James F. "Jim" Hoy, a professor of English at Emporia State University, is Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fames Cowboy Historian Inductee for 2004.
Raised on a stock ranch near Cassoday, Jim has lived in the Flint Hills most of his life. He obtained a Bachelors of Science Degree from Kansas State University in 1961. After fulfilling various internships with the completion of undergraduate school, Hoy taught at El Dorado Junior High School from 1963 to 1965. He soon moved on to teaching at a college level. Jim earned his Masters Degree from Emporia State University and went on to complete his Docurate Degree in 1970. He served as the Chair of the English Department at Emporia State for 10 years. In 1990, he happily returned to teaching and researching full-time.
Hoy's academic interests include such topics as Western American Literature, Australian Outback folklore and literature and Great Plains folklore. He has published over one hundred articles and is the author/co-author of nine books. The University of Oklahoma Press opted to publish one of Jim's works Cowboys and Kansas: Stories from the Tallgrass Prairie.
His chief interest is the folklore of ranching, both historical and contemporary, with a special emphasis on the Great Plains and particularly the Flint Hills. Hoy gives lectures and programs for school, community and professional groups throughout the region. Since 1983, he has written a weekly newspaper column titled "Plains Folk". In 1996, the Library of Congress appointed Jim to their Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center.
Jim's research has taken him onto the back roads of the American West and tracks of the Australian brush to discover cattle guards, hay barracks, folk songs and old-timers willing to talk about the way things were.
