Students in St. Bonaventure University’s six-week Francis E. Kelley Oxford Program at the University of Oxford’s Trinity College are contributing to research for a presentation at an academic conference.

Students in Anne Lee’s “Women, Minorities and the Media” course and Richard Lee’s “Media and Democracy” course are assisting with research for a presentation about Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, who studied journalism at St. Bonaventure in the 1960s and had successful careers covering rock ’n’ roll, developing advertising campaigns and writing novels.

The St. Bonaventure presentation is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. ET on Sunday at the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association’s Virtual Symposium.

“In the presentation, we plan to share Patricia Kennealy-Morrison’s extraordinary accomplishments, which are often overshadowed by her relationship with Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors,” Richard Lee said. “We also plan to explain how the foundation for her success came at a small Catholic university in rural Western New York.”

Kennealy-Morrison was editor of Jazz & Pop magazine and authored several books, including a memoir about her relationship with Morrison, and two fiction series — one science fiction/fantasy; the other, a collection of murder mystery novels. She died in 2021.

“As a writer, Kennealy-Morrison helped people take music journalism seriously,” Anne Lee said. “As a woman, she achieved success and earned respect in the male-dominated field of rock music.”

The two years Kennealy-Morrison spent studying journalism at St. Bonaventure played an influential role in her career.

“Russell Jandoli, then head of the department, was a role model and a teacher in the true sense of the word,” she wrote in a blog post in 2008. “He taught me how to think the story like a reporter and feel the story like a reader and write the story like a witness on oath and edit the story like a hanging judge. Without his influence, I would still have become a writer and editor, but not the writer and editor I became because of him.”

Later in her career, Kennealy-Morrison made visits to St. Bonaventure to work with journalism students. In 2008, she spoke at the Jandoli School’s Communication Day. Her visits led to lasting friendships with several faculty and staff members. She donated several of her books to the university, as well as a large jeweled Celtic cross that hangs outside the dean’s office in the Jandoli School of Communication.

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About the University: The nation’s first Franciscan university, St. Bonaventure is a community committed to transforming the lives of its students inside and outside the classroom, inspiring in them a commitment to academic excellence and lifelong civic engagement. Out of 167 regional universities in the North, St. Bonaventure was ranked #6 for value and #14 for innovation by U.S. News and World Report (2024).