Publications of Dr. Robert J. O’Hara

In addition to the more traditionally published works listed below, I have also administered major scholarly discussion groups and comprehensive academic websites, authored hundreds of higher education news bulletins and college newsletters, and written newspaper natural history columns and genealogical essays, many of which (I like to think) have some enduring value. Citations to the works below in the publications of other authors can be found through my Google Scholar profile.

Selected Publications

O’Hara, Robert J. 2017.
Was Ishmael black? Facts behind Herman Melville's fiction. Journal of African American History, 102(3): 380–386.

O’Hara, Robert J. 2016.
Inscriptions from the West Street Cemetery in Fitchburg, Massachusetts (1798–1879), with an outline of the early Marshall families in Fitchburg’s Laurel Hill Cemetery. MASSOG, 40(3): 79–87; 41(1): 17–24.

O’Hara, Robert J. 2016.
“Oh, God! to think Man ever comes too near his Home!”: Thomas Hood’s poem “The Lee Shore” as a source for Moby-Dick. Leviathan, 18(2): 39–52.

O’Hara, Robert J. 2015.
The names Ahab and Ishmael in early Massachusetts. Notes and Queries, 62(3): 417–418.

O’Hara, Robert J. 2011.
American higher education and the “collegiate way of living.” (美国高等教育和 “学院制生活.”) Community Design (Tsinghua University), 30(2): 10–21. [Invited essay, published in Chinese and English. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2007.
“To gather from the air a live tradition.” Inside Higher Ed, 21 December 2007. [Essay on the King’s College Festival of Lessons and Carols and on the value of tradition in education. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2007.
Against theme halls. Student Affairs Leader, 35(22): 1–2, 15 November 2007. [Invited essay on the importance of residential diversity in higher education. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2007.
Essay-review of Valentine’s On the Origin of Phyla. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 21(1): 109–112. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2006.
Hogwarts U. Inside Higher Ed, 28 November 2006. [Essay on the four foundations of the residential college model. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2006.
Essay-review of Christian’s Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 20(1): 117–120. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2004.
Pasta with a side order of philosophy, please. Times Higher Education Supplement (London), 20 August 2004, p. 14. [Invited essay on residential colleges and higher education renewal. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 2001.
How to build a residential college. Planning for Higher Education, 30(2): 52–57. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1999.
Peabody Park: spring and the wild side of campus life. UNCG Magazine, 1(2): 22–23. [Photo essay.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1997.
Population thinking and tree thinking in systematics. Zoologica Scripta, 26(4): 323–329. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1996.
Mapping the space of time: temporal representation in the historical sciences. Pp. 7–17 in: New Perspectives on the History of Life: Systematic Biology as Historical Narrative (M.T. Ghiselin & G. Pinna, eds.). Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, 20. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

Robinson, Peter M.W., & Robert J. O’Hara. 1996.
Cladistic analysis of an Old Norse manuscript tradition. Research in Humanities Computing, 4: 115–137.

O’Hara, Robert J. 1996.
Trees of history in systematics and philology. Memorie della Società Italiana di Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, 27(1): 81–88. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

Williams, Ernest E., Hugh Rand, A. Stanley Rand, & Robert J. O’Hara. 1995.
A computer approach to the comparison and identification of species in difficult taxonomic groups. Breviora, 502: 1–47.

O’Hara, Robert J. 1994.
Evolutionary history and the species problem. American Zoologist, 34(1): 12–22. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1994.
Review of Panchen’s Classification, Evolution, and the Nature of Biology. Isis, 85(1): 182–183. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1994.
Vita: Chauncey Wright — Brief life of an “indolent genius”: 1830–1875. Harvard Magazine, 96(4): 42–43. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1993.
Systematic generalization, historical fate, and the species problem. Systematic Biology, 42(3): 231–246. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J., & Peter M.W. Robinson. 1993.
Computer-assisted methods of stemmatic analysis. Occasional Papers of the Canterbury Tales Project, 1: 53–74. [Usefulness of cladistic analysis to the study of manuscript traditions. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1993.
Review of Atran’s Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science. Forest and Conservation History, 37(1): 43. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1992.
Telling the tree: narrative representation and the study of evolutionary history. Biology and Philosophy, 7(2): 135–160. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

Richmond, Charles W. 1992.
The Richmond Index to the Genera and Species of Birds. (R.J. O’Hara, ed.) Boston: G.K. Hall & Co. [Major collection of 108 microfiche. Introduction available in Adobe portable document format.]

Robinson, Peter M.W., & Robert J. O’Hara. 1992.
Report on the Textual Criticism Challenge 1991. Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 3(4): 331–337. [Report on the application of cladistic analysis to the study of manuscript traditions. Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1991.
Essay-review of Sibley and Ahlquist’s Phylogeny and Classification of Birds. Auk, 108(4): 990–994. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1991.
Review of Kofalk’s No Woman Tenderfoot: Florence Merriam Bailey, Pioneer Naturalist. Archives of Natural History, 18(3): 415. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1991.
Representations of the natural system in the nineteenth century. Biology and Philosophy, 6(2): 255–274. [Reprinted 1996 as pp. 164–183 in: Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1988.
Problems in the narrative representation of evolutionary history. American Zoologist, 28(4): 144A. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1988.
Diagrammatic classifications of birds, 1819–1901: views of the natural system in 19th-century British ornithology. Pp. 2746–2759 in: Acta XIX Congressus Internationalis Ornithologici (H. Ouellet, ed.). Ottawa: National Museum of Natural Sciences. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1988.
Homage to Clio, or, toward an historical philosophy for evolutionary biology. Systematic Zoology, 37(2): 142–155. [Also available in Adobe portable document format. Reprinted 2011 in part as pp. 105–109 in: Causal Explanation for Social Scientists: A Reader. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.]

O’Hara, Robert J., David R. Maddison, & Peter F. Stevens. 1988.
Crisis in systematics. Science, 241(4863): 275–276. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

O’Hara, Robert J. 1987.
Strickland and Wallace, and the systematic argument for evolution. American Zoologist, 27(4): 107A. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]

Coombs, Roxane, & Robert J. O’Hara. 1986.
The Great Collections: Agassiz, Barbour, Bigelow, Brewster, Cabot, de Koninck, Faxon, Garman, Hagen, Thayer, Whitney. Cambridge: Museum of Comparative Zoology Library, Harvard University. [“An exhibition drawn from the great private book collections given to the Library ... during its 125 year history. Mounted in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the founding of Harvard College.”]

Mayr, Ernst, & Robert J. O’Hara. 1986.
The biogeographic evidence supporting the Pleistocene forest refuge hypothesis. Evolution, 40(1): 55–67. [Also available in Adobe portable document format.]