Evelyn O'Callaghan (born 20 September 1954) is a Jamaican academic who is a professor of

West Indian literature Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most ...

at the University of the West Indies. She was the first Jamaican woman to win a Rhodes Scholarship.

Biography

O'Callaghan was born in Nigeria to parents of Irish descent."Professor Evelyn O'Callaghan For Edward Baugh Lecture"
'' Jamaica Gleaner'', 10 October 2014. She moved to Jamaica as a small child, and attended

Mount Alvernia High School Mount Alvernia High School is a private all-girls Roman Catholic high school in Newton, Massachusetts. The school is part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Background Mount Alvernia High School was established in 1935 as an extension ...

in Montego Bay.Mt. Alvernia & Beyond
Mt. Alvernia High School Alumni Association. Retrieved 22 November 2017. O'Callaghan completed her undergraduate education at Ireland's

University College Cork University College Cork – National University of Ireland, Cork (UCC) ( ga, Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh) is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland, and located in Cork. The university was founded in 1845 as one ...

, which her father had attended. She was Jamaica's Rhodes Scholar for 1978, the first woman to be selected for the honour, and subsequently completed a

Master of Letters The Master of Letters degree (MLitt or LittM; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. Ireland Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University offer MLitt degrees. Trinity has offered them the longest, owing largely to its tradition as Ireland ...

degree at

Wolfson College, Oxford Wolfson College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with around sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research a ...

. She later completed a doctorate at the University of the West Indies (UWI), with her thesis being supervised by

Edward Baugh Edward Alston Cecil Baugh (born 10 January 1936) is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose ''Selected Poems'' (2007) Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the ...

. O'Callaghan initially worked as a junior lecturer in English literature at the UWI campus in

Mona, Jamaica Mona is a neighbourhood in southeastern Saint Andrew Parish, approximately eight kilometres from Kingston, Jamaica. A former sugarcane plantation, it is the site of a reservoir serving the city of Kingston and the main campus of the Universi ...

. She transferred to the Cave Hill, Barbados, campus in 1983, and was eventually awarded a full professorship. O'Callaghan is the current dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, and has previously served as head of the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature. She is an editor of the ''Journal of West Indian Literature'', and has written several books about early West Indian women writers.Prof. Evelyn O'Callaghan
Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, University of the West Indies. Retrieved 22 November 2017.

References

External links

Interview with Professor O'Callaghan, February 2016 (YouTube)''Woman Version''
book by Professor O'Callaghan, available fully and freely in th
Digital Library of the Caribbean
{{DEFAULTSORT:OCallaghan, Evelyn 1954 births Living people Jamaican people of Irish descent Jamaican historians Jamaican women historians Historians of the Caribbean Alumni of Wolfson College, Oxford Academic staff of the University of the West Indies University of the West Indies alumni Alumni of University College Cork Jamaican Rhodes Scholars Women biographers Academic journal editors