Carey Snyder

ATHENS- Carey Jean Snyder of Athens, Ohio, passed away on March 20, 2025, aged 56, at O'Bleness Memorial Hospital, ending a 19-month battle with breast cancer. (In lieu of flowers, trees, or other gifts, it was Carey's wish that if you want to memorialize her, please do so by joining her in contributing to the two charitable causes listed at the bottom of the obituary.)

A brilliant, vibrant, caring soul, Carey would have described herself first as the mother of Zach and wife of Mark. The wider community knew her as a Professor of English Literature at Ohio University since 2001; a soccer player of inexplicable speed; a runner and hiker of the woodland trails in southeast Ohio; a knitter and crafter; an intrepid cook; an inspired planner of lively gatherings and globe-spanning adventures; a lover of cats; a person endlessly curious about the arts, literature, and the lives of those around her. Carey was a magnetic and radiant presence in any constellation of people.

Born May 19, 1968 in San Jose, California, Carey grew up in a lively, skilled, and creative family. They lived in a home that they designed and built in the Santa Cruz Mountains, raising chickens and goats, and dogs that chased them. The children were given glorious freedom to range widely and to blossom in their own ways. Their commute to and from school involved various combinations of bikes and buses, but always a trudge up a 2.5-mile hill to home. Carey graduated from Soquel (California) High School early, her last two years as part of an innovative and highly individualized program developed by Wes Beach. She went on to receive degrees from UCLA (BA), Claremont Graduate School (MA), and Stony Brook University (PhD) At Stony Brook. Carey met Mark Barsamian, a doctoral student in math, in 1998. In 2001, she moved to Athens to start her job at Ohio University. In 2004, Mark joined her, and they married that summer, on a sunny lawn overlooking Monterey Bay in Capitola, California. Zach came along in July 2006.

As a scholar, Carey wrote numerous articles; her first book was British Fiction and Cross-Cultural Encounters: Ethnographic Modernism from Wells to Woolf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).She later edited the H.G. Wells novel Ann Veronica for the prestigious Canadian publisher Broadview. In recent years, her research and writing focused on British writer Beatrice Hastings and New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield, culminating in a book manuscript entitled The Feminist New Age: Beatrice Hastings, Katherine Mansfield, and Modernist-Era Periodical Culture (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). Three fellow scholars and an enthusiastic editor at EUP collaborated with Carey in her last few months to bring the book to completion and expedite the review process; she learned just days before her death that the book will be published.

In addition to her scholarly activity, Carey put much work and care into--and drew great satisfaction from--her mentoring relationships with students. She spent countless hours planning her courses, reading, commenting on, and discussing student work. In recent years, she developed study abroad programs that took students to London. With pride, Carey followed her students’ success in their careers. They include writers, editors, teachers, lawyers, dancers, a rabbi, and others. Some of them visited Carey in Athens, and she met up with them in New York, England and elsewhere when she traveled.

As rich and varied as her professional life was, Carey's home life was even fuller. She lived with Zach and Mark in a small house at the edge of Athens, bordering on a large expanse of wooded parks and nature preserves. Their lives were perennially enriched by these woods: walking there with newborn Zach in a baby carrier, going on countless hikes and runs, hosting an annual New Year's Morning hike with friends. In January 2025, just two months before she died, Carey hiked over 100 miles as part of a month-long hiking/running challenge.

When young Zach began playing soccer, Carey and Mark became his ready opponents on their small side-yard soccer field and then coached some of his early teams. Carey took it further, joining a team in a local soccer league. Despite having no soccer background, she quickly became a skilled and unstoppable player.

At home, she took on ambitious cooking projects, from a traditional fruit pie with butter crust, to sushi, to unique desserts using native pawpaw fruit that she collected from the woods behind her home. She even managed, after fifteen years of marriage, to pry from her mother-in-law the secret Barsamian family recipe for cheesecake, that she perfected into a version of her own that became equally cherished.

Carey always thrived by seeking out and embracing new and interesting challenges. One year alone saw her push out a book, a tenure dossier and a baby, and also learn to swim a very fine butterfly stroke. In the end, she only lost two battles. The first, against the plant-munching deer of Athens, she fought year after year, with undimmed optimism that the next “deer-proof” plant she bought might actually be. The second, against cancer, she fought with all her might, assisted by fine and compassionate doctors in Athens, Columbus, and Houston. But this last battle was also one that she could not win.

Carey is survived by her son Zach Barsamian, husband Mark Barsamian, sister Pamela Snyder (Warren Leggett), brother Matthew Snyder (Karla Galdamez), mother Nancy Huguenard, and father Dave Snyder (Joanna Snyder), as well as beloved in-laws, nieces, and nephews. She also leaves behind a close and nurturing community of friends and colleagues, both near and around the world, who struggle to comprehend this loss.

An informal reception celebrating Carey’s life will be held at 2pm on Sunday, April 6, 2025, in the big tent outside Jackie O’s Taproom on Stimson Avenue in Athens, Ohio. A memorial service is being planned for Summer 2025, in Athens, Ohio. Details will be announced in early April 2025.

Carey’s last wishes included donations to two charitable causes: a scholarship fund to support study abroad for English majors at Ohio University, and the Athens Conservancy, whose vision and hard work has preserved many natural areas that Carey so loved. In lieu of flowers, please make memorial gifts by joining Carey in supporting these two causes.

Gifts to the Carey Snyder Study Abroad Scholarship Fund at Ohio University may be made by

-clicking on this link to The Carey Snyder Study Abroad Scholarship Fund,

-or visiting ohio.edu/give-now, clicking in the Designation box, and searching for “Carey”,

-or writing a check, payable to The Ohio University Foundation and with Carey Snyder Scholarship notated on the memo line, and sending it to The Ohio University Foundation, PO Box 869, Athens, OH 45701.

Gifts to the Athens Conservancy in Carey’s Memory can be made by

-clicking on this link to the Conservancy’s web page In Memory of Carey Snyder,

-or visiting athensconservancy.org/donate/ and in the comments box, writing “In memory of Carey Snyder”,

-or writing a check, payable to Athens Conservancy and with In Memory of Carey Snyder notated on the memo line, and sending it to Athens Conservancy, PO Box 2281, Athens, OH 45701.