Skip to content →

Author: Patrick Dobson

Dr. Patrick Dobson is a work in progress until his termination. In the meantime, He is a writer, scholar, postman, and college professor living in Kansas City, MO.

The University of Nebraska Press published his travel memoirs, Canoeing the Great Plains: A Missouri River Summer in 2015 and Seldom Seen: A Journey into the Great Plains in 2009. Canoeing the Great Plains won the 2016 High Plains Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award. His essays and poems have been published in New Letters, daCunha, Kansas City Star, Garo, Wood Coin, and JONAHmagazine, and others.

Dobson earned a doctorate in American History and Literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2013. He has edited books, taught journalism, and been a union ironworker. He now teaches American History, Modern Latin American History, and Western Civilization at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS.

He looks forward to hearing from you soon.

The daguerreotype and the reception

The annual Johnson County Community College Night at the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art brings something like 700 students to the gallery. Faculty give presentations on art and art history associated with particular pieces or collections. The lectures last fifteen to twenty minutes with questions and answers until the next round…

One Comment

The man I could have been

My parents are in town. I spent the last week dreading the day they would come. But like most things I fear, their arrival and stay has been less traumatic that I supposed. They have revealed themselves once again to be just people, regular people who happen to be my…

Leave a Comment

Five years later, I still miss Joachim Frick

My friend Joachim, Josef and Marlies’ son, was diagnosed with cancer in October 2010. When his wife, Kristine, told me the news, I was struck dumb. Joachim and I had been together as friends for over 25 years. He was, in many ways, my soul mate. He had prospered, a…

Leave a Comment

When the waiting ends

The most bothersome thing about travel but that makes up most of travel is waiting. We wait for the next train for several hours. We wait in line at the food shop. We wait to get into the museum. It’s fair to say that I spend the majority of my…

Leave a Comment