Notre Dame’s Joyelle McSweeney, the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English, fulfilled her mother’s lifelong dream by competing on Jeopardy this week. And with a final score of $17,700 — over $13,000 more than the second-place finisher — she won.
Her mother, a retired school teacher living in Pennsylvania, has always hoped one of her four children would appear on Jeopardy, so when McSweeney was invited to Sony Pictures Studios in California, she knew she had to say yes.
“I consulted with my siblings, and they were like, ‘It’s now or never,’” she said.
McSweeney didn’t really tell anyone else about her upcoming game show debut, calling it her “secret mission.” All but one of her colleagues in the Department of English, which she chairs, didn’t know until an announcement in the local news. The exception was professor Susan Harris, who herself competed on the trivia game show in September.
The two English faculty members tried out for the show simultaneously, responding to a call for contestants they had found in their email inboxes. After completing the Jeopardy Anytime Test — the first step for hopeful champions — they advanced through online heats of qualifying contests.
“We were both tickled and delighted to move through the screening process together,” McSweeney said.
She didn’t expect to actually make it to the show, and she definitely didn’t expect to win. Unlike many of the fellow contestants she met backstage, McSweeney didn’t cram in a study session or come up with a betting strategy before the competition.
But when she got behind her podium with a thumb on her buzzer, she was totally focused.
“I was one with the Jeopardy cosmos,” she said.
McSweeney attempted to give the correct question for 28 total clues in categories ranging from “Sports that don’t involve running” to “17th-century happenings,” getting 23 right. She was far enough ahead in Final Jeopardy that she didn’t need to bet anything to win — but she wagered $100 and was the only contestant to get the answer correct.
Earlier in the game, she had a special advantage in the “American authors” category as an American author herself and a creative writing scholar. A 2022 Guggenheim fellow, McSweeney has written nine books, her most recent a collection of poems published last year, and she directed Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program for four years.
One writer who came up in the “American authors” category was especially close to McSweeney’s heart — literally.
Hanging around her neck during the competition was a “Stella Maris” or “star of the sea” medal, a portrait of the Virgin Mary. For McSweeney, it’s a Catholic symbol and a connection to the English department, as Stella Maris is the title of a book by Cormac McCarthy. Knowing that he also wrote Blood Meridian won McSweeney $1,200 in the Double Jeopardy round.
Because of the covert nature of her journey to Jeopardy, McSweeney’s necklace was her only companion from home on set. But once her mother found out McSweeney’s episode would be airing, she invited all of her friends and neighbors to her house for a watch party.
“That was my cheering section,” McSweeney said.
As for McSweeney’s prize money, she’ll be putting it in the college fund for her three children.
In her second game on Tuesday, Nov. 4, McSweeney entered the Final Jeopardy round with $3,600 and bet everything on getting the last question right — which she did, doubling her score to $7,200. However, it wasn't enough to win the whole game, capping her Jeopardy run at two episodes.
