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures in 1996, the same year  she was named "Alumna of Achievement" by her alma mater, the University of Florida. In 1982, she won UC’s Rieveschl Award for Creative and Scholarly Work and was named Distinguished Research Professor in 1990, the same year she was elected corresponding (i.e., non-Spanish) member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Language. In 2007, she was named Outstanding Graduate of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Florida, and selected to give the banquet address honoring those named from all the departments of Arts and Sciences. She has had homages for her theater work by SGAE in Madrid twice and two more  by the University of Cincinnati for initiating, in 1964,  study abroad at UC.

Ph. D.: University of Florida 1962

Contemporary Spanish theater, contemporary Spanish narrative,women's (Spanish and US-Americans')sense of justice as reflected in dramatic texts by women.

Contemporary Spanish narrative and theater, especially novels and plays written by women. Spanish phonetics and pronunciation.