Dr. Joe Kelly is a professor in the English department at the College of Charleston. He is currently the director of the Irish and Irish American Studies and has taught classes in modern Irish literature, modern British literature, composition, and western civilization. When Professor Kelly was 15, he moved from his home in New Jersey to Texas, which would later have a large impact on his career field. Professor Kelly would go on to attend the University of Dallas to get his bachelor’s degree in English and he would then attend the University of Texas at Austin to receive both his masters and doctorate in English.
Being from an “old catholic Irish family”, Professor Kelly had a large interest in Irish literature and has written many pieces on the famous Irish author James Joyce. Although it may seem that Irish culture has little to do with the south, Professor Kelly does discuss how Irish nationalism was inspired by the civil rights movement in southern states. While he didn’t study the south specifically, Professor Kelly’s research and location in the south provided him the opportunity to write an article on Irish history in Charleston. After learning about the Irish history in the south, specifically looking towards Catholic Bishop John England, Professor Kelly took a turn in his career and began to look more at history than just literary criticism. He describes the situation as “it was just the fact that I happened to be living in the south that led to this encyclopedia article and then my fascination in writing this 500 word encyclopedia article led to this book which really changed the course of my career and I became, I would describe myself now as somebody who rights the history of ideas as opposed to the literary criticism”. Many of Professor Kelly’s works would now showcase this shift towards a different type of narrative.
In his most recent novel Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin, Professor Kelly offers a different perspective to the beginning of America that focuses on reconstructing the confounding mythology of American history. He states that “It’s not so much that I’m interpreting things as I’m trying, myself at least in a small part, to contribute to that myth making”. In another one of his works that focuses more directly on the south, America’s Longest Siege: How Charleston Caused the Civil War, Professor Kelly is able to showcase the impact slavery had on Charleston culture which then affected the start of the Civil War. Both of these novels use the new type of narrative that Professor Kelly discovered while writing on the Irish south.
Professor Kelly’s current project is a novel showcasing the battle between two ideologies, liberal democracy and fascism, between World War l and World War ll. He plans on writing a narrative to show how modern writers were able to shift American culture in a way that allowed liberal democracy to succeed.
